What does it mean to «poskresti po susekam» («scrape through ‘suseks’»)?
There is a famous Russian folk tale called ‘Kolobok’ about a a little round bread-like being. And to find flour for baking it, it was necessary to "scrape through ‘suseks’".
This photo of 'suseks' was taken in Nizhny Novgorod Region.
In the old days, a ‘susek’ was a container for storing grain or a partitioned off part of the barn where grain or bread was kept. In Russian, there is another word with a similar meaning, ‘zakroma’, formed from the word ‘edge’ (‘kromka’). But, ‘suseks’ were used for "spare" bread, when the ‘zakromas’ were already full, that is, they were a kind of emergency reserve.
The word itself has common roots with the verb ‘sech’, i.e. "to cut off".
Today, the phrase "to scrape through ‘suseks’" means to pick up the last of the stock.
