Historical story

2017 winner Volkskrant-IISH Thesis Prize examined everyday communism under Khrushchev

The communist interference during the 1950s went a long way:even cooking had to go according to plan. Olav Hofland investigated whether this actually got off the ground in practice. He won the 2017 Volkskrant-IISH Thesis Prize for his thesis.

This year, three men were shortlisted for the Volkskrant IISH thesis prize 2017. This is exceptional, because in recent years female young researchers dominated the rankings. Olav Hofland (Leiden University) was ultimately chosen as the winner with his thesis Cooking Towards Communism. Domestic cooking and the Khrushchev Regime's struggle for the Communist way of life.

In this extremely smoothly written thesis – the jury even calls it a page turner – Hofland contributes to research into everyday communism under Nikita Khrushchev. How did Khrushchev's regime (1953-1964) try to reform the cooking behavior of the Soviets to fit the communist way of life? A very interesting subject with all kinds of good intentions behind it. But, as is so often the case, these are subject to contradiction, as we can read in Hofland's gripping account.

Back to the source

At the Twentieth Party Congress in 1956, Khrushchev, Stalin's successor, gave a speech in which he said he wanted to return to the teachings of the early days of communism. This meant that all life had to be organized according to the principles of communist morality. Not only work, but also leisure activities, maintaining relationships and the degree of consumption. Hofland explains in his thesis what Khrushchev wanted to achieve with this:'The socialist way of life would contribute to the health of citizens, would emancipate women and erase the egocentric materialism - which belongs to the registry office.'

Much research has already been done on this topic. However, Hofland focused specifically on cooking and the ways in which Khrushchev tried to do away with eating at home to serve communism. The jury appreciated this contribution to the historiography of cooking in the Soviet Union. Hofland in his thesis:'Soviets generally ate three meals a day:breakfast, the main meal at midday and the lighter dinner after work or school. Although the number of people eating lunch in canteens at work increased under Khrushchev, most people continued to eat at home.' And that was just not the intention.

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Soviet women had to be liberated from the kitchen so that they could develop their talents on an equal footing with men. In addition, the state had more influence on people outside the home. So cooking at home had no place in the communist way of life. Khrushchev's ambition was to outsource cooking within twenty years. The whole family could get healthy, tasty and cheap food in state canteens.

And it didn't just stop at policy making, Hofland shows. In 1959, Khrushchev started expanding and improving food services. Novelties such as self-service and takeaway meals were introduced and the number of locations where people could eat subsidized grew significantly.

Too little vegetables

Yet the Soviets did not go out to eat en masse. Why not? According to Hofland, there were several reasons for this. On the one hand, you had the state-sponsored food scientists who just gave Soviet women more work instead of lightening their burdens. According to the scientists, as many fruits and vegetables as possible should be eaten. This was difficult in a country where there was scarcity and little to get out of season. The women therefore had to grow their own vegetables and fruit, but also wake them up, preserve them, freeze them, and so on. There was no escaping this. Different kinds of indoctrinating media such as newspaper columns, women's magazines and cookbooks inculcated women in what to do in the kitchen.

On the other hand, the regime realized that their policies needed time to succeed. Hofland shows how the regime introduced changes step by step, taking into account the realities of everyday life, the shortcomings of the economy and cultural habits. Modernization of the kitchen was supposed to help with this, until the ultimate goal, no longer cooking at home, was achieved. Freezers and refrigerators for better storage of vegetables, food cans and dishwashers were introduced. This domestic modernization, which also emerged in Western countries after the Second World War, thus served a higher communist purpose here.

The men and children were also expected to help more in the kitchen. The Soviet woman would spend less time preparing food because of all this. The result, however, was that autonomy in their own kitchen increased and people continued to eat at home. In addition to the new visions on healthy food, on which women spent a lot of time, this ultimately undermined the policy. Communist families did not mass eat their healthy meals in state canteens. Despite the desire to get the woman out of the kitchen, it remained her domain, also in the Soviet Union.

Soviet propaganda

What the women thought of all these developments is not reflected in the thesis. For the source research, Hofland only looked at policy documents, cookbooks, women's magazines, food technology magazines, newspapers and columns. The women themselves, for example their diaries or interviews with them, are not the subject of the study.

Hofland himself indicates that further research into their experiences and opinions is certainly important in order to get a broader picture. The jury even wondered whether he had not been too blinded by the superficiality of Soviet propaganda. But despite this minor caveat, Hofland is a deserved winner.