As the news of an American spy being arrested in Russia with an entire Maxwell Smart spy kit in his possession filled the Russian and American airwaves, I realized that sadly the CIA doesn’t read this blog. Just a few weeks ago I provided a set of instructions for the spy to survive in Russia undetected. Things like putting your feet up, sipping and enjoying cocktails, being too smart and hard-working, wigs, money and compasses will definitely get you found out. Or even a lost button from your pant pocket. Here is a song based on a true story, written in 1939 and performed by some kids.
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bb_i_48TgpU
*very free translation mine.
A little brown button was lying on the road,
And no one had noticed it in tons of brown dust.
A bunch of bare feet was stomping on that road,
A bunch of tanned and bare feet by little button passed.
The boys walked in a crowd all from a distant village, Alyosha walked behind all and raised the most dust.
On purpose or by accident, he couldn’t tell for sure,
He stepped on little button, and stopped in place aghast.
“This button don’t look ours!” – cried out all the children.
“And weird foreign letters are written very large!”
To border patrol station they raced like wild horses
To show little button to someone who’s in charge.
“Please show me exactly,” – told them commander strictly
And opened map of border he right in front of troop.
He asked the name of village and brown dusty road
Where little boy Alyosha felt button with his foot.
Four days they wasted looking for man on every road,
Four days they looked for him, forgetting any sleep
On fifth day the had found the evil-looking stranger
And gave him very thorough search like very very deep.
They found button missing on enemy’s back pocket!
A button wasn’t present on foreign baggy pants.
And deep inside the pocket – a cartridge from revolver,
A map of Soviet border and other secret plans.
Patrolmen praised the children for bravery and courage
And then the border captain shook all of their hands
They gave the children rifle checkpoint had in storage
And little boy Alyoshka was given drum for bands.
That’s how it’s protected, the Soviet sacred border.
And no evil bastard will ever get inside! Alyoshka kept the button, because he is a hoarder.
A little brown button with praise and lots of pride!
During the course of my (long) life I have tried many variations of the beet and cabbage soup otherwise known as borscht: hot and cold, with meat or vegetarian, chopped and shredded, home-made and not, but no one ever managed to make it better than my Mom. Now my daughter says that mine is even better than that, I guess this is just how life works. Borscht is delicious and good for you, but most importantly it’s cheap and easy to make. A word of caution: you can’t make a small amount of borscht, there will always be more than you expected.
First, assemble the ingredients: beets (I had 4 medium), 2 carrots, small or medium head of cabbage, 1 red pepper, some fresh parsley, 2 stalks of celery, 1 medium onion, 1 tablespoon of tomato paste, 3-4 potatoes and a can of V-8 or tomato juice.
Cut off the beet greens and discard them unless you have a pet goat or a vegetarian friend. Peel the beets.
Put the beets in a large pot half-full (half-empty?) with slightly salted water.
Cover, bring to a boil and simmer for about an hour until a knife can easily go through a cooked beet.
In the meantime, chop an onion and sauté it in a small amount of (olive) oil. While this is being done, shred carrots and chop parsley and celery.
Add all of this to the skillet with onions and continue to sauté.
Now you have time to slice the cabbage, red pepper (I used half) and cube potatoes (not too small).
When the beets are ready, remove them from the pot and set aside to cool down. Add all the vegetables and the contents of the skillet to the pot. Cook until potatoes can be cut with a spoon, about 20 minutes. When the beets are cool enough to handle, shred them and add to the pot. Bring to a boil. At this time add tomato paste and V-8. Bring to a boil and adjust the salt. You are done.
Since this borscht is virtually fat-free, a dollop of sour cream will add a bit of substance and contrast the sweetness of the beets. You can serve it cold, warm or hot and it will only get better the next day and even better after that, if you still have any left.
There are thousands of borscht recipes on the internet and every schmuck with a video camera posted one on Youtube; I have no idea and no desire to try what they taste like, most likely they are disgusting vinegar-tasting pots of overcooked cabbage and beets. The only recipe you’ll ever need is here. Enjoy it or else! Here is a video of the yesterday’s borscht-cooking session.
When I was growing up® we thought that the American food was magically delicious, something like what unicorns would eat, if we knew what the unicorns were. That’s why when we had foreign visitors in our schools, there were specific and strict instructions not to show our guests that we have any interest in their snacks and especially chewing gum. Chewing gum was worth more than its weight in gold and the sneaky elderly capitalists knew it when they were throwing it out by handfuls from the bus window, just to see the kids swarm and fight each other for the precious sticks. It was not uncommon to hear “Let me chew your gum” from someone in school and they didn’t mean a new wrapped one. Slowly but surely the American foods made their way Behind the Iron Curtain, first it was Pepsi in a long and complicated international deal, then McDonald’s.
The line to the first McDonald’s was so long, they made a whole video clip out of it.
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amx-JHhtsHw
Since then most people had enough time to realize that’s not everything is as good as one imagines it to be. Even people who invented McDonald’s and made it in what it is today, a place to get formerly cheap foul-smelling slop, are now looking to previously shunned ethnic cuisines to get their fill of interesting, healthy, unique and delicious foods.
Sometime ago I was arguing on twitter about the number of women in the medical profession in the USSR. While I knew I was right (because I am always right), my opponent ridiculed my anecdotal references, like a number of female doctors I visited in my childhood, or a number of female students in my Dad’s medical school photo-album. I thought maybe a scientific-looking study would be more convincing.
Women had been 10% of doctors and dentists in 1913. They rose to 77% in 1950 (Tsentral’noe Statisticheskoe Upravlenie, 1969a: 103), but then declined to 72% in 1969, when they were also down to 55% among medical students, pointing to an equalized sex ratio in medicine a generation hence.
Although remuneration in the Soviet professions shows nothing remotely like the spread in the United States between the teacher at the bottom of the heap, the engineer somewhat better off, and the doctor way out in front, there is a differential there as well. The Soviet government, always economically pinched, has raised wages and salaries in a[264] manner to attract people into fields which would not otherwise be entered by enough candidates to meet the need. Engineering is the best enumerated. Law is the lowest paid of the professions in the Soviet Union, and in it women are precisely the same proportion (one-third) as in engineering,the highest paid. Women had been 5% of the lawyers in 1926. At present there are 2,500 women judges. So women are majorities in the two professions in the middle of the payscale – medicine and teaching minorities in the two at the extremes-engineering and law. However, the 1971-1975 Five-Year Plan provides sharp salary increases for the two professions of medicine and teaching. Those seeking signs of discrimination no matter what are faced with the fact that, in numbers as distinct from percentages, there are more women engineers than physicians, and more physicians than librarians. The 775,000 women engineers in the USSR (1969) is almost equal to the total number of engineers in the United States (870,000), of whom only 1% are women.
On this International Women’s Day I am posting some photos of the Soviet women at work and at play. Wishing the best to all my female readers, even those who thought they can prove me wrong.
