Goldstein has written an introductory text for the general reader who has an interest in Russia’s history and culture, but who does not have expertise in its food history. This book does not present new material and the intent is not to break new ground theoretically or empirically. The reader who is expecting a rigorous analysis of Russian food policy will be disappointed; there is no central argument and no endnotes or citations to references. Instead, the book is a well-written, broad history that is accessible to a wide readership. The author presents a well-informed portrait of Russian food that is part memoir, part cookbook, and part historiography.
The analytical approaches for the book’s three lengthy chapters are sociological, ethnographic, and cultural anthropological. A fourth chapter, which for some reason is unnumbered, covers the whole of the post-Soviet period in twenty-five pages. The central theme in the first chapter—the longest,...