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Catriona Kelly
Introduction
Soviet spy Konon Molodyi: Gordon Lonsdeil’, Moya professiya – razvedchik (Moscow: Orbita, 1990), p. 11.
The Book of Tasty and Nutritious Food: This publication has garnered more attention than any other cookbook from any period of Russian history. See, inter alia, Dobrenko, Piretto, Von Bremzen. Maria Pirogovskaya, ‘Taste of Trust: Documenting Solidarity in Soviet Private Cookbooks, 1950s-1980s’, Journal of Modern European History, vol. 15, no. 3 (2017), pp. 330-49, is an unusual and welcome study of the reception of cookbooks, including BTNF, in late Soviet history.
On Russia’s imperial role and the atrophy of its national identity, see particularly Geoffrey Hosking, Russia: People and Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997).
O povrezhdenii nravov v Rossii knyazya M. A. Shcherbatova i Puteshestvie A. Radishcheva (London, 1858: Moscow: Nauka, 1983), pp. 20-21.
I. M. Radetsky, Al’manakh gastronomov (St Petersburg: tipografiya Otdel’nogo korpusa vnutrennei strazhi, 1853), vol. 2, p. xi.
Edith Sollohub, The Russian Countess: Escaping Revolutionary Russia (Exeter: Impress, 2017), p. 191.
Regional change: In the Moscow, 1933 edition of M. S. Brodsky, V. S. Kokhan, and I. A. Shapiro’s food marketing manual, Tovarovedenie pishchevykh produktov, references in the Moscow, 1928 edition to regional diversity were removed, and references to overall Party policy inserted. This was part of a general pattern.
Petr Kuleshov in his 1893 manual on pig management: Svinovodstvo (Moscow: P. K. Pryashnikov and V. N. Marakuev, 1893), p. 114.
On the Bureau of Applied Botany and its seed bank, see ‘Vtoroi spisok obraztsov semyan, predostavlyaemykh Byuro po prikladnoi botanike zhelayushchim dlya ispytaniya na mestakh’, Trudy Byuro po prikladnoi botanike, no. 1 (1913), pp. 1-13
<http://www.botanicus.org/item/31753004049125>
On the improvement of food output between the late 1880s and the start of World War I, see A. N. Chelintsev, Russkoe sel’skoe khozyaistvo pered revolyutsiei (2nd edn.; Moscow: ‘Novyi agronom’, 1928), a compilation of data from the official Tsarist-era agricultural censuses of the 1880s-1910s.
On the persistence of private sale and exchange after 1917, see J. Hessler, A Social History of Soviet Trade (Princeton University Press, 2004).
On rationing classifications after 1917: Mary McAuley, Bread and Justice: State and Society in Petrograd, 1917-1922 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991).
‘I shall address myself’: Ekaterina Avdeeva, Vkusnyi i deshevyi stol (4th edn.; St Petersburg: tipografiya knyazya V. V. Obolenskogo, 1877), p. ii.
‘Dr Puf’ (Vladimir Odoevsky), ‘Zapiski dlya khozyaek: Lektsii Doktora Pufa’, supplement to Literaturnaya gazeta, 1854-1855: reprinted in Vladimir Odoevskii, Kukhnya: Lektsii Doktora Pufa, doktora entsiklopedii i drugikh nauk o kulinarnom iskusstve (St Petersburg: Izdatel’stvo Ivana Limbakha).
Stephen Graham, Changing Russia (London: John Lane, 1913), p. 119.
On the prodigality of Russian cooks in the belle époque, see F. A. Zeest, Vliyanie frantsuzskogo kulinarnogo iskusstva na russkuyu kukhnyu: Otdel’nyi ottisk iz “Zhurnala dlya vsekh” (St Petersburg: Sankt-Peterburgskaya gubernskaya tipografiya, 1899), p. 27.
For the ‘letter M’ joke, see Una Pope-Hennessy, The Closed City. Impressions of a Visit to Leningrad (London: Hutchinson, 1938), p. 49.
On Mikoyan’s impact on industrial food production, see Irina Glushchenko, Obshchepit: Mikoyan i sovetskaya kukhnya (Moscow: Vysshaya shkola ekonomiki, 2010), and also the comments in Aleksandr Fokin’s review of Glushchenko’s book, ‘Gamburgery – otdel’no, nauka – otdel’no’, Dialog so vremenem: al’manakh intellektual’noi istorii , no. 35 (2011), pp. 389-92. On the establishment of the Soviet ice cream industry in the 1930s, see Igor’ Bogdanov, Lekarstvo ot skuki, ili Istoriya morozhenogo (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2007), pp. 85-139.
Chicory leaves: it seems likely that BNTF was at least in part intended as a Soviet equivalent of the major French culinary encyclopaedia, Larousse gastronomique, first published in 1938, which acted as a showcase for French cuisine. With Larousse also, availability of the ingredients described to ordinary mortals was not the point.
On the development of the champagne industry, see Jukka Gronow, Caviar with Champagne: Common Luxury and the Ideal of the Good Life in Stalin’s Russia (New York: Berg, 2003); Konstantin Bogdanov, ‘Soviet Champagne: A Festive History’, Forum for Anthropology and Culture no. 9 (2014), pp. 233-44.
On Novocherkassk: Samuel H. Baron, Bloody Saturday in the Soviet Union: Novocherkassk, 1962 (Stanford University Press, 2001).
On food shopping in the Kremlin, see the memoirs of the film director Vitaly Mel’nikov, Zhizn’, kino (St Petersburg: Sad iskusstv, 2005), pp. 264-5.
Anatoly and Galina Naiman, ‘Protsess edy i besedy’, Oktyabr’ no. 3 (2003), < https://magazines.gorky.media/october/2003/3>.
For the guile of Soviet shoppers, see Anna Kushkova, ‘Surviving in the Time of Deficit: the Narrative Construction of a “Soviet Identity”’, in Mark Bassin and Catriona Kelly (eds.), Soviet and Post-Soviet Identities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), chapter 14.
On food consumption levels in the late Soviet period, ‘Proizvodstvo i potreblenie produktov pitaniya v SSSR’ (based on figures from Statisticheskii ezhegodnik), Istoricheskie materialy, Razdel 2 <http://istmat.info/node/511>, accessed 25 July 2022.
For positive comments on late Soviet diet, see particularly the diary of Evgeniya Kiseleva (b. 1916), a countrywoman with limited education, published as N. N. Kozlova, I. I. Sandomirskaya, ‘Ya tak khochu nazvat’ kino’: ‘Naivnoe’ pis’mo: opyt lingvosotsiologicheskogo chteniya (Moscow: Gnozis, 1996).
M. Redelin, Dom i khozyaistvo (3rd edn.; St Petersburg: A. F. Marks, 1900), vol. 1, pp. 319-25. On food contamination at this period, see also the regular reports in Gazeta Pishcha, 1911.
On storage during the Blockade, see D. S. Likhachev, Vospominaniya (St Petersburg: Logos, 1995), pp. 317-9; on treatment of this as an excuse for theft, ibid. Cf. a 2002 interview with a Siege of Leningrad survivor b. 1933 by Alexandra Piir, Oxf/Lev SPb-02 PF8, who recalls how he and his sister thieved food from neighbours.
The use of icehouses as a defining feature of Russian culinary tradition is discussed in, for example, Elizabeth David, Harvest of the Cold Months; The Social History of Ice and Ices (London: Michael Joseph, 1994).
