Food in Russian History and Culture by Musya Glants (Editor), Joyce Toomre (Editor)

From the Publisher

This Collection of Original Essays gives surprising insights into what foodways reveal about Russia's history and culture from Kievan times to the present. A wide array of sources - including chronicles, diaries, letters, police records, poems, novels, folklore, paintings, and cookbooks - help to interpret the moral and spiritual role of food in Russian culture. Stovelore in Russian folklife, fasting in Russian peasant culture, food as power in Dostoevsky's fiction, Tolstoy and vegetarianism, restaurants in early Soviet Russia, Soviet cookery and cookbooks, and food as art in Soviet paintings are among the topics discussed in this appealing volume.

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 foodmoral, ideological, and spiritualthrough 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.

Product Details

• Table of Contents

Table of Contents