The road to self-identification, to finding one’s place in society lies primarily through understanding one’s ethnic roots in our singular Ukrainian folk culture. Ukrainian folk cuisine is an inalienable component of this culture. Actually, what do we know about food, our daily meals, something we rarely analyze, accepting it as something mundane and commonplace? Does our concept of the Ukrainian cooking tradition correspond to reality? How has this tradition impacted the Ukrainian national character? The Day’s Tetiana AKIMOVA discussed these and other questions with ethnographer Lidiya POPOVYCH.
The Day: How did you take up ethnography?
Popovych: I have been involved with it since February 1, 1968. I was in my last year at the History Department and I had been on annual ethnographic and archaeological expeditions. Ethnography is a special science, based on empirical material, and I think it is even more interesting than archaeology, because it is an opportunity to work with people, the older generation. We call them informants, the carriers of our old traditional culture. They can share it with us, they preserve that culture. When it comes to a wedding or funeral, especially in the countryside, people turn to them for advice on how to do things the right way. And they are willing to share this knowledge.
The Day: Why do you take such an interest in Ukrainian folk cuisine?
Popovych: No one seems to take folk cuisine seriously, but it is an element of material culture most resistant to the ravages of time, preserving traditional, even archaic traits the longest. Say, traditional clothes dating from the eleventh and eighteenth century differ, and the kind of clothes worn in the twentieth century is completely European. Of all the elements of material culture clothes are most susceptible to fashion. And so what’s left of all that complex is just elements, often symbolic. Folk dwellings are also symbolic. The Ukrainian symbol is the whitewashed village house and cherry orchard lauded by Taras Shevchenko. European travelers visiting Ukraine in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries identified Ukraine with such village homes under thatched roofs, and this symbol persisted almost to the mid-twentieth century. Then the Ukrainian countryside — and, of course, village houses — changed abruptly. As elements of folk culture, they had to and did abide by certain laws of civilization. At the time, people’s food, without bypassing these laws, has remained a stable element of this culture — and not in terms of separate components, but as a whole system. Our cooking tastes have over the centuries adapted to certain products, dishes, eating rituals, and we have remained faithful to them.
Let me give you one story as an example. An ethnographer from Leningrad spoke at an ethnographic conference. He came from a Far East ethnic group known as Nivkh. His report was about how the people found it hard to adapt the onslaught of civilization and assimilate into that cultural environment precisely from the standpoint of material culture. For centuries on end, the Nivkh people had adhered to a semi-nomadic lifestyle with its everyday life and eating. Under the Soviets, they began to be gradually adjusted to a settled “civilized” way of life. Children were enrolled in boarding schools at six because it was physically impossible for them to travel all the way from their igloos to school on a daily basis. However, this made the Nivkh sever all ties with their ancient unique culture, a kind of culture that can’t be replaced once lost. To a Ukrainian, their diet was strange. Mothers, after breast-feeding their babies, would give them not the lialka (lit., doll, chewed-up sweetened bread wrapped in a piece of thin cloth) the way our mothers did, but only dried fish. And their babies grew up quite healthy, never had upset stomachs or anything. And then they were enrolled in boarding schools and had to eat milk porridge, potatoes, borsch, meals they’d never been served before. They became seriously ill and physically handicapped in a couple of years. Simply because they were constantly hungry, because the school diet was not enough for them. They would steal from school and run to their nomad camps to get dried fish. See how important the culture of eating is.
The Day: What do you think of the traditional Ukrainian cuisine in terms of modern rational diets?
Popovych : Remember Kotliarevsky’s Aeneid? “And then he had kulish, kasha, lemishka, zubtsi, putria, and shulyk with honey for a tidbit.” Almost half the dishes were cooked using germinated grain [ kulish: a thick gruel of corn flour; lemishka: cornmeal pap; shulyk: poppy-cake]. Take zubts, for example. They took germinated barley grain, crushed it to make groats, add kvass, steep, and malt it. It is a healthy food with lots of vitamins. Putria is a kind of kasha using malt flour. And they never cooked kysil [ordinarily a jelly-like dish made of farina, fruit juice, and sugar] the way we do. They roasted oats, ground them, sifted the meal, fermented and cooked it. Kvasha was a very popular dish during the spring fasting. It was cooked like this: one part of malt flour, one part of rye and buckwheat flour mixed, soured, steamed, and cooked in the oven. The cooking technology was quite complicated and every housewife made it her own way, although not all proved quite successful. There are many proverbs and legends about kvasha. For example, women with long natural heels were believed to be excellent kvasha cooks. Maidens were not to be trusted with the dish at all (if they tried it, they would drown their own fate). Some sayings went like this: “A Cossack climbed through the window to make our kvasha taste like wine,” and “A Greek carrying a jug stumbled, spilling honey in our kvasha.” If, when cooking it, a housewife was visited by someone poorly dressed, the dish was sure to turn out well, and vice versa. Regrettably, no one makes kvasha now for want of ingredients and cooking knowledge. In fact, modern dietitians recently came up with a theory saying that food made of fermented grain has wondrous magic medicinal qualities: more proof that the more things change, the more they stay the same.