For built-in cupboards, see the plan for a prestige apartment block, locally known as ‘the nest of gentry’ in Leningrad, designed in 1961: Tsentral’nyi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv nauchno-tekhnicheskikh dokumentov, St Petersburg (TsGANTD-SPb.), f. 36, op. 1-2, d. 490, l. 24. Indeed, even in a discussion of standard apartments at Lenproekt architectural planning institute in 1957, a participant commented, ‘we have decided that removing the cupboard makes the plan worse in some respects’. TsGANTD-SPb., f. 36, op. 1-1, d. 434, l. 30.
Statistics on fridge production: ‘Sovetskie kholodil'niki’ <https://back-in-ussr.com/2015/03/sovetskie-holodilniki.html>. Accessed 23 January 2023. In Lekarstvo ot skuki, p. 101, Igor’ Bogdanov claims that when Mikoyan suggested promoting private fridge production in the mid-1930s, Stalin discouraged the idea: in a cold country, people had no problem with keeping things chilled; be that as it may, production numbers remained small till the Khrushchev era.
For an indicative selection of menus from a St Petersburg elite household, see Velikosvetskie obedy, comp. Yu. M. Lotman and E. A. Pogosyan (St Petersburg: Pushkinskii fond, 1996).
For the case of Nikolai Gogol or Mykola Hohol (real surname Yanovskyi), see Edyta Bojanowska, Nikolai Gogol: Between Ukrainian and Russian Nationalism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002). For Belorussia, see Elisaveta Fen (real name Elizabeth Jackson), A Russian Childhood (London: Methuen, 1961); A Girl Grew Up in Russia (London: Deutsch, 1970), referring, for example, to the ‘horrible dialect’ (actually, a separate language) spoken in nearby villages.
Borrowing from Molokhovets in BTNF: see Catriona Kelly, ‘Leningrad Cuisine/La cuisine leningradaise: A Contradiction in Terms?’, Forum for Anthropology and Culture, 9 (2013), 245-82.
On the egalitarian ethnic policies of the early Soviet period in non-Russian areas, see Terry Martin, The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923-1939 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001).
For an informative discussion of William Pokhlyobkin’s career, see Adrianne Jacobs, ‘V. V. Pokhlëbkin and the Search for Culinary Roots in Late Soviet Russia’, Cahiers du monde russe, vol. 54, no. 1 (2013). Ol’ga and Pavel Syutkin, Kukhnya v litsakh: Nepridumannaya istoriya (Moscow: AST, 2016), pp. 292-311, contrast what they see as Pokhlyobkin’s arrogance with the more ‘scholarly’ approach of Nikolai Kovalyov (author of Russkaya kulinariya Moscow: Ekonomika, 1972), and delicately suggesting that Pokhlyobkin may have poached some of his material from the latter, but given that Pokhlyobkin began publishing for a mainstream audience earlier than Kovalyov, this imputation seems unconvincing.
On changes to food provision in the late Soviet period (mainly from the point of view of canteen and café menus and the promotion of ready-to-cook products, polufabrikaty), see Natal’ya Lebina, ‘Plyus destalinizatsiya vsei edy… (Vkusovye prioritety epokhi khrushchevskikh reform: Opyt istoriko-antropologicheskogo analiza)’, Teoriya mody, vol. 21 (2011), pp. 213–42. Aaron Hale-Dorrell, ‘Industrial Farming, Industrial Food: Transnational
Influences on Soviet Convenience Food in the Khrushchev Era’, The Soviet and Post-Soviet Review, vol. 42 (2015), pp. 174-96, has a similar remit, but also covers hyperprocessed food for home consumption, with attention to US food production of the era.
Not being able to afford cooking oil on the return from work: see Catriona Kelly, St Petersburg: Shadows of the Past (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014), chapter 5.
An example of a premium outlet emphasising that its milk products are unadulterated is VLavke, Moscow, <https://vlavke.ru/products/moloko-i-tvorog/moloko/>, accessed 17 August 2022.
On buffets, see e.g. Piet Buwalda, Ambassador for the Netherlands to the USSR, 1986-1990, who attended a formal reception for the October Revolution holiday on 7 November 1986 where tables were so heaped with caviar, smoked salmon, and cream cakes that handling your plate was a challenge. On the other hand, ‘if you were late, getting near the tables was difficult and you ended up with nothing’. [Prozhito.ru].
On the nutritional value of soup: Stepan Zhikharev noted in 1808 Russian interest in ‘Rumford’s Soup’, a German mixture comprising pearl barley, dried peas, vegetables, and sour beer, and supposed at the time to provide its consumers with all their nutritional needs.
For a good discussion of the promotion of ‘national’ food in the late Soviet period, see Adrianne Jacobs, ‘An Empire in Aspic: Popularizing National Cuisines in Late Soviet Russia’, The Soviet and Post-Soviet Review, vol. 50, no. 1 (2022), pp. 8-39. The ethnic groups whose food was promoted were overwhelmingly those from the so-called ‘titular nationalities’, that is, the hegemonic groups in the SSRs (Soviet Socialist Republics), such as Georgians, Armenians, Uzbeks. Nationalities in the so-called ‘autonomous republics’ (subdivisions of full SSRs) (for instance, the Chuvash or Bashkirs) were not publicised in the same way, still less minority ethnic groups without administrative denominations of their own, such as Germans, Ingrian Finns, Hungarians, or Uighurs. Diane Koenker, ‘The Taste of Others: Soviet Adventures in Cosmopolitan Cuisines’, Kritika, vol. 19, no. 2 (2018), pp. 243-272, deals with interest in food beyond the USSR.
Among the exceptions to the emphasis on authenticity in English-language cookbooks is Alissa Timoshkina’s Salt and Time (London, 2019), which includes, for instance, Korean pickled carrot. For similar treatments of Ukrainian cuisine, see Olia Hercules, Mamushka (London, 2015) and The Summer Kitchen (London, 2020).
For another description of zakuski, see Robert Richardson-Gardner, Sketches of Russian Life Before and During the Emancipation of the Serfs (privately printed, 1872), p. 69: in a traktir (traditional Russian-style restaurant), the zakuski offered comprised ‘various relishes, such as fresh caviar, raw herring, smoked salmon, “Balyk” (sturgeon dried in the sun), raw smoked goose, radishes, cheese, butter, and other comestibles.’
It should be said that Olga and Pavel Syutkin’s Russkaya kukhnya: ot mifa k nauke only scratches the surface of the history of Russian dishes, ignoring, for example, regional variations in naming patterns. For an exemplary study of the latter kind, see Alexandra Grigorieva, ‘Naming Authenticity and Regional Italian Cuisine’, in Authenticity in the Kitchen: Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery 2005, ed. Richard Hosking (London: Prospect Books, 2006), pp. 211–16.
Chapter 1
Boris Volzhin on potato bread: Entsiklopediya russkoi opytnoi gorodskoi i sel’skoi khozyaiki […] (St Petersburg: Izdanie knigoprodavtsa Vasil’ya Polyakova, no date – 1842 by censorship stamp), Part 1, p. 37.
On the karavai’s survival in the countryside, among landowners as well as peasants see e.g. the diary of Kirill Berezkin, from a gentry family in Vologda, 24 June 1849: a karavai with an icon alongside it had been presented at his sister’s wedding.
