The fall of the socialist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe has created winners and losers. Most current political tensions in those countries are rooted in the uneven distribution of the benefits deriving from rapid political and economic changes. What one can afford and bring to the table is a stark reminder of deeper structural inequalities that can spoil the flavor of the best food.
While speaking to Gerald Martin, the author of his biography, Gabriel García Márquez: A Life, Márquez said, “What matters in life is not what happens to you, but what you remember and how you remember it.” This quote has been churning in my head as I start working on a book-length project about the changes in the contemporary Polish food landscape together with my coresearchers Agata Bachorz and Mateusz Halawa. The flexible and shifting nature of memory seems particularly important in Central and Eastern European countries as they are engaged in deep social, political, and economic transformations fallowing the fall of the Iron Curtain. Memory and history intersect in the region at many levels, as the essays in the volume History, Memory and Politics in Central and Eastern Europe: Memory Games, edited by George Mink and Laure Neumayer, indicate. These entanglements reach all aspects of individual and communal life, including food. In fact, the sensory and direct experiences of shopping, cooking, and eating allow for these high-flying cultural discussions to reach the intimacy of the body.
The past, it turns out, is never neutral or objective. In an article written with Agata (and accepted for publication in the journal Eastern European Politics and Societies: and Cultures), we write about Poland: “Individuals and communities articulate their social identity not only by positioning themselves in time but also by evaluating time periods as positive or negative, desirable or undesirable. In fact, images of the past can be used in representing and shaping the future… In popular culture different interpretations of food and culinary practices from the past are connected to contemporary debates about what Poland was, is, and will be. Such understandings are subject to constant negotiations among actors that do not command the same levels of power and have access to different forms of culinary capital… Different interpretations of history, actively conducted through the selection or dismissal of specific elements of the past, provide the building blocks for divergent projects about what the nation was, is or should (not) be and what sort of modernization it should undergo to achieve the preferred futures that various political, social, and cultural stakeholders strive for.
There are many ways in which we can observe and assess the processes of memory making. One approach is to dig into archives and look for documents that can point to the way people thought and discussed food-related issues. Although these exchanges reveal interesting political and power negotiations, they tend to convey the voices of those who were in administrative positions that allowed them to participate in the proceedings. A great example of this method is Jukka Gronow’s Caviar with Champagne: Common Luxury and the Ideals of the Good Life in Stalin’s Russia, which illustrates how the Soviet Union created its material and consumer culture from scratch in a way that resonated with the objective of the regime. The availability of luxuries like sparkling wine, caviar, and chocolate became a propaganda tool to show how the country’s economy and the citizens’ wellbeing was improving under the guidance of the Party. Material objects and constructed environments can also constitute elements of contention in the reconstruction of memory, providing concreteness to debates that otherwise would remain quite abstract. In What Remains: Everyday Encounters with the Socialist Past in Germany, Jonathan Bach looks at the circulation of objects from East Germany that have become the focus for the phenomenon of Ostalgia, while Stephen Colliers examines budgets, construction materials, and urban design in Post-Soviet Social: Neoliberalism, Social Modernity, Biopolitics to get a better sense of how the past stubbornly resurfaces in the mundane details of life under the shifts imposed by neoliberalism.
The dynamics of memory making around food emerge clearly in Albena Shkodrova’s Communist Gourmet: The Curious Story of Food in the People’s Republic of Bulgaria. This well-researched and highly readable book delve into how differently people remember and above reinterpret the shared past of socialist Bulgaria. Although the stories are often lighthearted and funny (the author describes them as “the small mischiefs of Communism”), they bring back episodes and periods of struggle and food scarcity, of injustice and resistance through everyday practices. Although the book partly builds its arguments on written sources, it is the interviews and the personal musings of the various characters that provide a vibrant description of how political principles and institutional structures determined the lives of Bulgarian citizens between 1944 and 1989.
Shkodrova highlights the contradictions in a food system that was supposed to be the outcome of scientific and technical progress but had to deal with lack of raw materials, incompetence, and bureaucratic red tape. The author underlines how “scientists were employed to lead food production, food technologists were trained, and the number of qualified engineers increased. Standards were set in place, as were procedures for quality control. Planning and investment were scaled up.” (2) However, several of the eyewitnesses she interviewed described “dangerous working conditions, primitiveness, filth, chaos, and long working days, as well as incompetence, corruption, exploitation, intimidation, and other types of harassment, often on political or allegedly political grounds.” (2) The interviewees often report contradictory memories, torn between the pride of having been part of a shared effort to raise the nation from poverty and the harsh realities of everyday life.
Many brands emerged as symbols of economic and industrial advancement, but often their availability was limited, or their quality was inconsistent, responding to the needs and pressures of the moment. Paradoxically, the areas of production that remained preindustrial were able to provide better quality output. The Socialist party constantly tried to promote the appeal of the Socialist good life, which was predicated not only on the availability of healthy, nutritious food for everybody, but also on its quality. Moderate consumption in a more equitable society was not meant to exclude the enjoyment of tasty ingredients and dishes. Pleasure was not considered per se in opposition to socialist goals.
As much as they were forced to confront the realities of scarcity, long lines at stores, and the injustice of the elites hoarding the best of what the marketplace was able to offer, many of the characters in Shkodrova’s book reminisce nostalgically about flavors and products that are also connected with youth. Certain preparations are still connected in their minds with family and friends. Moreover, the lack of regulations and of social safety networks in the post-socialist transformation has hit hard those who are now elderly and inevitably look for respite in their memories of the past. The fall of the socialist regimes has created winners and losers. Most current political tensions in Bulgaria, Poland, and other Central and Eastern European countries are rooted in the uneven distribution of the benefits deriving from the economic changes. What one can afford and bring to the table is a stark reminder of deeper structural inequalities that can spoil the flavor of the best food.