Seasoned Socialism: Gender and Food in Late Soviet Everyday Life

396 Pages·2019·4.39 MB·English

by  Anastasia Lakhtikova (Editor)

Russia & Eastern Europe • Women’s Studies • Food G S S
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Seasoned Socialism considers the relationship between gender and ch andtlintik &
food in late Soviet daily life. Political and economic conditions heavily enk gerova Gender Food
influenced Soviet foodways during this period, and this exploration of o , ,
Soviet women’s central role in producing sustenance for their families, as in Late Soviet Everyday Life
well as the obstacles they faced in this endeavor, offers new insights into
intergenerational and inter-gender power dynamics. Food, both in its quality S
and quantity, was a powerful tool in the Soviet Union. This collection features edited by
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work by scholars in an array of fields including cultural studies, literary
a Anastasia Lakhtikova, Angela Brintlinger,
studies, sociology, history, and food studies, and the work gathered here
explores the intersection of gender, food, and culture in the post-1960s Soviet s and Irina Glushchenko
context. From personal cookbooks to gulag survival strategies, Seasoned o
Socialism considers gender construction and performance across a wide array
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of primary sources, including poetry, fiction, film, women’s journals, oral
histories, and interviews. This collection provides fresh insight into how the
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Soviet government sought to influence both what citizens ate and how they
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thought about food.

ANASTASIA LAKHTIKOVA received her PhD in English and Comparative S
Literature from Washington University in St. Louis. 
o
ANGELA BRINTLINGER is Professor of Slavic Languages and Cultures at
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Ohio State University and author of Writing a Usable Past: Russian Literary
Culture (1917–1937) and Chapaev and His Comrades: War and the Russian i
Literary Hero across the Twentieth Century.  a
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IRINA GLUSHCHENKO teaches in the School of Cultural Studies of the
Division of Humanities at the National Research University Higher School of i
s
Economics, Moscow. She is author of Food and Drinks: Mikoyan and Soviet
m
Cuisine and editor of Time, Forward! Cultural Politics in the USSR and (with
Boris Kagarlitsky and Vitaly Kurennoy) of USSR: Life after Death.

Cover illustration: Russian Hospitality by Marjorie W. Johnson
iupress.indiana.edu
PRESS
SEASONED SOCIALISM

SE A SONED
SO CI A LIS M
Gender and Food in
Late Soviet Everyday Life
Edited by
Anastasia Lakhtikova,
Angela Brintlinger, and
Irina Glushchenko
IndIana UnIversIty Press
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
© 2019 by Indiana University Press
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any
means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by
any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publisher. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum
requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—
Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Cataloging information is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-0-253-04095-4 (hardback)
ISBN 978-0-253-04096-1 (paperback)
ISBN 978-0-253-04099-2 (ebook)
1 2 3 4 5 24 23 22 21 20 19
To the women—and men—for whom
late Socialism was more than just a period.
After all, it was also a life.

CONTENTS
Foreword / Darra Goldstein ix
Acknowledgments xix
Introduction: Food, Gender, and the Everyday
through the Looking Glass of Socialist Experience /
Anastasia Lakhtikova and Angela Brintlinger 1
I Women in the Soviet Kitchen: Cooking Paradoxes in
Family and Society
1 Love, Marry, Cook: Gendering the Home Kitchen in
Late Soviet Russia / Adrianne K. Jacobs 33
2 “I Hate Cooking!”: Emancipation and Patriarchy in
Late Soviet Film / Irina Glushchenko, translated by
Anastasia Lakhtikova and Angela Brintlinger 59
3 Professional Women Cooking: Soviet Manuscript
Cookbooks, Social Networks, and Identity Building /
Anastasia Lakhtikova 80
II Producers, Providers, and Consumers: Resistance and
Compliance, Soviet-Style
4 Cake, Cabbage, and the Morality of Consumption in
Iurii Trifonov’s House on the Embankment /
Benjamin Sutcliffe 113
5 Sated People: Gendered Modes of Acquiring and Consuming
Prestigious Soviet Foods / Olena Stiazhkina, translated by
Anastasia Lakhtikova and Angela Brintlinger 132
viii | Contents
6 Dacha Labors: Preserving Everyday Soviet Life /
Melissa L. Caldwell 165
7 Vodka en Plein Air: Authoritative Discourse, Alcohol,
and Gendered Spaces in Gray Mouse by Vil Lipatov /
Lidia Levkovitch 193
III Soviet Signifiers: The Semiotics of Everyday Scarcity and
Ritual Uses of Food
8 Cold Veal and a Stale Bread Roll: Zofia Wędrowska’s
Taste for Scarcity / Ksenia Gusarova 223
9 “Our Only Hope Was in These Plants”: Irina Ratushinskaya
and the Manipulation of Foodways in a Late Soviet Labor Camp /
Ona Renner-Fahey 247
10 Shchi da kasha, but Mostly Shchi: Cabbage as Gendered and
Genre’d in the Late Soviet Period / Angela Brintlinger 271
11 Still Life with Leftovers: Nonna Slepakova’s Poetics of Time /
Amelia Glaser 297
Afterword: Cultures of Food in the Era of Developed Socialism /
Diane P. Koenker 320
Bibliography 335
Index 359
FOREWORD
In 1993 I participated in a groundbreaking conference on “Food
in Russian History and Culture” at Harvard’s Russian Research Center.
Boris Yeltsin was president of the Russian Federation. The Soviet Union had
only recently ceased to exist. It was a heady, anxious time—in that regard
not unlike the present moment, when Russia is once again in the daily news
and we contemplate the oddness of American-led sanctions inspiring an
artisanal food movement in a country that for decades relied on the worst
forms of industrial agriculture. Our conference papers ranged widely in
their concerns, beginning with a look at food in the Primary Chronicle and
ending with an exploration of late Soviet painting. I spoke on vegetarianism
at the turn of the twentieth century and Natalya Nordman’s wacky promo-
tion of hay as the solution to Russia’s endemic hunger. One of the confer-
ence organizers, Joyce Toomre, discussed the still-relevant topic of food and
national identity in Armenia. Joyce had helped found the Culinary Histo-
rians of Boston, America’s first culinary history group and a lifeline for me
when I moved to western Massachusetts in 1983. Each month I religiously
drove six hours round-trip to Boston to attend a lecture—the beginning of
my formal education in the study of food.
The Culinary Historians had a profound effect on others, too, inspir-
ing the formation of similar groups throughout the country. Explorations
of food as a tool to understand culture and society—now recast as food
studies—burgeoned, moving from the margins and the realm of avocation
to become an established discipline in academia. And yet in the field of
Slavic Studies, critical thinking about food has been slow to gain accep-
tance. This volume, then, is all the more welcome as evidence that Slavicists
are now taking seriously the ways in which the study of food—its procure-
ment, preparation, and consumption—can illuminate deeply held cultural
and societal values.
Because so little work has been done in Slavic food studies, the possi-
bilities for investigating the meanings and uses of food are nearly e ndless.
Rather than presenting a mishmash of subjects, the editors of this volume
have wisely chosen to limit its scope by focusing on food in relation to
gender in the late Soviet period. As the essays reveal, many of the era’s
ix