Charles Piazzi Smyth, Three Cities in Russia (2 vols.; London: Lovell Reeve & Co., 1862), vol. 2, p. 63, p. 27.
For the recommendation of rye bread and herring, see e.g. Radetsky, Al’manakh gastronoma, p. 8; on the other hand, S. Rogal’skaya, Semeinyi stol (St Petersburg: M. O. Vol’f, 1865), p. 48, advised that eggs stuffed with mushrooms should be served on rounds of white bread.
Max Fasmer’s etymological dictionary, Etimologicheskii slovar’ russkogo yazyka, ed. B. A. Larin (4 vols.; Moscow: Progress, 1964-1973) points out that the word lepyoshka also means ‘cow pat’, but this derivation seems fanciful: it is hard to think of any case where a popular dish has been named to celebrate animal ordure. The reverse, on the other hand (‘cow cake’ for cow droppings in rural Ireland) is widespread.
‘By dawn, she had to get the bread out, make the kvas, bake the lepyoshki, milk the cow, iron the dresses and shirts, wash the children, get the water in and make sure her neighbour didn’t grab all the space in the stove’ (Leo Tolstoy, Polikushka, 1863).
On state involvement in the grain trade, see David Moon, The Plough that Broke the Steppes: Agriculture and Environment on Russia’s Grasslands, 1700-1914 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013); Peter Gatrell, The Tsarist Economy (London: Batsford, 1982), chapter 4; Peter Gatrell, ‘Feeding Russia’ in Russia's First World War: A Social and Economic History (Harlow: Routledge, 2005).
As early twentieth-century autobiographies by children and young people attending the Holy Synod schools indicate, middlemen in the grain trade at the village level were not necessarily rapacious exploiters; they could be struggling peasants or townsfolk (see RGIA, f. 803, op. 16, d. 2730, l. 142, boy b. 1887 whose father operated a small grain ferry in Tomsk Province).
For bread prices in 1925, see <https://www.russian-money.ru/prices/?year=1925> (accessed 23 January 2023).
On the utopian plans for bread factories, see Margarita Shtiglits, Neparadnyi Peterburg (Moscow, 2021), p. 409, quoting Sovremennaya arkhitektura, 1926. In lesser factories, hygienic conditions were of a different order: see e.g. TsGA-SPb., f. 6770, op. 1, d. 3, l. 1 ob. (meeting of 31 March 1925 at the Badaev Bread Factory reporting problems with ventilation and no head coverings for women workers).
On the innovative design of the Neva Flour Mill, see Shtiglits, Neparadnyi Peterburg, pp. 379-93.
For Marsakov’s biography, see Karl Gal’pern, Dela i idei inzhinera Marsakova (Moscow, 1934), pp. 36-96. Marsakov’s breakthrough work was in fact done in Dnepropetrovsk, before he reached Moscow: see Gal’pern, Dela i idei, pp. 69-70. Archival records paint a less rosy picture than would be suggested by Marsakov’s work in some key cities. As late as 1938, Leningrad Province, alongside 14 ‘bread conglomerates’ (kombinaty), also had 52 bakeries, 10 of them new ‘bread points’, but some of the others founded earlier and ‘not answering modern requirements’, others ‘artisanal’, and even the most modern ‘not 100% in good order’. There were also problems with supplies of quality flour. TsGA-SPb., f. 9663, op. 1, d. 3, l. 2, l. 6, l. 8.
Magnitogorsk is described in Yuri Zhukov, Lyudi 30-kh godov (Moscow: Sovetskaya Rossiya, 1966), p. 320.
L. Ya. Auerman, Pshenichnyi khleb: Syr’e. Proizvodstvo. Sorta (Moscow: Tsentrosoyuz, 1929); Tekhnologiya khlebopecheniya (Moscow: Snabtekhizdat, 1933); Tekhnologiya khlebopekarnogo proizvodstva (7th edn.: Moscow: Legkaya i pishchevaya promyshlennost’, 1972; 8th edn., ibid., 1984).
For the figures on bread production in Leningrad, see TsGA-SPb., f. 9663, op. 1, d. 3, l. 2, l. 6, l. 8 (1938); TsGA-SPb., f. 9663, op. 1, d. 3, l. 17 (1946); TsGA-SPb., f. 9366, op. 1, d. 163, l. 40 ob. (1951).
An eyewitness account of the 1964 bread shortage is Henry Morton, ‘USSR, 1964 – Reminiscences’, Russian Review, vol. 25, no. 1 (1966), p. 40.
In September 1978, the issue of bread wastage was pressing enough to receive discussion at the Leningrad Regional Committee of the Communist Party: TsGAIPD-SPb., f. 24, op. 210, d. 2, ll. 5-10.
For Merezhkovskaya’s pie recipes, see Sovety khozyaikam, p. 5.
Chapter 2
On folk beliefs about the cow, see M. Trostina, ‘Arkhetip korovy-kormilitsy v fol’klore russkikh i mordvin’, Filologicheskie nauki: Voprosy teorii i praktiki, no. 12 (90), part 1, pp. 60-65; A. Rosenholm, ‘“There is no Russia without the Cow”: The Russian Mind and Memory: The Cow as Symbol’, in Understanding Russian Nature: Representations, Values, and Concepts, ed. A. Rosenholm and S. Autio-Sarasmo (Helsinki: Aleksanteri Institute, 2005) pp. 69-96; S. Adon’eva, ‘Korova-mat’: klyuch k skazke “Kroshechka-Khavroshechka”’, Skazka i mif no. 2 (2019), pp. 128-38.
The economic significance of the cow is addressed in e.g. Narody Rossii: Zhivopisnyi al’bom (St Petersburg: Obshchestvennaya pol’za, 1880), p. 4; V. Vereshchagin, ‘A Russian Village’, in The Tsar and His People, or Social Life in Russia (New York: Harper and Bros, 1891), p. 431.
The gazetteer of 44 farmers from the gentry and aristocracy in O skotovodstve v imeniyakh i na fermakh: (Moscow: Komissiya Vtoroi Vserossiiskoi vystavki rogatogo skota, 1872) includes examples who sold their milk locally, or to middle-men, or at market in provincial cities such as Ryazan’, or the capitals. On farms’ city outlets, see Lev Lur’e, Sosedskii kapitalizm: Krest’yanskie zemlyachestva Peterburga kontsa XIX-nachala XX veka (St Petersburg: izdatel’stvo Evropeiskogo universiteta, 2020), p. 87.
For cultivated milk products in RKTB, see e.g. sour milk (Kostroma Province, vol. 1, p. 248, ibid., p. 340; Yaroslavl’ Province, vol. 2.2, p. 125); prostokvasha (guznostrel in local dialect), Kostroma Province, vol. 1, p. 379; smetana (ibid.); Tver’ (vol. 1, p. 518), Yaroslavl’ (vol. 2.1, p. 378, p. 591 – even among poor peasants, vol. 2.2, p. 125), Kaluga, vol. 3, p. 151, pp. 436-7).
J. Cartmell Ridley, Reminiscences of Russia: The Ural Mountains and Adjoining Siberian District in 1897 (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Andrew Reid and Co., 1898), p. 42.
On enjoying local milk products, see e.g. the note on a visit to Russia’s Far East by Kropotkin, 4 July 1863.
For the menus of the Durnovo family, see Lotman and Pogosyan, Velikosvetskie obedy.