The Day: How are traditional Ukrainian dishes connected with old rites and folkways in general?
Popovych: There is a definite connection between the calendar and folk cuisine, just as there are certain eating rituals, taboos, restraints, and preferences. For example, the Pylypivka religious fast before Christmas [beginning November 27; Advent] is very long, lasting six weeks, but not that hard to endure, because people have plenty of food and preserves from the fall. It should be noted that the Ukrainians were never zealous about fasting. Vasyl Kravchenko, an early twentieth century ethnographer, wrote that meat and dairy products were allowed if one was physically weak, in the case of an expectant mother, or in the postnatal period. Afterward, their relatives would visit the parish priest, and he would pray for forgiveness. Children received milk and dairy products until three years of age, because this kind of food was required for their normal physical development. Lent was observed by every adult, and it was the hardest trial, for it commemorates the Passions of Christ (every religious fast is an expression of empathy). There were several other fasts: Petrivsky [fasting period before the feast of SS. Peter and Paul], Spaso-Preobrazhensky [preceding the church feast of the Transfiguration, August 6], and Petrivka. The latter was rarely observed if at all, for it was time to mow and sometimes even to harvest, so the men had to work hard and eat well. There was even a saying that Lent was a real fast and Petrivka the granny’s fib, an excuse to accumulate cheese and butter. Spasivka was popularly referred to as Husky Eater, for it was time for plenty of vegetables.
Food had special meaning on holidays. Christmas was different from Easter and the latter from Whitsunday primarily because the feasts were celebrated in different seasons, and seasons were an extremely important factor in the people’s diet. In addition, every holiday carried a certain idea and was adjusted to the natural calendar. The religious idea of Christmas coincides in time with the winter solstice, when the day begins gradually to get the better of the night. On the last day before Christmas a Lenten festive dinner was served: borsch with fish or mushrooms and fish in aspic. As people began to earn more, after the abolition of serfdom in the late nineteenth century, the idea of Christmas Eve dinner of 12 courses was conceived — whether for the number of apostles or the number of months. And kutia [boiled wheat with honey and ground poppy seeds] was served only on Christmas Eve and the feast of the Epiphany. True, they also cooked kolyvo, a dish resembling kutia [wheat boiled with raisins, eaten after a funeral or Mass for the dead]. Ethnographers believer there is a connection between kolyvo and kutia, because “guests from the world beyond” were expected on Christmas Eve (extra spoons were placed on the table, so their forefathers could also partake of the feast). There are countless stories about people seeing some signs that their ancestors had joined them at the festive table. This was not a bad sign. On the contrary, their presence bode the family well.
Easter falls on the spring equinox, it is a holiday of forgiveness, joy, tolerance, kindness; that’s probably why people [of the Orthodox Church] greet each other with [three] kisses [on both cheeks] and the words “Christ is risen!” and “He is truly risen!” This holiday dates back a long time and is characteristic of not only Ukrainian culture. Numerous analogies are found elsewhere — for example, the feast of resurrection of nature, deity, and man (as with Osiris in Egypt or Attis in Greece). The connection with the blossom of spring is quite conspicuous, the more so that it was when the new year started in olden times. It was that turning point when everybody expected something divine to happen. There was nothing coincidental about the Christian calendar fitting the old one so well. Not at once, of course, but gradually, with adjustments made by the Church, so that now we cannot imagine our culture without all those folk rites. Take our paska Easter bread, actually cake made of leavened dough [often with raisins now]. The Ukrainians have always treated paska with special reverence. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries when the Church began to divide into the Western and Eastern ones, Eastern adherents chose leavened dough as Eucharist and the Latin Church unleavened dough (to make wafers). This is evidence of cultural preferences and adjustment to products that would become “spring bread” and bread or wafer consecrated in the celebration of the Eucharist.
And, of course, there are the pysanka decorated eggs. The egg was regarded as a symbol of the cosmos, turnover of nature, and immortality of the Ukrainians, ancient Aryans, Greeks, and other peoples. At present, the pysanka art is cultivated mostly by Carpathian highlanders, with individual masters found in Lviv, Chernihiv, Sumy, Kyiv, and Cherkasy oblasts.
