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September 21, 2025 • 12 mins

With a new cookbook, author Polina Chesnakova looks to the past to understand how food plays a role in nation-building.

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
How Soviet Cuisine shaped A Diaspora's Table by Paulina Chesnakova,
read by Danny Scott in nineteen thirty five, two years
after a government engineered famine known as holodomor literally death
by starvation, left millions of Ukrainians and others across the
region dead, Joseph Stalin declared in a speech at the

(00:21):
first All Union Conference of Stakhanovites, life has become better comrades,
life has become more cheerful. To drive home his optimistic
read on the state of the Soviet Union, he did
what so many personalities do these days, to capitalize on
their influence and sell their vision. He published a cookbook
spearheaded by the People's Commissar of the Food Industry on

(00:44):
Ostas Mikoyan and authored by the Institute of Nutrition of
the Academy of Medical Scientists of USSR. The Book of
Tasty and Healthy Food knigov kustnis drovi Pishe, or simply
the Book as it became known over time, was first
published in nineteen thirty nine. More than one thousand, four
hundred recipes were crammed into its four hundred pages, interspersed

(01:07):
with pictures of lavish spreads, tips on etiquette and hygiene,
menu suggestions, canned food ads, and prescriptive diets for various
ailments and syndromes. As food historian Polly Russel writes, what
was on offer in the book was not an achievable
culinary proposition, but a promise of what might be enjoyed
once the ideals of communism were realized. The reality it

(01:29):
sold couldn't have been further from the truth. Grocery shelves
were perpetually empty due to shortages. The average comrade could
barely afford a piece of meat, let alone the bottle
of Soviet champagne or tins of caviar that graced the
book's pages, and yet the masses, for lack of better words,
ate it up. The nineteen fifty two editions sold two

(01:49):
point five million copies alone. In total, ten editions and
twenty three publications were published from nineteen thirty nine to
nineteen ninety, with print runs of a million copies at
a time. The vision of a fully realized socialist state
wasn't the only agenda. The totalitarian Kitchen Bible aimed to
push the glossy images of seafood from the Caspian sea

(02:12):
fruit from Crimea and kognak from Armenia, paired with recipes
for Ukrainian vareniki dumplings, Moldovan mamaaliga, cornmill porridge, Georgian kartou,
beef and rice soup, and Uzbek plov rice. Pilov belied
a secondary motive by pulling dishes, techniques, and ingredients from
all over the USSR and adopting them into Slavonic cuisine.

(02:36):
The book propagated and codified another kind of nationalism, a
new culinary Soviet lexicon. It was an effective tool to
drive home the rhetoric that the USSR was a united
brotherhood of all peoples. Editions of the book, printed during
the era of Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev nineteen sixty four
to nineteen eighty two, were adapted to have an especially

(02:57):
strong emphasis on national diversity. In nineteen seventy eight, food
historian William Porkiobkin published National Cuisines of Our Peoples, which
claimed that all these ethnic foods and others belonged to
the Soviet patrimony. Porklopkin even included a section on Jewish cooking,
which was purposefully censored from the book and other state
approved culinary publications on religious not to mention anti Semitic grounds.

(03:23):
Another force for social coherence and uniformity in Soviet eating
habits was gost Gusudharstyini standart state standards that dictated, down
to the gram how recipes should be prepared in government
run canteens and cafeterias across the USSR. You could be
sure that the katletin meat patties you ate in Moscow
would be the same as in Tashkent. All these implementations

(03:46):
homogenized not only the way citizens across the us SR
understood and prepared the food on their tables, but also
how they saw themselves as one. The book, as cultural propaganda,
ultimately worked. A pan Soviet cuisine arose, with many of
these regional foods becoming familiar, if not an intimate part
of daily life to those born and raised in the USSR.

(04:10):
Some dishes, like Ukrainian borsch became a family staple, while
others like Caucasian shashlik meet kebabs and Crimean chiburikhin savory
fried hand pies turned into popular and inexpensive street foods.
The last Soviet era print of the book ran in
nineteen ninety, soon after the state that commissioned it fell apart.

(04:30):
The way my mom describes post Soviet Tbilisi in those
early years, frequent blackouts, shootouts on the streets, empty storefronts,
metal rails for trolleys uprooted and sold for cash. Soviet
buildings looted to the studs. It was every man for himself.
Having seen the writing on the wall, My parents had
started the documentation necessary for immigration early and were lucky

(04:53):
enough to escape in September nineteen ninety two. I was
just three months old when my parents boarded a plane
to Boston, a fish, becoming refugees. They ended up in
Rhode Island, where my aunt and her husband were already
waiting for us. Soon after, three of my mom's sisters
and their families joined us. We had each other, but
we also quickly found ourselves connecting with other recently arrived

(05:15):
immigrant families through the local and newly formed Russian Evangelical Church,
comprising religious refugees from all over the USSR. The church
wasn't just Russian. The founding families represented Estonia, Latvia, Georgia,
Moldova and Ukraine, and as the congregation grew, so did
representation from all the former republics. Faith banded us together,

(05:37):
but so did our new immigrant status, the Russian language,
and crucially, a love and appreciation for each other's food.
As far back as I can remember, church potlucks were
a smorgus board of Soviet mainstays, Eastern Bloc hits, and
regional favorites. I don't think any of those families realized
at the time that, with the ability to finally afford