Henry Sutherland Edwards, The Russians at Home (1861) in The Russians at Home and the Russians Abroad: Sketches Unpolitical and Political of Russian Life under Alexander II ([London]: W. H. Allen, 1879), p. 195.
A. M. B. Meakin, Russia: Travels and Studies (Philadelphia: J. P. Lipincott Co., 1906), p. 260.
For the nutritional value of meat, see e.g. Narody Rossii: zhivopisnyi al’bom, p. 5.
Numbers of cattle for slaughter in 1886: A. A. Bakhtiarov, Bryukho Peterburga: obshchestvenno-fiziologichicheskie ocherki (St Petersburg: F. Pavlenkov, 1888), p. 10. Butchering of calves in smaller abattoirs: ibid., p. 43.
For City Duma discussions, see e.g. ‘Myasnoi vopros v Gorodskoi Dume’, Pishcha, no. 1 (1911), pp. 2-4.
For pork in Ukraine: Narody Rossii: Zhivopisnyi al’bom, p. 23); Kursk: Avdeeva, Zapiski o byte.
Archaeological remains point to pork’sconsumption in Russian cities during the early medieval period (eleventh to twelfth centuries): M. I. Selionova, Iz istorii Rossiiskogo ovtsevodstva i ego nauchnogo soprovozhdeniya (Moscow: Rossiiskaya Akademiya Nauk, 2017), p. 6. Pork is also mentioned in the Domostroi.
Bakhtiarov claims that the original pork butchers in St Petersburg were Germans and the piglets raised by Finns (Bryukho Peterburga, p. 51, p. 17)
For pig slaughter statistics in the 1880s, see Bakhtiarov, Bryukho Peterburga, p. 43. The figures in Byulleten’ Sankt-Peterburgskoi skotopromyshlennoi i myasnoi birzhi for 1914 (300-400 pigs per day, plus up to 20 piglets) were similar. On numbers in World War I, see ibid., 1915-1916.
Sale of lamb in frozen form: Chelintsev, Russkoe sel’skoe khozyaistvo, p. 172.
Rise in large holdings of sheep between 1876 and 1900: Selionova, Iz istorii Rossiiskogo ovtsevodstva, p. 22.
Agricultural censuses, 1880s-1910s: Chelintsev, Russkoe sel’skoe khozyaistvo, pp. 180-181, p. 189.
Vasily Pashkov: see Molochnoe khozyaistvo: syrovarenie i skotovodstvo (St Petersburg, 1872), pp. I-IV.
For the Ministry of State Property’s exhibitions, see Otchet o Pervoi Vserossiiskoi vystavke rogatogo skota, 1869 god (St Petersburg, 1870); Pravila Vtoroi vserossiiskoi vystavki rogatogo skota v Moskve 1872 goda (Moscow, 1872).
Among examples of old-style manuals are Mikhail Chulkov, Ekonomicheskiya zapiski dlya vsegdashnego upotrebleniya v derevnyakh prikashchiku, i rachitel’nomu ekonomu,kotorye ezheli prilezhno ispolnyaemy im budut, to bez vsyakogo somneniya nedostatochnogo pomeshchika sdelayut bogatym (Moscow: tipografiya Ponomareva, 1788); Vasily Lyovshin, Karmannaya knizhka dlya skotovodsta, soderzhashchaya v sebe: opytnyya nastavleniya dlya soderzhaniya raznykh domovykh zhivotnykh, vospityvaniya onykh i lecheniya ikh obyknovenneishikh boleznei prostymi domashnimi sredstvami (Moscow: tipografiya S. Selivanovskogo, 1817. By contrast, Nikolai Aleksandrov, Praktika sel’skogo khozyaistva dlya nachinayushchikh (Moscow: tipografiya M. Smirnovoi, 1862), offers systematic advice on the care of cattle, noting, for example, that one should be sure to feed a newborn calf colostrum.
For syr as curd cheese, see the references to ‘white syr’ in Derzhavin’s ‘To Evgeny: On Life in Zvansk’, 1807, or paskha syr in Kirill Berezkin’s diary, 2 April 1849. The National Corpus of the Russian Language (www.ruscorpora.ru) and Prozhito.ru both produce unambiguous mentions of syr in the modern sense only from the 1800s (e.g. ‘drinking down Swiss cheese with Rhenish wine’, Aleksei Vul’f, 6 August 1808).
On Meshchersky cheese, see Radetsky, Al’manakh gastronomov, p. 359. Swiss cheese was at the lower end of the price spectrum for foreign cheeses, though, with the highest prices fetched by ‘French morol’, from Marseilles’ (sic.; presumably Northern French Maroilles), Parmesan, ‘English Roquefort’ [Stilton], Cheddar (chester), and Brie (ibid.). Other Russian aristocratic landowners making cheese were the Dolgorukovs, L’vovs, and Kurakins (ibid.)
On Vereshchagin, see Molochnoe khozyaistvo, pp. I-IV.
The famous chemist and polymath Dmitry Mendeleev reported numbers of cheeseries to the Free Economic Society on 20 March 1869: Molochnoe khozyaistvo, pp. 257-75.
On cheese as a zakuska see e.g. Edwards, The Russians at Home, p. 235 (1860s); Matvei Andreev, 13 August 1874; Fidler on a visit to the poet Sologub (‘sardines, ham, Swiss cheese, oranges, and a bottle of Barsac’, 27 April 1912).
On sucking pigs, see e.g. O skotovodstve v imeniyakh, p. 74.
Numbers of pigs in 1876: Appendix to Ottamar Rohde [as Rode], Svinovodstvo (4th edn.; St Petersburg: A. F. Devrien, 1884), pp. 422-3.
Numbers of pigs in late 1880s: Kuleshov, Svinovodstvo, pp. 1-4; on demand in cities, ibid., p. 108.
Village Library pigkeeping manual: I. Yamburgsky, Promyshlennoe krest’yanskoe svinovodstvo (St Petersburg: A. F. Sukhov, 1912).
‘Pampered’ nature of foreign livestock: N. V. Vereshchagin in A. A. Popov, K voprosu o russkom molochnom skote (Moscow: izd. N. V. Vereshchagina, 1896), p. v.
English shorthorn: Galkin, pp. 13-14.
Milk for children: V. I. Lenin, ‘Pis’ma iz daleka: No. 3’, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii: Neizvestnye dokumenty, vol. 31 p. 44, <https://leninism.su/works.html>.
Lyubov’ Gorovits-Vlasova, ‘K voprosu o mikrobiologii i khimii kumissa’, Kurortnoe delo no. 10 (1923), pp. 1-19.
Annual report from the Leningrad Milk Products Trust, 1940: TsGA-SPb., f. 9605, op. 2, d. 25, l. 2.
For smetana, see the annual reports for 1935 and 1940 from the Leningrad Milk Products Trust, TsGA-SPb., f. 9605, op. 1, d. 6, ll. 75-9; ibid., op. 2, d. 25, l. 1.
Mentions of dietary milk products: e.g. Kulinariya, comp. L. S. Akulov et al. (Moscow: Gostorgizdat, 1955), p. 26; TsGA-SPb., f. 9605, op. 4, l. 3 (typed list in the inventory). On tvorog, see ibid.
Shortages of cheese in the 1930s: see e.g. Vladimir Vernadsky, 22 Feb. 1938 (only ‘bad second-class cheese’ could be obtained); January 1940 – no cheese at all, except in Moscow.
