![]() ![]() This book goes through decade after decade of Russian life, from pre-to post-Soviet times, and in each section accompanies family anecdotes with recollections of meals. ![]() Meals assembled with such effort were all the more appreciated. We think of lines as annoyances to avoid in Russia they were not only unavoidable but also a central fact of life-even “a quasisurrogate church,” as one Russian novel, composed entirely of dialogues in a queue, puts it. To get food and other necessities, Homo sovieticus could count on spending a third of his or her nonworking hours waiting in lines, where a special kind of communality developed. ![]() Soviet cooking? Isn’t that an oxymoron? Wasn’t the Soviet Union a place where everything was in short supply, people waited on endless lines, there was little if any choice, and the center of every meal was vodka? Yes, indeed, and yet a quite interesting cuisine developed under these conditions. ![]()
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