Posted on Dec 30, 2022
How Russia's Shared Kitchens Helped Shape Soviet Politics
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In the decades following the 1917 Russian Revolution, most people in Moscow lived in communal apartments; seven or more families crammed together where there had been one, sharing one kitchen and one bathroom. They were crowded; stove space and food were limited. Clotheslines were strewn across the kitchen, the laundry of one family dripping into the omelet of another.
As the Soviet Union industrialized from the 1920s to the 1950s, and millions poured into Moscow from the countryside, one of the goals of the new government was to provide housing for the workers. It started putting people into apartments that had been occupied by the rich or by aristocrats who had been driven out by the new regime.
"The communal apartment was like a microcosm of Soviet society," says Anya von Bremzen, author of Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking. "People from all walks of life, sometimes absolute class enemies, living next to each other. The expression was 'densed up.' The allotment was 9 square meters per person."
As the Soviet Union industrialized from the 1920s to the 1950s, and millions poured into Moscow from the countryside, one of the goals of the new government was to provide housing for the workers. It started putting people into apartments that had been occupied by the rich or by aristocrats who had been driven out by the new regime.
"The communal apartment was like a microcosm of Soviet society," says Anya von Bremzen, author of Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking. "People from all walks of life, sometimes absolute class enemies, living next to each other. The expression was 'densed up.' The allotment was 9 square meters per person."
How Russia's Shared Kitchens Helped Shape Soviet Politics
Posted from npr.org
Food/Chow
Cooking
Russia
Communism
World History
Posted >1 y ago
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PO1 William "Chip" Nagel
..."Just as the leadership, citizens, and politics of the USSR changed drastically between 1917 and 1991, so too the Soviet kitchen underwent innumerable changes from generation to generation. Every Soviet leader had a unique vision for the USSR, and each leader proposed a different version of what the Soviet kitchen should look like. While in the beginning, the kitchen held little importance in Soviet life, eventually it became a crucial living space that brought out the intricacies of communal life. Later, the Cold War changed the kitchen again by making it the center of a competition with the West, but throughout the last 30 years of the USSR, the kitchen struggled to maintain its place in the socialist agenda amidst a quickly-changing political culture. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the government no longer belonged in the kitchen. Russian kitchen culture lost much of the political spark it had held for the previous 74 years as capitalism rippled through and eradicated the tight grasp the government had held within the Soviet home."...
..."Just as the leadership, citizens, and politics of the USSR changed drastically between 1917 and 1991, so too the Soviet kitchen underwent innumerable changes from generation to generation. Every Soviet leader had a unique vision for the USSR, and each leader proposed a different version of what the Soviet kitchen should look like. While in the beginning, the kitchen held little importance in Soviet life, eventually it became a crucial living space that brought out the intricacies of communal life. Later, the Cold War changed the kitchen again by making it the center of a competition with the West, but throughout the last 30 years of the USSR, the kitchen struggled to maintain its place in the socialist agenda amidst a quickly-changing political culture. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the government no longer belonged in the kitchen. Russian kitchen culture lost much of the political spark it had held for the previous 74 years as capitalism rippled through and eradicated the tight grasp the government had held within the Soviet home."...
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