On meat as ‘excitatory’, see Galkin, p. 7, pp. 3-5. That meat/animal products generally were vital to the diet remained nutritional orthodoxy in later decades as well: see e.g. ‘Pitanie detei’ in Slovar’ dlya roditelei: Semeinoe vospitanie, ed. M. I. Kondakov (Moscow, 1967), p. 193.
50% meat from substandard animals: Galkin, p. 29.
1940 livestock statistics: ‘Sel’skoe khozyaistvo, okhota i lesovodstvo v Rossii’, Federal Service of State Statistics, 2009, <https://www.gks.ru/bgd/regl/b09_38/IssWWW.exe/Stg/d01/05-01.htm> (accessed 16 February 2022).
Laboratory screening and non-observance of results: Bakhtiarov, p. 55.
Lack of refrigeration: Selionova, p. 31.
Primitive killing facilities: Lur’e, Sosedskii kapitalizm, pp. 79-82.
‘variable foodstuff’: Brodsky, Kokhan, and Shapiro, Tovarovedenie pishchevykh produktov (1928), p. 173.
hymn to Soviet meat production: Brodsky, Kokhan, and Shapiro, Tovarovedenie pishchevykh produktov (1933), pp. 120-8.
The sites for meat plants named were Semipalatinsk (eastern Kazakhstan), Orsk (Orenburg province), Pokrovsk (eastern Ukraine), Samara, and the North Caucasus. See Gigant myasnoi industrii: Stroitel’stvo i eksploatatsiya Leningradskogo myasokombinata im S. M. Kirova, 1932-1935 gg., comp. Ya. I. Zelikman, V. I. Alekseev, S. V. Dorin (Leningrad, 1936), p. 6. A map on p. 7 shows the location of the smaller plants, by now 33 in number, rather than 57, and mainly located in the capitals of republics (Tbilisi, Baku, Frunze) and major industrial centres (e.g. Stalingrad, Luhansk, Kirov) as well as livestock-producing areas (e.g. Bryansk, Poltava, Rostov-on-Don).
Numbers of pigs processed: Gigant myasnoi industrii, p. 24.
Information on preserved meat and sausage: Brodsky, Kokhan, and Shapiro, Tovarovedenie pishchevykh produktov (1933), pp. 280-88.
1945 livestock numbers: ‘Sel’skoe khozyaistvo, okhota i lesovodstvo v Rossii’, Federal Service of State Statistics, 2009, <https://www.gks.ru/bgd/regl/b09_38/IssWWW.exe/Stg/d01/05-01.htm> (accessed 16 February 2022).
1953 livestock numbers: ibid.
Market share of lamb: Selionova, pp. 47-8, p. 55.
Celebratory nature of chicken in the early Soviet period: Galkin, pp. 132-3.
On Chernyanka, formerly an egg store, see the outline history on the site of the Belgorod Provincial Archive Administration <http://ipbk.belgorod-archive.ru/?page_id=164>. (Accessed 7 August 2022). What later became the Tomarovka Meat Plant was at first housed in a few sheds by the railway line (ibid.).
Planned egg production in Leningrad Province, 1979: To put the figures in context, average chicken production across the US in the late 2010s was about 20 million metric tonnes per year, and egg production about 780 million.
Imports of milk products: I. G. Kalabekov, ‘Import tovarov: SSSR i strany mira’, <http://su90.ru/import.html> (accessed 24 January 2023).
On the drop in food imports after 2014, see Ekaterina Burlakova, ‘Kak Rossiya za 20 let sama sebya nakormila’, Vedomosti, 22 October 2019, <https://www.vedomosti.ru/business/articles/2019/10/22/814308-kak-rossiya-za-dvadtsat-let>; on Large White pigs, <http://big-fermer.ru/porody-svinei>.
Chapter 3
A. S. Pushkin, ‘Pis’mo Sobolevskomu’, Sobranie sochinenii v 10 tomakh (Moscow, 1977), vol. 9, pp. 242-3. Valdai is more than 300 km from the Baltic; the herring come from a species permanently resident in fresh water, rather than anadromous or catadromous.
For Edwards’s ukha recipe, see The Russians at Home, pp. 248-9.
Vereshchagin, ‘A Russian Village’, in The Tsar and His People, p. 431.
‘fish ends’ in railway carriages: Graham, Changing Russia, p. 238.
On the uncommonness of ‘preserve ponds, see Edwards, The Russians at Home, p. 231.
Fishing in parks: as in the case of Vladimir Chermezov, then a schoolboy aged 15, at Tsarskoe Selo in June 1861, and actor Sergei Zimin on holiday with a friend in Penza in 1903.
Tramp fishermen: Graham, Changing Russia, pp. 256-7.
Reval fisheries: A. I. Glubokov, V. V. Smirnov, and M. A. Sedova, ‘Istoriya osvoeniya biologicheskikh resursov reki Volgi ot pervykh upominanii do 1917 goda’, Trudy Vserossiiskogo nauchno-issledovatel’skogo instituta rybnogo khozyaistva i okeanografii, vol. 181 (2020), pp. 150-1.
E. Avdeeva, Zapiski o starom i novom russkogo byte (St Petersburg, 1842), p. 46.
Overfishing in the mid nineteenth century: Glubokov, Smirnov, and Sedova, ‘Istoriya osvoeniya’, pp. 150-1. For a similar picture of the results of over-fishing in the Black Sea, see Dmitry Ya. Fashchuk and Mikhail I. Kumantsov, ‘Rybnyi promysel Sovetskoi Rossii i SSSR v pervoi polovine XX veka’, Izvestiya RAN: seriya geograficheskaya, no. 1 (2017), p. 148. See also ‘Proekt novogo ustava rybolova’, Rybak (Astrakhan’), no. 6 (1 February 1908), p. 3, no. 7 (13 February 1908), p. 3.
Astrakhan Fishing Office: Glubokov, Smirnov, and Sedova, ‘Istoriya osvoeniya’, pp. 150-1.
1862 fishing ban: Glubokov, Smirnov, and Sedova, ‘Istoriya osvoeniya’, p. 155.
Fishing Industry Exhibition: Glubokov, Smirnov, and Sedova, ‘Istoriya osvoeniya’, p. 157.
Drying and salting and first canning plant: Fashchuk and Kumantsov, ‘Rybnyi promysel’, p. 148.
On the artisanal character of river and lake fishing, e.g. V. A. Emel’yanov, P. P. Vanichev, Rybnyi promysel Ladozhskogo ozera (Leningrad: Knigopechatnya, 1929); L. O. Pallon, ‘Ryby i rybnyi promysel Segozera’, Trudy Olonetskoi nauchnoi ekspeditsii, vol. 8 (1929), pp. 3-5; P. G. Chalkin, Rybnyi promysel: tekhnika rybnogo lova i prigotovlenie rybnykh produktov primenitel’no k turukhanskomu severu (Krasnoyarsk: Gostip, 1932).
On the composition of the catch in 1923, Fashchuk and Kumantsov, ‘Rybnyi promysel’, p. 151.
7 April 1934 decree and exploration of new species fishing: Fashchuk and Kumantsov, ‘Rybnyi promysel’, pp. 152-5.
Consumption in 1937: Maks Usachev, ‘Okean: set’ rybnykh magazinov s kapitalisticheskim dushkom’, 19 February 2020, https://retailer.ru/legendy-torgovli-v-sssr-okean-set-rybnyh-magazinov-s-kapitalisticheskim-dushkom/.
