Post: #1

A interesting bit of cultural history:

How Russia's Shared Kitchens Helped Shape Soviet Politics

Quote:The reason Soviet authorities considered kitchens and private apartments dangerous to the regime was because they were places people could gather to talk about politics.

"The most important part of kitchen politics in early Soviet time was they would like to have houses without kitchens," says Genis. "Because kitchen is something bourgeois. Every family, as long as they have a kitchen, they have some part of their private life and private property."

Sergei Khrushchev, retired Brown University professor and son of Nikita Khrushchev, the head of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, explains: "In Stalin's time, the theoretical idea of communism declared that all people have to be equal and the women have to be free from the slavery work in the kitchen. There mustn't be a kitchen in the apartment. You will go and eat in the cafeteria."

This was part of the romantic approach of the early post-revolutionary years, says Masha Karp. "People forget what an incredible upheaval the 1917 revolution was," she says. "There was a huge movement to free the country from the czarism, bring happiness to poorer classes. People thought maybe it was a good idea to relieve a housewife from her daily chores so that she could develop as a personality. She would go and play the piano, write poetry, and she would not cook and wash up. The idea to have canteens and cafeterias was a continuation of this wonderful intention."

But the cafeteria idea did not pan out. After the revolution, the civil war began and they did not build any cafeterias. Also, Anya von Bremzen tells us, the food in the canteens was terrible, and women continued to cook.

#backtothekitchen товарищ !

Post: #2

My favorite part about this was rewatching the "kitchen debate". A classic - I can't even imagine seeing Obama/biden (especially Obama) debating Putin like that in such a frank and open environment.

Post: #3

I was born in Soviet Union and, while I was lucky, my cousin and some other people I knew, still spent their childhood in communal flats where multiple families shared a kitchen and toilet, before the soviet union broke and these communal flats were transformed into normal ones.

Communal flats were hell. A family with children living together with an alcoholic or ex-convict was a common scenario. Thin walls so everyone hears what you talk and when you have sex. All done so that people would spy on each other. Hell. No privacy.

Soviet union broke probably because in these conditions you were a fool if you worked hard and honestly, for a fixed salary with no choices of improvement while your wife stayed home with children and some random alcoholic dude who had nothing to do than drink and smoke in your communal kitchen, miss his piss and womit in you communal toilet and try to score with your communal wife while you were on work. Being a lazy alcoholic with shady criminal income yourself was your best bet in those times.