Volume 21, Number 1 A TRINITY OF SIBERIAN EASTER-SEASON MEALS Sharon Hudgins © Sharon Hudgins All Rights Reserved The copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the Anthropology of East Europe Review is retained by the individual authors. They reserve all rights other than those stated here. Please contact the managing editor for details on contacting these authors. Permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. Commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors After the breakup of the Soviet Union in late special foods that were traditionally eaten on 1991, a number of major social, political, and Russian Orthodox holidays were prepared, economic changes began to occur in the newly sometimes surreptitiously, by far fewer cooks established Russian Federation, the largest than in earlier tsarist times. In many families, successor state to the former Union of Soviet culinary-religious traditions were not passed on Socialist Republics. Democratic elections were from one generation to the next, and many held, many restrictions on foreign travel and on personal recipes for dishes with religious religious institutions were lifted, and both a significance were lost when women of the older market economy and a free press began to generation passed away.2 In the 1990s, however, develop. A new class of relatively wealthy after seven decades of relative dormancy, interest business-people (legitimate and otherwise) soon in these holiday foods began to increase as more emerged, with plenty of Russian rubles (and and more Russians began returning to the foreign hard currency) to spend at home and religious practices of their ancestors--or, if they abroad. An increasing number of Russians were already believers, now more openly started traveling to countries that had previously practiced their religion and followed the culinary been off-limits to all but a few select citizens of traditions associated with it.3 the Soviet Union. A wide variety of imported This paper focuses on three very consumer goods--including foodstuffs that different types of meals that I ate (and, in one Russians had never tasted before--began case, also cooked) in Irkutsk, Siberia, during a appearing on the dusty shelves of former state specific period of time in the spring of 1994, stores and in the open-air markets of every corresponding to pre-Lenten Carnival, Lent, and sizable city. Church attendance rose Orthodox Easter Sunday. Each meal illustrates dramatically, and the public observance of several aspects of the changes that were religious holidays was renewed throughout the occurring in the society and economy of Eastern country. Siberia during the early post-Soviet period. Many of these factors also began to Maslenitsa: Festival Food in Irkutsk have an effect, directly or indirectly, on the gastronomy of Russia. Russians who traveled After several long months of Siberian abroad discovered new kinds of foods that had winter, March brought not only a gradually been unavailable in the Soviet Union. Eating in perceptible lengthening of the daylight hours, but Spanish or French or Greek restaurants, they also the festival of Maslenitsa, the seven-day encountered new dishes and different ways in "Butter Week" celebration that immediately which meals could be served. Those who were precedes the seven-week fasting period leading 4 interested in cooking brought back foreign up to Easter. Maslenitsa itself is a secular recipes and new culinary ideas when they festival--equivalent to Shrovetide in Britain, returned to Russia. And at home, even those Fasching (Fasnacht, Fasnet) in Germanic Russians who never traveled to other countries countries, and Carnival or Mardi Gras in many could now purchase a wide range of new food Latin countries. All of these festivals date from products imported from a large number of pagan times, when people gathered during the nations around the world.1 spring equinox to chase away the evil spirits of With the increase of interest in religion, winter, to make offerings to the sun, to celebrate and the concomitant public observance of the regeneration of life, and to welcome the Russian Orthodox religious holidays, many return of warmer weather. culinary customs associated with these holidays In the Christian era, Russian Maslenitsa were also resurrected. During much of the evolved into a period of last-minute Communist era, when religious practices were merrymaking the week before Lent--a culinary often actively discouraged by the government, orgy during which people devoured huge Volume 21, Number 1 quantities of circular bliny (yeast-raised like it belonged in a museum of early twentieth- pancakes, golden rounds symbolizing the sun), century kitchen appliances. Fresh from the drenched in melted butter or smothered in