Control over inland waterways: ‘O vosproizvodstve i ob okhrane rybnykh zapasov vo vnutrennikh vodoemakh SSSR’, 15 September 1958. <https://docs.cntd.ru/document/9003878>.
Rise in fish consumption, 1950-1960: Svetlana M. Ryzhkova and Valentina M. Kruchinina, ‘Tendentsiya potrebleniya ryby i produktov ee pererabotki v Rossii’, Vestnik VSUIT, no. 2 (84) (2020), pp. 181-9. (p. 182).
Average consumption 1960: Ryzhkova and Kruchinina, ‘Tendentsiya potrebleniya’, , p. 182.
Decree of 7 June 1966, <https://docs.cntd.ru/document/765705335>.
The outline State Department report, ‘Soviet Fishing Agreements with Mozambique’, 2 November 1976, < https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1976STATE269398_b.html>, records exploratory expeditions for rock lobster and prawns going back to 1966, followed by the arrival of a ‘giant 13000 gross ton refrigerated fishing trawler Onezhskii Zaliv in Maputo on 13 October 1976’; the eventual result was significant over-fishing (Jennifer J. Jacquet and Dirk Zeller, ‘National Conflict and Fisheries: Reconstructing Marine Fisheries Catches for Mozambique, 1950-2004’, Fisheries Centre, University of British Columbia, Working Paper # 2007-2, p. 3).
V. Pokhlyobkin, ‘Labardan ili treska’, Nedelya, 23 May 1971, pp. 10-11.
On Dem’yanova ukha restaurant, see V. Smirnov, ‘Vecher v restorane’, Leningradskaya pravda, 7 February 1975, p. 2. ‘Demyan’s Fish Soup’ is proverbial for hospitality offered till the guest reaches bursting point.
Okean: R. Danilov, ‘Rybnye univermagi’, Izvestiya, 8 September 1972.
For the claim about Okean’s Spanish origins, see Usachev, ‘Okean’. On Vanaturg’s herring tastings, see Sovetskaya Estoniya, 9 July 1965, p. 4.
Okean as a model for specialist stores: D. Smokty, ‘Soyuz proizvodstva i torgovli’, Izvestiya, 17 April 1977, p. 2.
Pamela Davidson, ‘Recipes from the USSR’, in Alan Davidson, North Atlantic Seafood (Harmondsworth, 1979), pp. 338-9.
On the selling of ocean fish and squid, see Olga and Pavel Syutkin, SSSR Cook Book (London: Fuel, 2015), p. 36. As they point out, squid could also be bought tinned.
Alma-Ata Okean: B. Ibraev, ‘Pokupatel’ zhdet’, Pravda, 14 October 1977, p. 3.
Nothing on sale that anyone wants in Okean: V. Shagulnov, ‘V teni univermaga’, Pravda, 12 October 1984, p. 3.
Problems with the fishing industry in the Soviet Far East: B. Poboronchuk, ‘Zakatali v banku rybu’, Sovetskaya kul’tura, 27 November 1986, p. 6 (also quoting a local director of Okrean and the director of Far Eastern Fish).
On the legal situation of angling, ‘O vosprizvodstve i ob okhrane rybnykh zapasov vo vnutrennikh vodoemakh SSSR’ <https://docs.cntd.ru/document/9003878> (accessed 24 January 2023).
Pikeperch: Dmitry Pyanov, Artem Delmukhametov, and Evgeny Khrustalev, ‘Pike-Perch Farming in Recirculating Aquaculture Systems (RAS) in the Kaliningrad Region’, Foodbalt 2014, p. 315.
Prices for caviar and Kamchatka crab: online information, August 2022.
2020 Russian catch figures: The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture (SOFIA), Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2022, Table 2 and Table 5.
Chapter 4
V. Nabokov, Speak, Memory!, ch. 3 (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969), p. 35.
V. Lyovshin, Psovyi okhotnik (St Petersburg: tipografiya S. Selivanovskogo, 1810), p. 225.
For the Durnovo household’s consumption of ryabchik in 1857-1858, see Lotman and Pogosyan. On the decayed aristocrat in Khitrovka, Vladimir Gilyarovsky, Moskva i moskvichi, 1926 (Moscow: Moskovskii rabochii, 1968), p. 23.
Anon, The Englishwoman in Russia: Impressions of the Society and Manners of the Russians at Home. By a Lady, Ten Years Resident in that Country (London: Murray, 1855), p. 180.
William Barnes Steveni, Things Seen in Russia (London, 1914), p. 130, comments that Russian peasants believed bears were former sinners turned into animals as a punishment, and that reindeers were sacred.
On Gelendzhik, Changing Russia (London, 1913), p. 47. Graham also noted the fruit of butcher’s broom (Ruscus aculeatus, iglitsa in Russian) on sale in local markets, though probably more for its medicinal than culinary purposes (similarly, the guelder rose, Viburnum opulus, kalina, was valued as an antiscorbutic. To this day it is used for vodka tinctures).
Robert Lyall, The Character of the Russians; and a Detailed History of Moscow (London: T. Cadell, 1823), pp. 556-562.
On gun licensing, see the useful outline by Ivan Belyaev, ‘Zakonodatel’stvo ob ognestrel’nom oruzhii’ on the site, ‘Okhotnich’i prostory’, < http://www.ohot-prostory.ru/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1829> (accessed 28 February 2022).
For the 1885 and 1892 measures, Sobranie uzakonenii i rasporyazhenii pravitel’stva, no. 19 (1892), article 217, pp. 423-4 (1885 measures as revised in 1892), pp. 424-8 (1892 rules).
On hunting societies, ‘125 let Tomskomu okhotnich’emu obshchestvu’ (2018), < https://rors.tomsk.ru/news/125_let_tomskomu_okhotnichemu_obshchestvu/>.
On the early Soviet regulations, Sbornik dekretov i postanovlenii Narodnogo kommissariata zemledeliya, 1918-1920 (Moscow: Gosizdat, 1920), pp. 173-4; ‘Okhota v SSSR’, ‘Entsiklopediya okhotnika’ <http://ihunter.ru/encyclopedia/books/priroda-i-okhota/okhota-v-sssr-2/> (accessed 28 February 2022). For Glavokhota, see V. V. Ryabov, ‘Okhota i okhotnich’e khozyaistvo v SSSR’, ibid. <http://www.ohot-prostory.ru/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2208>.
Food prices in 1922: S. A. Pervushin, ‘K voprosu o tsennostnykh sdvigakh v 1922 g.’ [1923], Vestnik Moskovskogo universiteta (2016), series 6: Ekonomika, no. 4, p. 118.
On the shift to hunting for fur on export grounds, ‘125 let Tomskomu okhotnich’emu obshchestvu’ (2018),
< https://rors.tomsk.ru/news/125_let_tomskomu_okhotnichemu_obshchestvu/>.
On the postwar revival of encouragement to hunting, ‘Vsemerno razvivat’ okhotnich’e khozyaistvo’, Pravda, 19 July 1947, p. 2.
Problems with remote areas and lack of refrigeration: Vasily Shimansky, ‘Chelovek na okhote’, Literaturnaya gazeta no. 15 (1961), p. 2.
For later examples of anti-hunting coverage, see M. Shimansky, ‘Okhota v nenast’e’, Izvestiya 14 February 1975, p. 5; V. Prokhorov, ‘Khoroshii chelovek – okhotnik’, Pravda 31 August 1989, p. 6.
