A. B. Kiladze

Soviet specialists probably would not have turned to this unusual raw material and to the production of fish leather, were it not for Gosplan’s production targets looming over the leather industry. Large-scale stockpiling and processing of fish skins commenced in the Soviet Union in 1929. Respectable scientific investigations, however, appeared only two or three years later. Therefore at the start, industry could not rely on expert scientific recommendations, but, in the spirit of the revolutionary era, aspirations to develop production outpaced reality. Production of fish leather reached its height in 1932, but many set objectives remained unfulfilled. Poor organization of procurement activities and insufficient coordination with the fish-processing industry blocked the development of a new branch in the leather industry. Research was abandoned for sixty years, until a second wave of interest started in the 1990s, as a result of changing economic conditions and demand from a certain contingent of consumers, for whom goods made from fish leather became an indicator of material well-being.