Publisher: OGIZ (Union of State Publishers)
Author: Beliiakov, N. D., Kardashev, V. P. (Valerian Pavlovich), Olsuf'eva, A.
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- 1Food Service Path to a new way to life (byt)
- 2Write out How much time is spent on preparing food in your family? Preparing breakfast ……………. Hours…………….Minutes Preparing tea ……………. Hours…………….Minutes Preparing lunch ……………. Hours…………….Minutes Preparing evening tea ……………. Hours…………….Minutes Preparing supper ……………. Hours…………….Minutes
- 3In the Factory Kitchen
- 4Housewife prepares dinner
- 5The primus stove was a small, portable stove invented in the late 19th century and known for its reliability, but also its inefficient nature and sooty smoke. Unlike the enormous electric kettles in the left of the page, this is a relic of the old, and is outdated. It is depicted in countless children’s books of the age as well, including How the Primus Stove Wanted to Become a Ford. See also: https://primus.us/pages/history
- 6Byt (“everyday life” or “lifestyle” from the verb byt’, or “to be”) was an idea under intense discussion in the early Soviet period, particularly in the works of Leon Trotsky. The revolution to "new byt" would capture a new Soviet attitude and mindset towards life, including social and cultural expectations, habits and customs. The shift from a focus on religious and family imagery to one of communal work and central production and the transition from a historic family and religious-centered lifestyle into one that is communal and civic in nature. This text and its accompanying images are then emblematic of the life of the “new” Soviet experience.
- 7Russian meals, though similar to American ones, differ slightly in their timing. “Obed” is a meal that roughly translates to lunch but is eaten around 2 or 3 pm; “uzhin” is dinner/supper and is eaten at 7 pm. Obed is considered the main meal of the day, punctuated by afternoon tea or “полдник”, an afternoon snack between the two meals around 5 pm. The hierarchy between these meals is demonstrated by the quintessential saying: завтрак съешь сам, обедом поделись с другом, ужин отдай врагу [eat breakfast alone, share obed with a friend, and give uzhin away to an enemy].
- 8
The woman working in the kitchen here, hunched over, is typical of a Soviet depiction of backbreaking woman's work done in the household. One of the promises of the “new way of life” [novyi byt] is made specifically to women: with industrialization and modernization they will no longer be subject to housework; their place will move out of the home and into the factory. Images of this shift were popularised using propaganda to proclaim “away with kitchen slavery,” instead emphasising the efficiency of communal cooking.
"Down with Kitchen Slavery; In with New Byt!" (1931)
- 9Birch is a archetypal russian symbol that helps to accentuate the contrast between the old and new in the personal kitchen and factory kitchen. Though the woman is “liberated” in that she wears a red headscarf and uses a semi-modern Primus stove, the old kitchen is inseparable from a distinctly non-Soviet, Russian past which can also be seen by the light/dark contrast and highlights the drive for the construction of a new Soviet “byt” or lifestyle.
- 10
These are the new stoves of the Soviet Factory Kitchen. They represent the way forward-- towards fully mechanized industrial modernization -- in a white immaculate factory rather than a sooty kitchen. The factory kitchen was a common sight in Soviet cultural imaginging, for both children and adults, as seen in Alexander Rodchenko's 1931 photograph, "Facotry Kitchen."