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What Was Socialist Food and What Comes Next?

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Anyavon Bremzen, Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking: A Memoir of Love and Longing (New York: Crown Publishers, 2013), 352 pp. (hb), $26, ISBN 978–0307886811.
PaulinaBren and MaryNeuburger, eds., Communism Unwrapped: Consumption in Cold War Eastern Europe (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 432 pp. (pb), $31.95, ISBN 978-0-19-982767-1.
E. M.Collingham, The Taste of War: World War II and the Battle for Food (New York: Penguin Press, 2012), 634 pp. (hb), $50, ISBN 978–0143123019.

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Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 October 2016

ANTON MASTEROVOY
ANTON MASTEROVOY*
Affiliation:
[email protected]
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Extract

Food in the former Soviet Union remains serious political business. In the summer of 2014, in retaliation against Western sanctions imposed in response to the annexation of Crimea, Vladimir Putin's government decreed an odd brand of ‘self-sanctions’ by forbidding the importation of many foodstuffs from the United States and the European Union. Conservative supporters of President Putin sprang into action, exhorting Russian consumers to embrace the opportunity to develop Russian agriculture while Putin's opponents raised the spectre of late Soviet food shortages. Though starvation does not seem like a genuine threat to modern Russia, the fact that these questions are raised at all requires scholars of food to pay attention to Russia and scholars of Russia to view food as an important aspect of the country's history. Serious studies of food in the Soviet Union and under other socialist regimes are particularly worthy of attention since these socio-economic systems, paradoxically, were best known both for proclaiming an end to hunger and for presiding over chronic shortages if not outright famines.

Type
Review Article
Information
Contemporary European History , Volume 26 , Issue 3 , August 2017 , pp. 523 - 532
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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References

1 On positive responses to sanctions see Masha Lipman, ‘Putin's Sanctions Against Russia’, New Yorker, 19 Aug. 2014. For warnings of Soviet-style shortages see Konstantin Borovoii, ‘Zdravstvuii, SSSR’ [Hello, USSR], Echo Moskvy, 2 Aug. 2014, online at http://echo.msk.ru/blog/k_borovoi/1371780-echo (last visited 20 May 2015).

2 Verdery, Katherine, What Was Socialism and What Comes Next? (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 For food as a tool of state power and a demonstration of socialist superiority see Osokina, Elena, Our Daily Bread: Socialist Distribution and the Art of Survival in Stalin's Russia, 1927–1941 (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2001)Google Scholar and Gronow, Jukka, Caviar with Champagne: Common Luxury and the Ideals of the Good Life in Stalin's Russia (Oxford: Berg, 2003)Google Scholar.

4 Fehérváry, Krisztina, ‘Goods and States: The Political Logic of State Socialist Material Culture’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 51 (2009), 426–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Shteyngart, Gary, Absurdistan (New York: Random House, 2006)Google Scholar and Shteyngart, Gary, Super Sad True Love Story (New York: Random House, 2010)Google Scholar.

6 Shteyngart, Gary, Little Failure: A Memoir (New York: Random House, 2014), 23–4, 59Google Scholar.

7 Strugatsky, Arkady and Strugatsky, Boris, Monday Starts on a Saturday, Bromfield, Andrew, trans. (London: Seagull Publishing, 2004), 99–100 Google Scholar.

8 For a criticism of Putin's ‘orientalism’ see Sergeii Mitrokhin, ‘Evropeiiskii vybor kniazia Vladimira’ [Prince Vladimir's European Choice], Echo Moskvy, 23 Jan. 2015, online at http://echo.msk.ru/blog/sergei_mitrohin/1479388-echo (last visited 20 May 2015).

9 For an excellent account of the social history of the Soviet War experiences, see Merridale, Catherine, Ivan's War: Life and Death in the Red Army, 1939–1945 (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006)Google Scholar.

10 Andrey Lan'kov, ‘Dorogoii peremen, preodolevaia otdel'nye trudnosti’ [On the Road to Reform, Overcoming Occasional Difficulties], Sluchaiinye zametki Andreiia Lan'kova, 2 Feb. 2015, online at http://tttkkk.livejournal.com/277883.html (last visited 20 May 2015).

11 For Soviet consumer complaints, among other forms of protest, see Kozlov, Vladimir A., Fitzpatrick, Sheila and Mironenko, Sergei V., Sedition: Everyday Resistance in the Soviet Union under Khrushchev and Brezhnev (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011)Google Scholar.

12 For a memoir which includes questions of food and identity see German, Mikhail, Slozhnoe proshedshee: (passé composé) (Saint Petersburg: Iskusstvo-SPB, 2000)Google Scholar. Kushkova's findings can be further confirmed by an unrelated interview project: Raleigh, Donald J., Russia's Sputnik Generation. Soviet Baby Boomers Talk about Their Lives (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006)Google Scholar.

13 V. V. Putin, ‘Vystuplenie v MGU 1 sentiabria 1999 goda’ [Speech in the Moscow State University, 1 Sept. 1999], Polit.ru, online at http://old.polit.ru/documents/109823.html (last visited 17 Feb. 2011).