****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
I read this book over my Christmas holiday. Anya Von Bremzen's moving, funny, and intimate journal explores the history of 20th century Russia through the framework of cuisine. Although her story is a personal one, it is concurrently the story of a nation and its struggles with the daily realities of life. Although late Czarism is touched on, the author focuses mainly on Soviet times, in particular the 1930's (High Stalinism) and the 1960's and 70's (Era of Stagnation). She also gives some great insights into modern Moscow, including a little mini-memoir of her travels there in 2011. What makes this book much more than a mere family memoir is the author's ability to pepper her tale with germane political commentary, literary references, and cultural tidbits that the casual as well as more Russo-oriented reader will appreciate. She mentions blat (the system of patronage in the Soviet Union), the Central House of Writers where the devil dines in "Master and Margarita", Soviet medicine, Gogol and Chekhov's sumptuous food descriptions, empty shelves in the 1990's and 40-dollar pizzas in Putin's Moscow. She weaves a mighty tapestry of references and associations which elevates this book above a simple memoir to something that speaks to a world that despite deprivation, also had some charm.If you are interested in exploring the subject further, I recommend two other volumes: one discusses Moscow culture in the 1930's "Moscow: the Fourth Rome" by Katerina Clark Moscow, the Fourth Rome: Stalinism, Cosmopolitanism, and the Evolution of Soviet Culture, 1931-1941 and the other, "Food in Russian History and Culture" by Glants and Toomre Food in Russian History and Culture (Indiana-Michigan Series in Russian and East European Studies), discusses numerous topics related to culinary history and culture in Russia and the Soviet Union, from Medieval times to Soviet Times. For another quirky suggestion, please check out the 1980's Soviet Film "Baltazar's Feast" Baltazar's Feasts or The Night with Stalin/ Piry Valtasara ili noch so Stalinym about Stalin's banquets in his later years- hard to find, but worth it.Overall I highly recommend this sumptuous overview of Russian cuisine and recent history, told from an impassioned and very personal point of view.
