Cooking With Lenin
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I look at him with each meal I prepare. Oh, I should mention this now, the indoor cooking season will commence next week and I have a most triumphant recipe for peanut soup that we will try this week, so stand by. I was contemplating that when I actually looked at Lenin. He, or at least his image on the plate, had settled into the landscape. I saw him suddenly as what he was- the transformative figure who personally made our world lurch on its axis. I am an American, and illiterate in any language but my own. I can puzzle out Cyrillic letters only because we were forced to learn the Greek alphabet in order to survive hell-week at the Fraternity. But as I scooped sauerkraut into the skillet to simmer with the last of the smoked kielbasa I brought back from Michigan yesterday, I realized I had a source who could tell me what the hen-scratches around the paunchy little Lenin meant. Svetlana is a lovely dark-eyed woman who appeared one day two years ago as my Subcontracts Manager. In that position, she was responsible for keeping the books in order for several dozens of millions of dollars worth of work, and incidentally keeping me out of jail in the process. We worked in different locations, and her rich savory Russian-accented English on the telephone was the first thing I noticed about her. She is highly intelligent, a rocket scientist by training, with time at the famed Kurchatov Institute. The physics institution was coincidentally one of the places we visited on the trip that produced the plate. Life is strange, indeed. Sveltlana was originally from Yalta, and had a good daughter and a bad marriage in Moscow and came to America to make her fortune on her own. She is a very impressive woman of great determination and dramatic dark Slavic eyes. “Around the rim,” she texted me back, “there are two slogans: “Damn the Bourgeoisie is the first, and the second is “Go to hell capital.” Fair enough, I thought, and I have an inclination to agree based on what has happened to us in the last couple years. I read on. “Across Lenin’s belly in red letters is his citation: “Time works for peace, for communism”. Svetlana provided the context, too. “The entire text is in old Russian alphabet. Lenin’s Government had changed that too. Alphabet was modernized. They also updated calendar to catch-up with the rest of the civilized world. Thus the Revolution happened on 25 October 1917, which almost immediately became November 7th. “FYI,” she added efficiently, “In the early hours of October 26, 1917 (“morning after” – Svetlana comment) the Second Congress of the Soviets adopted a proclamation drafted by Lenin which declared the Provisional Government overthrown and laid out the new soviet government’s program: an immediate armistice “on all fronts,” transfer of land to peasant committees, workers’ control over production, the convocation of the Constituent Assembly, bread to the cities, and the right of self-determination to all nations inhabiting Russia.” “That very evening,” she continued, “the Congress met for a second time and took three actions: decrees on peace and land, and the formation of a new government.” “Are you impressed?” “Regards, Svetlana.” Of course I was impressed. On so many levels. Of the artist, of the translator, and of the whole failed experiment in attempting to chang the way humans work with one another. Pity that so many millions had to die about it. I will certainly not cook the same way with Vladimir Ilyich Lenin looking on again. Copyright 2010 Vic Socotra |