sour skillet, the hot bliny were slathered with butter, cream.5 The name of the festival comes from sour cream, or jam, then handed to the customers maslo, the Russian word for "butter" (and "oil"), on squares of hand-cut paper, while the vendor in reference to the richest food consumed during totaled up the bills on a wooden abacus. Nearby, the week before the beginning of the Great Fast, aluminum trays full of extra bliny, folded into when believers abstained from eating meat, fish, quarters, awaited re-heating on the stove. And eggs, animal fats, and dairy products for the next still other trays held bliny rolled into cones and seven weeks. Russian Orthodox fasting filled with sweetened pastry cream. guidelines also traditionally proscribed the Women wrapped in floral-printed consumption of meat during Maslenitsa, which shawls sold the most extensive array of baked only reinforced people's desire to fill up on rich goods I had ever seen in Irkutsk: sweet and dairy foods during that time, before all animal savory pastries, small rolls and buns, giant products were prohibited during the Great Fast cookies and gooey layer cakes, all displayed on of Lent and Holy Week.6 folding tables set up in the snow. Other food The Maslenitsa celebration I attended in stalls offered meat products traditionally Irkutsk on Forgiveness Sunday in March, 1994, prohibited by Russian Orthodox fasting was the first major public observance of that guidelines during Maslenitsa week: skewers of festival within memory of the middle-aged shashlik grilled over hot coals, small meatballs Russians I knew in the city. Throngs filled the and large rissoles, savory buns with bits of fried public square in front of the municipal sports bacon on top, cylinders of bread dough with a stadium downtown, where the main events were forcemeat filling. One vendor sold shiny boxes being held. Hundreds of people in fur hats and of commercially made candies. Another stood fur coats, their breath forming clouds of stoically beside several cardboard boxes of condensation in the frosty air, milled about in unwrapped chocolate ice cream cones, with no front of an outdoor stage that had been set up on fear of their melting in the frigid air. From the the square. Over the stage, a row of huge animal back of a truck, a woman handed out hot pizzas masks made of red-painted papier-mâché baked in a portable oven. And all this festive perched above big signs advertising furniture, fare was washed down with cans of Coca-Cola clothing, sports events, and investment for the kids, cups of hot tea for the women, and companies. Folk dancers in colorful costumes shots of vodka for the men. from different parts of Eastern Siberia performed Suddenly, at 2:30 in the afternoon on to live and recorded music, while jesters and that snowy square in Irkutsk, a big bonfire was clowns worked the crowd. Handsome horses, set ablaze at the foot of the Maslenitsa witch, with rows of brass bells on their harnesses, and five minutes later all that remained of the provided pony rides for the kids and pulled frightening figure was a pile of harmless ashes. sleighs full of revelers. And towering over the That entire day, the sky had been gray and multitude was a giant effigy of Maslenitsa--the cloudy, the weather cold and windy. But just Old Witch of Winter herself--constructed of after the witch's effigy burned to the ground, the paper, cloth, and wood, her grotesque form clouds suddenly broke, the sun came out, and the covered with long red ribbons and straw snow began to melt, as if cued by God himself. streamers that rustled like whispered warnings in March 13, that Maslenitsa Sunday, was the first the chilly wind. day the temperature rose above freezing in Opposite the stage, a long row of gaily Irkutsk that year--once again confirming the decorated food stalls provided portable ancient Siberians' belief that banishing the barren sustenance for the merrymakers. Children and witch of winter brings the onset of fertile spring. adults wandered from one display of food to the Palm Sunday Weekend: A Spanish Meal in next, dividing their attention between the wares Siberia being hawked and the entertainers on stage--their ears tuned to the sounds of celebration, their The night before Palm Sunday, my noses turned toward the aromas of freshly husband and I had hosted a large dinner party at cooked foods. our apartment in Irkutsk, for several of our At one stall, a hefty woman in a Russian and American colleagues from the karakul-lamb coat cooked bliny on a tiny, four- university where we taught. For that special burner, white-enameled gas stove that looked occasion, we wanted to serve a meal composed Volume 21, Number 1 of dishes that none of our guests were likely to yellow cheese; fresh mushrooms sauteed in have eaten before.