(05:58):
and access ingredients, they were playing out the utopian culinary
dream the book hoped for. All those decades ago, we
knew the big Nalisniki blintzes that Babushka Galia brought to
tea after evening services were Ukrainian. The puroshki stuffed buns
we took on road trips were Russian. The plaw of
served at weddings were a poor imitation of the kind

(06:18):
they made in Uzbekistan, and the Gatta buttery pastry on
the dessert table originally hailed from Armenia. But for better
or for worse, we didn't dwell on origins. It was
simply our food, just like there was nashi ours, us
being the other ex Soviet Russian speaking immigrants, and then
there was everyone else. We always wanted to know where

(06:39):
you emigrated from, but we didn't think too hard on
it either. In some ways, the collective Soviet identity lived on,
and we continued to cement our bond through the countless
meals and dishes we shared together. While we were trying
to recreate the foods of the homes we left behind,
those who stayed were busy extracting themselves from the rubble
of the USSA dissolution. They weren't dwelling on existential culinary questions,

(07:04):
but on survival. Theirs was a matter of if and
how they could secure their next meal. But fast forward
a decade or two, and governments started to stabilize, whether
in striving to leave the Soviet legacy behind or in
reaction to regional conflict, a new wave of gastro nationalism
began to take hold. Food once again became a political

(07:24):
tool in nation state building. Fighting about which dish belongs
to whom says a lot more about current geopolitics than
the provenance of a dish that has been eaten in
a wide geographical region. Ayavon Bremsen, author of National Dish
and mastering the art of Soviet cooking, said in a
twenty twenty one interview with SAVE, dishes often existed long

(07:44):
before current national borders did. Take for instance, Borsch, the
rustic beat and cabbage soup inextricably linked to Eastern Europe,
prepared throughout the former USSR and now within the wider
Soviet diaspora, it has become a symbol of tension and
all out war between Moscow and Kiev. To dispel the
commonly held belief outside of Ukraine that Borsch is a

(08:06):
Russian soup, and further motivated by the Russian Foreign Ministries
tweet in twenty nineteen that it is one of the
country's most famous and beloved dishes. Ukrainian chef and restauranteur
Yevren Klopotenko started an appeal in twenty twenty with UNESCO
to recognize Borsch as part of Ukraine's intangible, cultural and
national heritage. He got his wish in twenty twenty two,

(08:28):
the same year that Russia launched its full scale invasion
of his country. Armenia lay claim to Lavash via UNESCO
in twenty fourteen, sparking outrage from Azerbaijan, which along with
other neighboring countries considers it an indeliible part of its
culinary canon. A few years later, the two countries clashed
again when UNESCO recognized Azerbai John's dolma making tradition. Then

(08:50):
there's the fight over Ajika, a fiery red chili paste
between Georgia and Abkhazia, and the Uzbek Tajik debate over
whose plow of is better and more authentic. Gastro nationalism
has taken other forms too. Since his successful UNESCO petition,
Klobotenko published The Authentic Ukrainian Kitchen, a cookbook documenting the

(09:10):
results of his year's worth of efforts to codify the
true cuisine of his country. A burgeoning and robust national
wine scene in Georgia is revitalizing indigenous grape varietals that
all but disappeared during the Soviet regime. And in Estonia,
the embrace of new Nordic i e. Hyperlocal, foraged and
seasonal as a culinary esthetic has become an effective way

(09:31):
for the country to align itself more with Scandinavia rather
than its eastern neighbor and Soviet past. Taking all of
this into account, when I started working on my upcoming cookbook,
Just Nauk. I was immediately presented with a problem. How
do I write about my family's food without being prescriptive.
I've always joked that we are a product of the
Soviet Union. I was, after all born in Ukraine to

(09:54):
Russian and Armenian parents from the country of Georgia. But
the term Soviet carries too much. I wanted to get
away from the bleak stereotypes, and this wasn't another book
in its utopian vision of ecstatic multiculturalism. As Rachel Sugar wrote,
I also felt I couldn't turn to the label Russian.
What was once a benign catchall term to describe the

(10:15):
Soviet and post Soviet experience has become as malignant as
Putin's aggressive imperialism. To lump these vibrant, distinct cultures and
cuisines under Russian minimizes and at worst erases them, as
the Soviet system once did, and as the current regime
aims to do. For my purposes, it also falls short
in accurately capturing the nuance and breadth of this specific

(10:38):
immigrant community. So instead, I took a transparent approach. I
collected the recipes that I and the millions of others
who share my background grew up eating and cooking, and
I provided both a historical and personal context for why
they belonged together. In the same book, I settled on
post Soviet as a descriptor, because in this specific context,

(10:59):
the cook book book, just like the diaspora it reflects,
wouldn't exist if it weren't for the Soviet Union and
the confluence of cultures it facilitated. I will be the
first to admit that a certain tension arises. On one hand,
I want to honor these ex Soviet countries and their
fights for sovereignty vis a Vi, Borsche or Plov. On
the other, it would be disingenuous of me not to

(11:20):
acknowledge the USSR's legacy, whether through the book or other propaganda,
in establishing a culinary lexicon that the wider diaspora still
pulls from today. The grayness simply points to our lived experience.
Just Knook is not a comprehensive culinary guide to all
the former republics or ethnic groups of the Soviet Union,

(11:41):
nor does it aim to perpetuate a simplistic monolith of
the Soviet legacy. Instead, it offers an earnest reflection on
the diaspora, on the complexities and contradictions we continue to
live with and navigate, and on a shared table that
has the power to both bring its members together and
tear them apart.
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