The Soviet cuisine encompassed a variety of tastes, from the Ukrainian salo to the Korean sliced carrots. In Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking, Anya Von Bremzen takes the reader on a personal journey through the Soviet Union’s history using food as her framework. Each chapter represents a decade infused with descriptions of her recreating dishes from that era in the present day. This book does not solely focus on the author’s personal family history, but it is simultaneously the story of a nation, its multicultural characteristics, its struggles with the daily realities of life under the Soviet empire. Similarly, in his article Edible Ethnicity: How Georgian Cuisine Conquered the Soviet Table, Erik Scott asserts that “the history of food
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He further argues that while it is true that each titular nationality’s cuisine was incorporated at the Soviet table, Georgian food reserved a special status because it was seen as “a refined cuisine appropriate for the Soviet middle class that emerged in the 1930s” (Scott 2012, 833). Georgian food transcended its borders, and became a crucial part of Soviet multiethnic culture rather than an exclusive domain. Anya Von Bremzen’s book and Erik Scott’s article reveal that Soviet cuisine and culture was constructed in large part by the contributions of non-Russians. Anya Von Bremzen states in the first chapter of her book Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking: A Memoir of Food and Longing that, “For any ex-citizen of a three-hundred-million-strong Soviet superpower, food is never a mere individual matter” (Bremzen 2014, 11). Food, she says, quoting an academic, “defined how Russians endured the present, imagined the future, and connected to their past” (2014, 11). In other words, every recipe and dish incorporated in her narrative is intertwined with a part of history and a part of the culture of the multiethnic empire. All of this is narrated from her apartment in Queens, where Anya and her mother …show more content…
Through her personal family narrative and recipes, Bremzen shows the experiences and perceptions of non-Russian minorities in the Soviet Union. She incorporates recipes of Central Asian palov and Armenian dolma in her narrative of the Soviet Union’s history, which does not only display the Soviet empire’s uniquely multi-ethnic national identity, but it also reveals minority experiences and their sentiments towards its eventual collapse. They were not on the periphery, rather they helped construct this multiethnic society and contributed to the creation of Soviet culture. Similarly, Scott uses the Georgian restaurant Aragvi as a case study to argue that Georgian food and its traditions were centerpieces in Soviet elite culture. Cuisines of non-Russian citizens became a crucial part of Soviet multiethnic culture rather than the exclusive domain of a single
He further argues that while it is true that each titular nationality’s cuisine was incorporated at the Soviet table, Georgian food reserved a special status because it was seen as “a refined cuisine appropriate for the Soviet middle class that emerged in the 1930s” (Scott 2012, 833). Georgian food transcended its borders, and became a crucial part of Soviet multiethnic culture rather than an exclusive domain. Anya Von Bremzen’s book and Erik Scott’s article reveal that Soviet cuisine and culture was constructed in large part by the contributions of non-Russians. Anya Von Bremzen states in the first chapter of her book Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking: A Memoir of Food and Longing that, “For any ex-citizen of a three-hundred-million-strong Soviet superpower, food is never a mere individual matter” (Bremzen 2014, 11). Food, she says, quoting an academic, “defined how Russians endured the present, imagined the future, and connected to their past” (2014, 11). In other words, every recipe and dish incorporated in her narrative is intertwined with a part of history and a part of the culture of the multiethnic empire. All of this is narrated from her apartment in Queens, where Anya and her mother …show more content…
Through her personal family narrative and recipes, Bremzen shows the experiences and perceptions of non-Russian minorities in the Soviet Union. She incorporates recipes of Central Asian palov and Armenian dolma in her narrative of the Soviet Union’s history, which does not only display the Soviet empire’s uniquely multi-ethnic national identity, but it also reveals minority experiences and their sentiments towards its eventual collapse. They were not on the periphery, rather they helped construct this multiethnic society and contributed to the creation of Soviet culture. Similarly, Scott uses the Georgian restaurant Aragvi as a case study to argue that Georgian food and its traditions were centerpieces in Soviet elite culture. Cuisines of non-Russian citizens became a crucial part of Soviet multiethnic culture rather than the exclusive domain of a single