Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking: A Memoir of Food and Longing

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.

Anya Bremzen's book on Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking should not be confused with a typical cookbook on Russian cuisine. For a very thorough treatise on Russian and general Slavic recipes, one should refer to Anya's other excellent work, "Please to the Table." There you will find an immense list of fabulous cooking ideas. But if you are like me, someone who is mystically drawn to all things Russian especially as it relates to everyday life for those who lived through Russia's darkest days then you will find this book very stimulating.Anya speaks partly from her own experience but draws heavily on her mother's. Going back to what life was actually like trying to provide for her family under indescribable hardships. Food is a common denominator between all of us and it is through this that we are made to see a life like we would not want to live.Anya is an extremely gifted writer and can clearly articulate her mind in a fashion that paints a clear and riveting picture for the reader. In addition, she contributes facts about life during this period that is extremely interesting to say the least. If you are a person who is drawn to learning more about life as it was under Lenin and Stalin then this book will feed your mind. This book will appeal to those who enjoy the fascinating depth of real cooking and how it can be so involving coupled with a way of life so foreign to us who have never experienced it. Do yourself a favor and purchase this book.

In this loving and poignant memoir, von Bremzen uses food as a lens to focus in on and explore late Russian Imperial, Soviet, and post-Soviet history. And what a story it is. Being Russian-American myself I was seduced by the charm of this book. My own parents defected in the same period that von-Bremzen and her mother left and I grew up on much of the same food because I grew up near the Russian-Ukrainian enclave of Brighton Beach in NYC. So this particular book was like a fun house mirror - not quite the same as my own experiences, but close enough to act as a madeleine. And I can truly say that this book speaks from authentic experiences that will fill you with joy even if you are not Russian or Russian-American. It's an extremely well-written history.The book is divided into decades chronicling roughly 100 years of Russian and Imperial Soviet history. In each decade we explore von-Bremzen's family - from her great grandparents to herself and also in each decade we have a particular food experience. If you are looking for recipes, then you will get them - at the back of the book with extra information about the author's experiences with the food. If you are looking for history, you will get it. It's much more personal history and that makes it much more rewarding to read. After reading this you will understand more about the centrality of food to the Russian experience.Now I really to want to go and make some Salat Olivier (Russian potato salad) and Kotleti (bunless hamburgers!).

History of the Soviet Union and beyond told by frustrated stomach. My family history and upbringing is very different but I am pretty the same age as the author and remember pretty much the same.It is very entertaining and full of transcript (latin letters) Russian that some readers may enjoy. From top to bottom, from party leaders to drunk slums, from top cultural events to something less pretty.The only one thing I don't agree with the author is her dislike of Putin, despite the fact that under his "regime" stomach frustration ended. Without money you will not get it but if you work you can get the stuff several generations of Homo Sovieticus before AD 2000 dreamt only. I think Putin is all right. But as I say my circumstances were a bit different.

I just learned a new word, "toska", "that peculiarly Russian ache of the soul", and it certainly runs through this memoir - do not let the title make you think it is a cookbook. Covering the author's family and their lives from tsarist Russia through the Soviet era, the cold war, Glasnost and to 2011 Putin times, I found it intensely fascinating.Growing up in Norway in the 1970s and 1980s, Soviet was a large, menacing presence to the east. We heard of bread lines and bombs and saw pictures of grave-looking men in the Kremlin in the news, but ordinary people were not part of our consciousness of Soviet. Certainly not their food, did they have any at all? My first trip there was in 1990, to then Leningrad, and my main memory were the empty shops, and for us privileged tourists the eternal chicken. I was 17, and knew far too little of the realities...From her mother's table in New York, Anya von Bremzen recounts her family's lives as privileged in some eras, shunned in others - the mosaic is rich and the food imagery brings it out for me. Unlike other reviewers, I found the topic well matched to the amount of detail given, and would wholeheartedly recommend this to those interested in a bygone time. Perhaps the "larger picture" isn't always there or sometimes seems divorced from the historical accounts included, as she tends to focus on the microcosmos of her own family or apartment building, but since she is recording her own experiences from childhood, it rings true to me. Intimate and distant in even measures, lovely.

Don't be fooled by the title of this book. - you won't find 100 things to do with beetroot (well, maybe some ideas); rather it is a wonderfully poignant personal and social chronicle of the Soviet Union as reflected through its culinary culture. The author - an émigré from Soviet Russia - skilfully guides the reader through her often dichotomous relationship with the Soviet Union in such a way that her personal story provides a compelling evocation of the lives of many.Nor does the book come under the mantle of misery memoire. Whilst endless winters and deprivation play a role, the queues become a locus of dissidence, gossip and romance. Soviet Man and Woman go to bed longing not only nutritional satiety but also cultural and intellectual.This book is beautifully written with an overwhelming feeling of toska or longing.

If you would like to understand daily life in the Soviet Union, this is the book for you. The title is somewhat misleading--there are quite few pages about food (and the absence of food) and a few recipes, but mostly it is an engaging and very readable family memoir over the entire 70-year duration of the Soviet experiment.

Engaging reminiscences of life and culinary inventiveness under Russia's Communist regime. Complete with more or less appetising recipes. The informal observations on history, politics and society are full of humour despite dark and difficult times.