Overview

In Russia, food has a hugely important role in political, symbolic, and practical terms. In this illuminating history of Russian food in the modern age, Catriona Kelly – a leading cultural historian and keen amateur cook – reflects on this and an environment where what you eat (and drink) indicates how patriotic you are. Kelly argues that an expectation of ‘feeding’ is embedded in attitudes to the state as provider, and that rationing systems have traditionally replicated and even enforced social hierarchies. The book looks at how Russian food is intimately connected with family and friends, and was an important source of delight even in the Soviet period, when official culinary provision and practices ostensibly sought to promote nutrition above all, and food was often short. Russian Food since 1800 traces these complex and contradictory associations. It also examines various shifts in diet and cuisine over the last three centuries, including the ways in which old traditions such as pickling and jam-making sit alongside wider world influences from the vast imperial hinterland in the Baltic, the Caucasus, and Central Asia, as well as Western Europe and America.

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9781350192775

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Catriona Kelly is Senior Research Fellow of Trinity College, University of Cambridge, UK. Among her many books are St Petersburg: Shadows of the Past (2014), Comrade Pavlik: The Rise and Fall of a Soviet Boy Hero (2005), Russian Literature: A Very Short Introduction (2001) and Refining Russia: Advice Literature, Polite Culture, and Gender from Catherine to Yeltsin (2001). She first visited the USSR as a student, and since then has spent large amounts of time living, eating, and cooking in Russia and other parts of the former Soviet world, including Ukraine, Moldova, the Caucasus, Central Asia, and the Baltic States.

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