Berries in Magnitogorsk: Zhukov, Lyudi tridtsatykh godov, p. 321.
Lingonberries and cranberries were the two wild berries mentioned in Brodsky, Kokhan, and Shapiro, Tovarovedenie (1933), pp. 594-5. On extracts, drinks, and syrups, see ibid.
Re. the idea that mushrooms were only prized in Russia: in Georgy Danelia’s film comedy, Autumn Marathon (1979), a visiting foreigner mournfully admits, ‘No, in Denmark people don’t pick mushrooms.’ Yet the actor playing the role came, in real life, from Germany, a country whose inhabitants are not much less enthusiastic about wild mushrooms than the Russians.
For the text of the 24 April 1995 law, ‘On the Animal World’, <http://www.consultant.ru/document/cons_doc_LAW_6542/>. (Accessed 24 January 2023).
For the text of the 22 December 2021 law, see < https://rg.ru/2020/12/28/resursy-dok.html> (accessed 24 January 2023). For the anxieties, Aleksei Tarasov, ‘Okhotnyi Ryad i ego dobycha’, Novaya gazeta, 3 August 2021 < https://novayagazeta.ru/articles/2021/08/03/okhotnyi-riad-razdelil-dobychu> (accessed 24 January 2022).
For information about commercial berry growing, see ,https://berry-union.ru> (accessed 25 January 2023).
Chapter 5
Charles Augustus Stoddard, Across Russia from the Baltic to the Danube (New York, 1892), p. 110.
N. I. Kichunov, Ogorodnyi promysel i promyshlenno-yagodnye kul’tury pod Petrogradom (Petrograd: tipografiya P. P. Soikina, 1914), pp. 87-137.
See e.g. (on ‘Great Russian’ food generally), Narody Rossii: zhivopisnyi al’bom, p. 5; (on Central Russia), Barnes Steveni, Things Seen in Russia, p. 125.
On vegetables in the south and Ukraine, see Avdeeva, Zapiski o starom i novom russkogo byte, p. 101, p. 54,
p. 73, p. 81, p. 87.
Lettuce etc. near St Petersburg: Kichunov, pp. 262-300. As well as the areas round big cities, another key place for vegetable growing was the water meadows round Rostov Velikii in Yaroslavl’ Province: see Lur’e, pp. 142-9. The combination of terrain (lake mud as fertiliser) and good railway connections to both capitals was crucial, and Yaroslavl’ Province also had well-established networks of resident migrants.
Potatoes in 1861: Edwards, The Russians at Home, p. 241.
Fear and loathing of potatoes in traditional peasant communities: Narody Rossii: zhivopisnyi al’bom, p. 5; RKTB, vol. 2, p. 379 (Yaroslavl’ Province).
Preparing peas for drying: Vereshchagin, ‘A Russian Village’, in The Tsar and His People, p. 496.
Ol’ga Zelenkova (as ‘Vegetarianka’), Ya nikogo ne em! 365 vegetarianskikh menyu i rukovodstvo dlya prigotovleniya vegetarianskikh kushanii (2nd, expanded edn., St Petersburg, 1909), p. 28.
On the work of the Bureau of Applied Botany before 1917, see Introduction. After 1917, the Bureau continued its work, at first as a department of the Ministry of Agriculture (later People’s Commissariat), and later as an independent research institute (renamed the All-Soviet Institute of Plant Science in 1930). There was also important work in the regions, e.g. at the Institute of Horticulture of Siberia, some of whose tomatoes were brought to the USA in 1989, and thence, via the Seed Savers’ Exchange, to other parts of the world (see Fionnula Fallon, ‘Reds: From Russia with Love’, Irish Times, 25 August 2012, and < https://www.seedsavers.org/>).
Meatless stuffed marrows: A. Speranskaya, ‘Kak i chto gotovit’ iz ovoshchei’, Rabotnitsa, no. 39 (1930), p. 3. Cf. the writings of Marina Zarina, a home economist and prolific cookery author of the late 1920s and early 1930s: see e.g. ‘Znachenie ovoshchei v pitanii’, Rabotnitsa, no. 12 (1927), p. 18; ibid, no. 34 (1927), 18-19.
Salads with mayonnaise: BTNF 1939, p. 289.
Green leaf salads: BTNF 1952, pp. 43-51, pp. 302-5.
On the tomato grower D. F. Feofanov, see Kichunov, pp. 344-62.
On vitamins, as well as Brodsky, Kokhan, and Shapiro, Tovarovedenie pishchevykh produktov (1933), pp. 535-6, see Kelly, ‘Leningrad Cuisine’.
Marina Zarina, Uchis’ khorosho stryapat’ (Moscow: Krest’yanskaya gazeta, 1928), p. 5.
For the history of Salat Olivier in the Soviet period, see Anna Kushkova, ‘V tsentre stola: zenit i zakat salata Oliv’e’, Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, no. 6 (2005) < https://magazines.gorky.media/nlo/2005/6/v-czentre-stola-zenit-i-zakat-salata-olive.html>.
A. V. Markov, Zasolka tomatov (Moscow and Leningrad: Koiz, 1933) (quotation p. 20). The brochure also recommended different varieties of tomato, which at this point, in line with the general preference for ‘cultured’ varieties of animal and vegetable, were mostly non-Russian types, such as Alice Roosevelt and Danish Export (p. 15).
I. P. Tsyplyonkov, Povarennaya kniga: 200 blyud dlya domashnego stola (Moscow: Gostorgizdat, 1939), pp. 6-7, p. 68, p. 88.
Viktor Nekrasov, V okopakh Stalingrada, Part 1, Chapter 10.
On sliced tomato and cucumber salad in canteens, see e.g. a book aimed at state farm coops and machine tractor stations, Kratkii sbornik retseptur naibolee rasprostranennykh blyud, rekomenduemykh dlya stolovykh sovkhozrabkoopov i mashinotraktornykh stantsii (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Tsentrosoyuza, 1955), p. 70. Amusingly, in a supposedly ethnic cookbook of the late Soviet period, Kukhnya narodov Severnogo Kavkaza, comp. V. V. Zorin (Groznyi: Rezul’tat, 1989), p. 44, this ubiquitous dish comes up as a speciality of the Tatar kitchen.
Tomato paste: Kulinariya, pp. 792-4.
On tax liability for vegetable gardeners, see ‘O sel’skokhozyaistvennom naloge’, 1 September 1939, <http://www.libussr.ru/doc_ussr/ussr_4201.htm>. (Accessed 24 January 2023).
For commercial fruit-growing in the 1840s, see Avdeeva, Zapiski; for the early C20, Meakin, Russia: Travels and Studies, p. 238, pp. 330-40; Steveni, Things Seen in Russia, p. 244
Plums etc. in Gelendzhik: Graham, Changing Russia, pp. 47-58.
Turkestan fruit harvest: Brodsky, Kokhan, and Shapiro, Tovarovedenie (1928), p. 374.
Fruit trees in Siberia: Brodsky, Kokhan, and Shapiro, Tovarovedenie (1933), pp. 570-1.
Potato shortages in 1983: V. Stepnov, ‘Opal’naya kartoshka’, Pravda, 2 April 1982, p. 3.
