> What? Why would the death of Stalin impact the price and availability of caviar?

> Maybe someone else knows the history here? Perhaps the elites, previously held in check by fear of Stalin, began hoarding for themselves and exporting for hard currency?

I think it is a pure coincidence caused by the rise of the population and the overfishing of the sturgeon in the Caspian sea.

Sturgeon, that the black caviar comes from, is a large and long-lived fish that is highly prized for its flesh and has been highly sought after mostly because of that. It also «produces» large amounts of roe (i.e. the black caviar) as a «by-product». A mature sturgeon can easily dispense a bucket full of the black caviar or more. The downside is that the sturgeon takes a very long time to grow and mature. Some species can live for up 70 years.

Now, back in the Russian emperial days, the black caviar was a delicacy for the nobility because they had been taught by French teachers at home, spoke French at home and had live-in French chefs / maids that cooked almost exclusively the French haute cuisine for the family. Traditional Russian food was generally frowned upon as something lowly that only the «unwashed masses» were supposed to eat. So it was the French who have taught the Russian nobility to eat and appreaciate the black caviar. It was a popular snack that was served exclusively with the icily cold vodka, but it was also used as an ingredient for a relatively small number of dishes as well. In other news, the demand for the caviar was rather small, and there was a constant huge oversupply of the black caviar, especially in the Caspian sea area. Sturgeon meat and black caviar were supplied to the nobility and the aspiring gentry, to the emperial court, and the black caviar was exported to European markets as an exotic food that originated somewhere in uncharted lands of the Russian Empire.

Then, Russian peasants (who also happened to be fishermen) did not share the taste for the black caviar with the nobility, and, consequently, they ignored it as a food source. The oversupply of the black caviar was fed to pigs and dogs (ugh, omega-3 rich dogs, anyone?), or it was simply thrown away. Sturgeon flesh was equally prized by everyone, though.

As the population in the post-WWII years started exploding, the sturgeon has become overfished, which has led to a sharp decline in the availability of the black caviar whereas the acquired taste for it on a mass scale started driving the increasing demand resulting the black caviar becoming a cultural cliche and a meme that the Russians are trolled for today.

P.S. the red caviar, on the other hand, is an entirely different story as it comes from the fish that inhabits cold seas that have only become more or less accessible and «industrialised» in last 50-60 years. It was not as easily available back in the emperial days, I would imagine (I am afraid, I do not have much information on the subject here). The overfishing of the arctic fish had not been a problem until fairly recently, therefore large supplies of the red caviar flooded the Soviet market making it a «cheaper» and a more easily accesible substitute for the posh, expensive and hard to procure black caviar.