There is a very interesting legend, recorded by V. Shukhevych, nineteenth century expert on the Hutsuls. It says that there is a demon chained to a big rock in the Carpathian Mountains. He regularly sends out twelve servants to see how people live all over the world. If they come back to report that people live well, the demon loses some of his strength, the chains grow stronger, and he cannot break free to exercise his evil powers. But if his servants report fratricidal wars, epidemics, and other disasters, the demon is jubilant, the chains grow thin, and he reaches out with his evil will. However, he is most anxious to know whether people continue painting pysankas for Easter. If they do, the demon grows weak and suffers. And so peace and quiet in the world will last as long as people continue to paint pysankas.
Many apocryphal legends explain the origin of red eggs. One such legend originates from Volyn oblast. The Mother of God was on her way home from the market, carrying a basket of eggs. As she put down the basket, she saw that the eggs had turned from white to red. She realized that her Son had been executed, so she went to mourn Him. That was when people started painting eggs to celebrate Easter.
Many dishes served had to do with weekly fasts (observed every Wednesday and Friday). Friday was associated with the Passions of Christ and bread was not baked that day. People fearing ills, death or other perils for their near and dear ones fasted on Monday, too. Such fasts were referred to as solemn or promised ones. In fact, one could go on a month- long, three to five year, or even lifelong fast like that. They said never make a promise for anyone unless you can carry it out, otherwise you will suffer and so will the other person. And so every such “promised” fast was observed especially strictly.
The Day: How accurate are our concepts of Ukrainian traditional dishes such as borsch or varenyky [piroshki]?
Popovych: Borsch, it should be noted, is a great attainment of the cooking culture. I would even say that if we could promote the national cuisine ,borsch would be a serious challenge to pizza or Chinese food. This dish incorporates all the nutritious wealth yieled by Ukraine’s soil. It is a feast of the palate, boasting countless flavors. The recipe was modernized with time, adding potatoes, tomatoes (originally beet kvass was added), making the dish even more delicious.
My husband and I were visiting Geneva and I was surprised to read a restaurant notice: “Russian Cuisine” and “Russian Borsch” underneath. Unfortunately, my French did not suffice to approach the chef and tell him what borsch was really all about, its Ukrainian history. On the other hand, there is nothing terribly wrong about such borrowing, because we have made the gift of borsch to the rest of the world. All restaurants in Moscow have it in the menu. I remember being on an expedition on the Moldovan- Ukrainian border and when I asked the locals about their main traditional dish, they said borsch. Well, it’s something to feel proud about.
The Day: How did borsch come about?
Popovych: Ethnographers trace it to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. At the time it was cooked using borshchevnyk cow parsnip, and it has been more or less the way we know it since the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries. Borsch was always served on holidays and on Sunday (meat was then added). Of course, it was served at weddings; the ceremony started and ended with it. It is probably the most popular dish today, both in the city and countryside.
As for our traditional cooking concepts, they are more or less accurate. A lot of new dishes have appeared, dictated by fashion, which we have adjusted to our taste. For example, our version of the Hungarian goulash is more like traditional Ukrainian stew, and pilaf more like boiled rice.
The Day: As an ethnographer, do you believe that every patriot should eat fatback?
Popovych: Being patriotic is not the point. The point is that preparing salo does not take a complicated preservative technique. You cure fatback by salt, and you have salo. You can eat it every day, grate it and add it to borsch or soup. You never get fed up with it. Over the centuries fatback has turned into a symbol of well-being and generosity. Now that our life has become more difficult, we receive many letters saying that fatback often replaces meat in the family diet. It enables the organism to restore the protein-fat balance upset by malnutrition. We went on an expedition, it was under the Soviets, and saw that people in the countryside had nothing but vegetables. We cooked hot meals for breakfast and supper and during the day we had no time for cooking, so we would each have fatback with bread and this would be enough until the end of the day. A colleague from Moscow hated it, and when she returned home she would tell about Ukrainians eating nothing but fatback, a sequel to the myth about us living on nothing but it. They still sing a wedding song that has this line, “I greased my lips with fatback and forgot to wipe it off,/Boys will keep kissing me to my dying day.” Fatback is an all-purpose product. It’s still best eaten salted, although there are a lot of cooking recipes with it.
The Day: What about the Ukrainian mentality? Would you single out any purely Ukrainian traits that have survived the ravages of time?
