Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking (53 page)

Even while taking a book leave from journalism, I was still lucky to bask in the generosity and friendship of my extraordinary magazine family. At
Travel+Leisure
my deepest appreciations to our genius editor in chief, Nancy Novogrod, and the beautiful talented Nilou Motamed. At
Food & Wine
love and cheers to the always-inspiring Dana Cowin and the awesome Kate Krader. An article about my mother’s dinners for
Saveur
was one of the sparks that inspired the book. For this, and more besides, I thank James Oseland and the
Saveur
editorial team.

Suzanne Rafer and the late Peter Workman of Workman Publishing will always have a special place in my heart for launching me into the food writing world.

In Moscow I’m dearly indebted to Viktor Belyaev, ex-Kremlin chef and ur-raconteur; to Daria Hubova for putting me and Mom on TV; and to Irina Glushchenko and her indispensable book for educating me about Anastas Mikoyan.

My Russian clan has been a source of nurture and a joy: Dad, Sergei Bremzen, and his wife, Elena Skulkova; Aunt Yulia;
sestrichki
Dasha and Masha (and Masha’s husband, Sergei), my brother, Andrei, and Nadyushka Menkova, the beloved von Bremzen family archivist.

On these shores
blagodarnost’
to Anna Brodsky (and Clava) for astute reads and precious communal apartment lore; and to Alexander Genis for his erudition and passion—and epicurean feats.

This book is imagined as a meal that spans decades of the Soviet experience. Our real meals wouldn’t mean much without the company of Irina Genis, Andrei and Toma Zagdansky, and Alex and Andrea Bayer. A separate Sovetskoye Shampanskoye toast to Katerina Darrier, Maria Landa-Neimark; Innessa Fialkova; Elena Dovlatova; Isolda Gorodetsky; and Svetlana Kupchik for bringing Soviet past to such vivid life at Mom’s table in Queens; and to Mark Serman for “fables.” Among the non-Russians: huge hugs to Kate Sekules for
always
encouraging me; Melissa Clark for being an angel; Mark Cohen for sharing his archival access; Peter Canby, Esther Allen, Nathaniel Wice, and Virginia Hatley for reading; Jonas and Ursula Hegewisch for their sparkle and style; and to all other pals in New York, Moscow, and Istanbul who fed me, listened to me, and lifted my spirits.

Larisa Frumkin is the soul and star of this book.
Mamulik:
you’re my everlasting hero and role model. This book is yours.

Finally every word on these pages owes something to Barry Your-grau, my partner, reader, editor, literary adviser, best friend, and true love. Without him this book would be a sad murky nowhere. Ditto my life.

W
hat follows is by no means an exhaustive list of the book-length nonfiction sources, both English and Russian, that I have consulted and/or quoted for this book, in addition to works of fiction, memoirs, magazine and newspaper articles, and reliable online materials. Sources that have been helpful to me across several chapters are cited in the earliest chapter. For the Russian titles I have relied on the standard Library of Congress transliteration system, which differs slightly from the more informal one used in the main text of the book.

Borrero, Mauricio.
Hungry Moscow: Scarcity and Urban Society in the Russian Civil War, 1917–1921
. New York: Peter Lang, 2003.

Giliarovskii, Vladimir.
Moskva i moskvichi
. Moscow: Moskovskii rabochii, 1968.

Glants, Musya, and Joyce Toomre.
Food in Russian History and Culture
. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997.

LeBlanc, Ronald D.
Slavic Sins of the Flesh: Food, Sex, and Carnal Appetite in Nineteenth-Century Russian Fiction
. Durham: University of New Hampshire Press, 2009.

Lih, Lars T.
Bread and Authority in Russia, 1914–1921
. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990.

McAuley, Mary.
Bread and Justice: State and Society in Petrograd, 1917–1922
. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991.

Pokhlebkin, Vil’jam.
Kukhnia veka
. Moscow: Polifakt, 2000.

