Food in Russian History and Culture (Indiana-Michigan Series in Russian and East European Studies) [Paperback]

Musya Glants (Editor), Joyce Toomre (Editor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0253211069 | ISBN-13: 978-0253211064 | Publication Date: August 22, 1997

"... the specificity and breadth of this [work] makes it unique.... lively reading... particularly recommended for academic collections with a strong focus in Russian history." —Library Journal

"... a remarkable new collection of essays... The book reads like a literary hybrid of cookbook, historical treatise, and novella; its subject is, literally, the essence of life itself.... Glants and Toomre deserve further praise for the book's consistent, animated directness of style." —The Boston Phoenix

This sparkling collection of thirteen original essays gives surprising insights into what foodways reveal about Russia's history and culture, from Kievan times to post Soviet Russia. Some of the chapters focus on historical topics while others consider images of food in literature and art.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Fourteen scholars have contributed 13 essays, each impeccably documented with endnotes, on the place of food ("foodways") in Russian history and culture. Edited by Glants, a specialist on 19th- and 20th-century Russian painting, and Toomre, a Slavicist and culinary historian, the book spans over ten centuries, from Kievan Rus to the present. Relying on sources as diverse as personal journals, police records, paintings, poems, and cookbooks, the writers examine changing attitudes about food?moral, ideological, and spiritual?through the eyes of peasants as well as tyrants. Recent works have dealt with the relationship between food and power (Sidney Mintz, Tasting Food, Tasting Freedom, LJ 8/96), but certainly the specificity and breadth of this one makes it unique. Although lively reading, it is particularly recommended for academic collections with a strong focus in Russian history.?Wendy Miller, Lexington P.L., Ky.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"... the specificity and breadth of this [work] makes it unique... lively reading ... particularly recommended for academic collections with a strong focus in Russian history." oLibrary Journal "... a remarkable new collection of essays ... The book reads like a literary hybrid of cookbook, historical treatise, and novella; its subject is, literally, the essence of life itself... Glants and Toomre deserve further praise for the book's consistent, animated directness of style." oThe Boston Phoenix

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 280 pages
• Publisher: Indiana University Press (August 22, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0253211069
• ISBN-13: 978-0253211064
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #998,632 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #38 in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Regional & International > European > Russian

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent collection of essays on a big theme, November 23, 1997

By 

Eileen Galen (USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Food in Russian History and Culture (Indiana-Michigan Series in Russian and East European Studies) (Paperback)

These essays -- by a roster of accomplished contemporary scholars of Russian Studies -- are wonderfully accesible and informative. Readers with interests in folk culture and history, Russian studies (history, literature, whatever) and/or culinary history will feel like they've struck gold. The thirteen scholarly pieces, some with a few illustrations, cover a wealth of topics (see table of contents above)-- consistently well. It's anything but dry; Pamela Chester's article on the relationship between (state-) tormented poets Marina Tsvetaeva and Osip Mandelstam (and their uses of food as symbol and, tragically, their deprivation of it, later) is heartbreaking. Peasantry, the gentry, and the Eastern Orthodox church; brilliant fussbudget Tolstoy's vegetarianism is in here; the uses of food in the writing of Dostoyevsky; fasting and food fashions; Catherine the Great (hardly any tastebuds; hearty interest in 'presentation'); the new Soviet state with its ambitious dreams for the citizenry, and the ultimate cynical mess that resulted. Food as power, class marker, moral symbol, and solace. The roots of asceticism (Orthodox church).Unfortunately, Jewish life and gulag life has been omitted, and a careful list of the prices of foodstuffs in St. Petersburg in Catherine's time is all rubles and kopeks... so I couldn't tell what I might have been able to afford.. What's here, though, is very good. I'll look for Volume 2.