Popovych: It’s hard to say, there are no written sources on the subject and all reconstructions of folkways are rather arbitrary. I think that the people has undergone transformations over the centuries, it hasn’t been stable. Even now it is mixing and diffusing, so that there is no way to tell a Galician from a native of Poltava oblast, or a South Ukrainian from a Polissian. Yes, there are definite traits; those in Polissia are more restrained and tactful; people from Poltava oblast are markedly generous and hospitable; those in the south are venturesome. Actually, generosity and kindness are inherent in all Ukrainians. And there must be some common negative features. You know the anecdote about two village boys butchering an ox? One held it by the horns and the other swung a heavy stake to knock the animal out, so they could butcher it. So this other buddy Petro hit the ox between the horns, but it just stood there. He swung the stake and hit it again. Nothing happened, except that Mykola, holding the ox by the horns, said, “You know, Petro, if you hit me between the eyes again I won’t be able to hold the ox.” What we can learn from literature, from records made, say, by Ivan Vyshensky or Hryhory Skovoroda in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, shows that the national character hasn’t changed much in principle. Thank God, the Ukrainians possess that tolerance which does not allow them to be at odds with each other and with other peoples. Nor are they marked by special cruelty. During World War II, my mother-in-law’s mother hid a Jewish baby for a long time, and she had four children of her own. Many other Ukrainian women did so. Also, Ukrainians in the Crimea do not object to the Tatars returning.
The Day: Ukrainians are generally believed to be given to drinking. Are they?
Popovych: Men taken to the bottle were generally frowned at in the Ukrainian community and condemned by the Church. Also, the kind of vodka they drank at the time was just 40 proof, not 80 proof as it is now. Markevych’s book, published in 1860, reads that good vodka was 20%. Men visited taverns only on holidays or on other special occasions. There is record of a wedding party in a village with 1,000 household in 1914. There were about 300 guests, six liters of vodka were ordered, and the party lasted a week! The parents of the newlyweds would treat every guest to a small glass of vodka on a plate with a piece of bread, a sign to make a toast, so every one awaited his/her turn. True, everybody could say out loud, “Now where is that godmother with vodka? I see none.” In other words, to get drunk one had to steal, and that was considered an almost mortal sin. What drunks there were had every hallmark of an outcast. They were universally ostracized and no one would even consider allowing one’s daughter to marry a character like that. Actually, even a drunk’s son was not eligible. In this sense, there was severe social control, especially in the countryside. There were more drunks in the city because the city did not have that kind of control. Under the Soviets, this control grew weaker in the first place. Second, there was a lot of migration. Third (let’s face it), vodka was considerably cheaper. The ritual of passing vodka and bread on a plate was generally observed before the war, now it is practiced in a few villages only. We witnessed it at a recent wedding in Pomokly, a village in Pereyaslav-Khmelnytsky district.
The Day: Ukrainians emigrating at the turn of the twentieth century and settling across the world have preserved our national culture dating from that period, something we have lost in Ukraine. There are changes in our orthography; it is going back to the 1920s. Do you think it should?
Popovych: I think that nothing should go back. Nothing can be made completely the way it once was. If we can preserve something we have from previous periods, we should do so. There are rites and traditions worth being preserved, and there are those gradually dying out. There is a certain historical process that just can’t be stopped. Of course, we can go back to our old spelling rules, but there are laws governing the development of speech and writing. Nothing should be enforced, just as you can’t enforce old traditions. Everything has its time.
The Day: Is the national character changing?
Popovych : The future is always ahead of us. However, while looking to the future, we should not forget our roots. Only a people respecting its past can hope to have a future. Civilization influences the national character in a way, for we now get more information. Hard as the powers that be try to hold back information, its impact is bound to increase, even if gradually, now that we have the Internet and satellite television — it’s just that we are very poor and can’t enjoy all of this fully. Perhaps this factor will help instill in the Ukrainians a stronger sense of national identity and dignity. There are the Ten Commandments, they did not emerge from out of nowhere. They will remain the core of human morality, and I hope that this core will be the beacon for our and other nations all over the world.
THE DAY’ S REFERENCE
Lidiya F. Popovych was born to a serviceman’s family in Dniprodzerzhinsk. She is a graduate of the Philology Department of Ivan Franko University of Lviv. She taught history at school in Chornobyl for two years, moved to Kyiv after marrying, and since 1968 has worked for the National Academy’s Maksym Rylsky Institute of Art and Folk Studies and Ethnography. She has defended a candidate-of-science thesis, written the book Ukrainian Folk Cuisine and the Kyiv Rus’ article in the book Ethnography of Kyiv and Kyiv Oblast. She is co-author of the ethnological dictionary, folk diet section in the ethnographic paper “Podillia,” and is currently is a contributor to the Encyclopedia of Folk Studies. Ethnographic expeditions have taken her all over Ukraine.