Suny, Ronald G., ed.
The Cambridge History of Russia, Volume 3: The Twentieth Century
. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Ball, Alan M.
Russia’s Last Capitalists: The Nepmen, 1921–1929
. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987.

Benjamin, Walter.
Moscow Diary
. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986.

Boym, Svetlana.
Common Places: Mythologies of Everyday Life in Russia
. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994.

Buchli, Victor.
An Archaeology of Socialism
. New York: Berg, 1999.

Elwood, Carter.
The Non-Geometric Lenin: Essays on the Development of the Bolshevik Party 1910–1914
. London-New York: Anthem Press, 2011.

Genis, Aleksandr.
Kolobok. Kulinarnye puteshestviya
. Moscow: Corpus, 2010.

Hessler, Julie.
A Social History of Soviet Trade: Trade Policy, Retail Practices, and Consumption, 1917–1953
. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004.

Kondrat’eva, Tamara.
Kormit’ i Pravit’: O Vlasti v Rossii XVI–XX Veka
, Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2009.

Martin, Terry.
The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923–1939
. Ithaca-London: Cornell University Press, 2001.

Massell, G. J.
The Surrogate Proletariat: Moslem Women and Revolutionary Strategies in Soviet Central Asia, 1919–1929
. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1974.

Osokina, Elena.
Za fasadom stalinskogo izobiliya. Raspredelenie i rynok v snabzhenii naseleniya v gody industrializatsii, 1927–1941
. Moscow: ROSSPEN, 1999.

Tumarkin, Nina.
Lenin Lives! The Lenin Cult in Soviet Russia
. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983.

Viola, Lynne.
Peasant Rebels under Stalin: Collectivization and the Culture of Peasant Resistance
. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.

Balina, Marina, and Yevgeny Dobrenko, eds.
Petrified Utopia: Happiness Soviet
Style. London & New York: Anthem Press, 2009.

Fitzpatrick, Sheila.
Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s
. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Glushchenko, Irina.
Obshchepit: Anastas Mikoian i sovetskaia kukhnia
. Moscow: GUVShE, 2010.

Gronow, Jukka.
Caviar with Champagne: Common Luxury and the Ideals of the Good Life in Stalin’s Russia
. New York: Berg, 2003.

Kniga o vkusnoi i zdorovoi pishche
. Moscow: Pishchepromizdat, 1939, 1952, 1953, 1954, and 1955.

Korenevskaya, Natalia, and Thomas Lahusen, eds.
Intimacy and Terror: Soviet Diaries of the 1930s
. New York: New Press, 1995.

Mikoyan, Anastas.
Tak bylo. Razmyshleniia o minuvshem
. Moscow: Vagrius, 1999.

Petrone, Karen.
Life Has Become More Joyous, Comrades: Celebrations in the Time of Stalin
. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000.

Berezhkov, Valentin.
Stranitsi diplomaticheskoi istorii
. Moscow: Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniia, 1987.

Glantz, David M.
The Siege of Leningrad: 900 Days of Terror
. London: Brown Partworks, 2001.

Jones, Michael.
Leningrad: State of Siege
. New York: Basic Books, 2008.

Lur’e, V. M., and V. Ia. Kochik.
GRU dela i liudi
. St. Petersburg: Olma-Press, 2003.

Moskoff, William.
The Bread of Affliction: The Food Supply in the USSR During World War II
. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.

Murphy, David E.
What Stalin Knew: The Enigma of Barbarossa
. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005.

Pleshakov, Constantine.
Stalin’s Folly
. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2005.

Plokhy, Serhii.
Yalta: The Price of Peace
. New York: Viking, 2010.

Salisbury, Harrison E.
The 900 Days: The Siege of Leningrad
. New York: Avon Books, 1970.

Snyder, Timothy.
Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin
. New York: Basic Books, 2010.

Djilas, Milovan.
Conversations with Stalin
. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1963.

Medvedev, Roy, and Zhores Medvedev.
The Unknown Stalin: His Life, Death, and Legacy
. New York: Overlook Press, 2004.

Montefiore, S. S.
Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar
. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2003.

