Notes
This empty can is a material trace of one of the most culturally resonant Soviet-Cuban consumer relationships of the twentieth century: the everyday presence of Soviet canned meat in the Cuban household diet. Throughout the years leading up to the Special Period (1986–1988), the second-highest food import coming to Cuba from COMECON members was canned meat, and 63% of these food imports were directly supplied by Russia/USSR. From 1968 until the dissolution of the Soviet Union, rationed Soviet canned meat consumption continued to be a staple at the Cuban dinner table (https://mundanemilitarisms.com/jess/jess_canned_meat.html).
In Cuban memory, carne rusa was ubiquitous — served in cafeterias, schools, and workplaces, integrated within the Cuban diet, hardly identifiable as exotic. While most recall that carne rusa was purchasable por la libre (at regular stores), some also recall that it was offered on the libreta (the rationing card) at certain points (https://cubacounterpoints.com/archives/1959.html). The "Slava" brand is one specific Soviet brand within this broader carne-rusa category.
The specific designation "Tourist pork luncheon meat" places this product within a documented Soviet food category. Tushonka (Russian тушёнка, from "to braise") is a canned stewed meat especially popular in Russia and the former Eastern Bloc; for the people of the Soviet Union, tushonka was a part of military and tourist food supplies; at some extreme periods of time it could be bought only with food stamps (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tushonka). The "tourist" branding meant products formulated for hikers, campers, and travelers — shelf-stable, calorie-dense, portable. The export-marked "Slava" can is therefore a Soviet "tourist food" product also exported to socialist allies. The tourist iconography on the label (palm tree, pyramidal or arched architectural element, sun) reinforces the "exotic warm destination" theme — the visual register of Soviet tourist imagery directed at warm-climate destinations (Crimea, the Caucasus, Central Asia, and by extension export markets like Cuba).
"Slava" is the Latin-script transliteration of Russian Слава (Glory). It was a relatively common brand-name choice in Soviet export consumer goods, evoking Soviet patriotic/heroic vocabulary while being pronounceable for non-Russian-speaking markets. ("Slava" was also famously the name of a Soviet wristwatch brand, a Soviet champagne, and various other consumer-goods brands — the same word does not indicate the same producer.)
Soviet products — canned meat, peas, Russian nesting dolls — for Cubans mark "a moment of access to different kinds of worldly goods, a period of generosity, largesse from the Soviet Union," as the literary scholar Jacqueline Loss has written (https://theworld.org/stories/2015/01/27/russiacubagn). The disappearance of carne rusa after 1991 (the Soviet Union's dissolution coinciding with the start of Cuba's Período Especial) made it a deeply nostalgic object in Cuban memory. Today in Miami's Cuban-American communities, carne rusa is among the most sought-after products in Russian-Cuban specialty stores, alongside Soviet perfumes and Russian crafts — a vehicle for "ostalgia," the nostalgia specifically for the Eastern (Ost) past (https://theworld.org/stories/2015/01/27/russiacubagn).