Chapter 6
Dostoevsky, Brat’ya Karamzovy, part 11, chapter 3. To add to the disgusting effect of Liza’s words, the source of the torture and crucifixion scene is a trash narrative about child murder by a Jew, though that aspect is not addressed in the discussion with Alesha that follows her comments.
Patoka: Slovar’ russkogo yazyka XI-XVII vekov, issue 14 (Moscow: Nauka, 1988), pp. 169-70.
Honey in Kursk: Meakin, p. 253. On the importance of honey, cf. Steveni, p. 129; Stoddard, p. 109 (kvas made from honey and barley meal in Russian small towns).
On sugar entrepreneurship in the social elite, and the limited roles played by government support and associationism, see Susan Smith-Peter, ‘Sweet Development: The Sugar Beet Industry, Agricultural Societies and Agrarian Transformations in the Russian Empire, 1818‑1913’, Cahiers du monde russe, vol. 57, no. 1 (2016) <https://doi.org/10.4000/monderusse.8334>. See also Galina Ulyanova’s portrait of Princess Evgeniya Romanovskaya in Kupchikhi, dvoryanki, magnatki: Zhenshchiny-predprinimatel’nitsy v Rossii XIX veka (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2021), p. 273. In 1894, the facility at Ramon’ in Voronezh Province produced 260,000 roubles’ worth of sugar, approximately 7 million dollars in today’s money, with 75% of the raw materials coming from the home farm.
Spun sugar decorations at a children’s party: Tamara Talbot Rice, Tamara: Memoirs of St Petersburg, Paris, Oxford and Byzantium (London: John Murray, 1996), pp. 18-19.
Paying for sugar, not tea: Edwards, p. 256.
Russian sugar production in 1913: V. P. Zotov, ‘Pishchevaya promyshlennost’ v predvoennye gody i v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny’, Voprosy istorii, no. 11 (1972), p. 92. This represented around 10% of the overall sugar production in the world at the time, which was dominated by the British Empire, with 3.5 million tons: Ben H. Morgan, ‘The Sugar Resources of the British Empire’, Journal of the Royal Society of Arts, vol. 75, no. 3875 (1927), pp. 363-4. Russia’s proportion would have been higher in terms of refined sugar, since India’s output was mainly of jaggery for home consumption (ibid.).
On teatime, see Molokhovets (1901), p. 91. An example of elite women’s involvement in preparing sweet things is the jam-making scene in Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina (1876-1878) part 6, ch. 2.. Wishful Cooking, the cookbook published by my mother’s aunt, Emily Lina Mirrlees, and cousin, Margaret Rosalys Coker (London: Faber, 1949), included ‘Gigi’s Italian Cream’, the speciality of their grandmother and great-grandmother, born in the 1820s.
For Belgorod Province, see < http://ipbk.belgorod-archive.ru/?page_id=158>; see also O. Afonina, ‘Znayu v poselke kazhdyi dom’, Znamya: Belgorodskaya raionnaya gazeta, 18 October 2017, p. 2.
On the blockade, see Stephen Graham, Russia and the World (London, 1915), p. 47 (also mentioning grain, butter, eggs, meat, etc).
See ‘Komissar i poet’ (1921), by Tsvetaeva’s nine-year-old daughter Ariadna Efron, Prozhito.ru. For other references to home baking, see Ol’ga Sivers, 29 November 1918; Aleksei Oreshnikov, 19 April 1922.
Walter Benjamin, ‘Moskauer Tagebuch, 1927-1928’ <https://www.projekt-gutenberg.org/benjamin/selbstze/chap003.html>.
Children’s menu: M. Zarina, ‘Chto gotovit’ dlya detei’, Rabotnitsa, no. 35 (1930), p. 16
Kulinariya, p. 753.
Consumption figures for 1963: TsGAIPD-SPb., f. 25, op. 91, d. 103, l. 38 (range 28.4 roubles p.a. to 31.6 roubles p.a. poorest-richest, though more variation with cakes and confectionery: 35 to 52.1 p.a.).
On sugar consumption, see ‘Proizvodstvo i potreblenie produktov pitaniya v SSSR’ (based on figures from Statisticheskii ezhegodnik), Istoricheskie materialy, Razdel 2, http://istmat.info/node/511 (accessed 25 January 2023).
When I organised a mini-survey on Facebook in 2017, 10 out of 80 correspondents mentioned these cakes, the third highest score for anything home-made, after gâteau Napoleon (see below) and pies.
On manuscript cookbooks, the best source is Pirogovskaya; see also Anastasia Lakhitikova, ‘Professional Women Cooking: Soviet Manuscript Cookbooks, Social Networks, and Identity Building’ in Anastasia Lakhtikova, Angela Brintlinger, and Irina Glushchenko (eds.), Seasoned Socialism: Gender and Food in Late Soviet Everyday Life (Bloomington, Indiana, USA : Indiana University Press, 2019), pp. 121-31.
With reference to the absorption of ‘foreign’ sweets, it is interesting to note that in other Northern European imperial cultures, such as the Netherlands or the United Kingdom, spicy foods and sauces, at least in an adapted form, have enjoyed greater popularity than exotic sweetmeats. Certainly, Turkish delight has traditionally had quite a high profile in Britain (helped by a chocolate-covered version from the UK company Fry), but kulfi or baklava are specialist-interest (eaten by world-cuisine fans or members of heritage communities).
For a typical nostalgia-soaked excursus, see ‘Torty v SSSR: a Vy pomnite?’ https://www.fresher.ru/2017/02/10/torty-v-sssr/ (10 February 2017): ‘In the USSR, you could not introduce a new kind of gateau for the home market without permission from the United Tasting Council of the Ministry of Food Marketing. […] They kept a watchful eye on the ingredients used – any departure from the recipe was a criminal offence. Real butter and eggs, natural sugar, genuine cream… Now we ourselves have to work things out and try to distinguish a “real” cake from one that looks pretty but doesn’t taste nice. There is a big choice on offer – from economy to luxury, high calorie and reduced fat, kefir and fruit flavoured. But often when you try them, they turn out to be either tasteless or sickly. That’s probably why recently, the recipes of Soviet cakes have been carefully collected and published on the Internet and in magazines and books.’ The comments to the post also wallow in this kind of nostalgia.
On food and nostalgia politics, see Melissa L. Caldwell, Dacha Idylls: Living Organically in Russia’s Countryside (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011).
Afterword
On grain theft, see Polina Ivanova, Chris Cook, and Laura Pitel, ‘How Russia Secretly Takes Grain from Occupied Ukraine’, Financial Times, 30 October 2022 < https://www.ft.com/content/89b06fc0-91ad-456f-aa58-71673f43067b> (accessed 31 October 2022). The story had previously been reported by BBC Russian Service.
For the announcement about borshch as a Ukrainian cultural artefact, see
< https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/culture-ukrainian-borscht-cooking-inscribed-list-intangible-cultural-heritage-need-urgent> (accessed 31 October 2022).
Zakharova’s riposte: ‘Zakharova otvetila na priznanie borshch ukrainskim blyudom’, Lenta.ru 1 July 2022 < https://lenta.ru/news/2022/07/01/zaharova/> (accessed 31 October 2022).
Vil’yam [as William] Pokhlebkin, A History of Vodka, trans. Renfrey Clarke (London, 1992) (Russian edn. 1991). For a polemical but convincing critique of the book from a historical point of view, see Boris Rodionov, Istoriya vodki ot polugara do nashikh dnei (Moscow, 2011), pp. 265-270.
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