Nikolaev, Vladimir.
Sovetskaia Ochered’ Kak Sreda Obitaniia: Sotsiologicheskii Analiz
. Moscow: INION RAN, 2000.

Rappaport, Helen.
Joseph Stalin: A Biographical Companion
. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 1999.

Zubok, Vladislav.
Zhivago’s Children: The Last Russian Intelligentsia
. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009.

Carlson, Peter.
K Blows Top: A Cold War Comic Interlude Starring Nikita Khrushchev, America’s Most Unlikely Tourist
. New York: Public Affairs, 2009.

Castillo, Greg.
Cold War on the Home Front: The Soft Power of Midcentury Design
. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010.

Crowley, David, and Susan E. Reid, eds.
Socialist Spaces: Sites of Everyday Life in the Eastern Bloc
. Oxford: Berg, 2002.

Khrushchev, N. S.
Vospominaniia. Vremia, liudi, vlast’
. Vols. 1–4. Moscow: Moskovskie novosti, 1999.

Taubman, William.
Khrushchev: The Man and His Era
. New York: W. W. Norton, 2003.

Vayl’, Petr, and Aleksandr Genis.
60-e: Mir sovetskogo cheloveka
. Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 1996.

Ledeneva, Alena.
Russia’s Economy of Favours:
Blat,
Networking and Informal Exchange
. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Yurchak, Alexei.
Everything Was Forever Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation
. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006.

Herlihy, Patricia.
The Alcoholic Empire: Vodka and Politics in Late Imperial Russia
. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Transchel, Kate.
Under the Influence: Working-Class Drinking, Temperance, and Cultural Revolution in Russia, 1895–1932
. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2006.

White, Stephen.
Russia Goes Dry: Alcohol, State and Society
. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

Felshman, Neil.
Gorbachev, Yeltsin and the Last Days of the Soviet Empire
. New York: St. Martin’s, 1992.

Kahn, Jeffrey.
Federalism, Democratization, and the Rule of Law in Russia
. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Kapuscinski, Ryszard.
Imperium
. New York: Knopf, 1994.

Moskoff, William.
Hard Times: Impoverishment and Protest in the Perestroika Years
. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1993.

Nekrich, A. M., trans. George Saunders.
The Punished Peoples: The Deportation and Fate of Soviet Minorities at the End of the Second World War
. New York: W. W. Norton, 1978.

O’Clery, Conor.
Moscow, December 25, 1991: The Last Day of the Soviet Union
. New York: Public Affairs, 2011.

Remnick, David.
Lenin’s Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire
. New York: Random House, 1993.

Ries, Nancy.
Russian Talk: Culture and Conversation During Perestroika
. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997.

Suny, Ronald G.
The Revenge of the Past: Nationalism, Revolution, and the Collapse of the Soviet Union
. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993.

Von Bremzen, Anya, and John Welchman.
Please to the Table: The Russian Cookbook
. New York: Workman, 1990.

Devyatov, Sergei, Yu. Shefov, and S. Yur’eva.
Blizhnyaya dacha Stalina: Opyt istoricheskogo putevoditelya
. Moscow: Kremlin Multimedia, 2011.

A
nya von Bremzen grew up in Moscow, where she played piano, black-marketeered Juicy Fruit gum at her school, and acted in Soviet films. In this country, after getting an MA from the Juilliard School, she has established herself as one of the most accomplished food writers of her generation: the winner of three James Beard awards; a contributing editor at
Travel+Leisure
magazine; and the author of five acclaimed cookbooks, among them
The New Spanish Table, The Greatest Dishes: Around the World in 80 Recipes
, and
Please to the Table: The Russian Cookbook
(coauthored with John Welchman). Anya contributes regularly to
Food & Wine
and
Saveur
and has written for
The New Yorker, Departures
, and the
Los Angeles Times
. Her magazine work has also been anthologized in several of the Best Food Writing compilations. Fluent in four languages, Anya lives in Queens, New York, and has an apartment in Istanbul.