The Russian Revolution

St. Petersburg, Archangel & Vladivostok
1912-1918

One of the most intriguing aspects of ephemera is that it reveals unwitting historical evidence of long-forgotten events. For example, three scarce menus from around the time of the Russian Revolution reflect three groups that found themselves on the losing side of the conflict—Russia’s ill-fated bourgeoisie; western intelligence officers and members of the White Army; and the United States Army that was sent to fight against the “Red” Bolsheviks, the radical party led by political activist Vladimir Lenin.

The menu below is a rare survivor from Russia’s fast-growing middle class at the turn of the last century. Printed five years before the revolution, this small card comes from a Sunday dinner in 1912 at a restaurant named Kukhmister Nikolae in St. Petersburg.

A translation is shown below….

Menu

January 8, 1912

——

Consommé Julienne,

                   assorted pies

Salmon Piquant,

                  tomato sauce

Roasts: Turkeys

  & Hazel Hens,

                          pickle & cucumber salad

Ice Cream

——

Moscow-style hors d’oeuvre,

tea, chocolate, and fruit

——

Kukhmister Nikolae

At the corner of Kuznetsky and Nikolaevsky Streets

No. 12-25

The Kukhmister Nikolaev was situated on the ground floor of a fin-de-siècle apartment building (shown below in 1999), across the street from a stately neoclassical church.1 This prosperous, middle-class neighborhood met with a harsh reversal of fortune beginning in 1917, a year marked by a series of revolutions collectively called the Russian Revolution. Most notably, the czar was deposed in February and the Bolsheviks seized power in October, installing an all-socialist government that excluded the bourgeoisie. Despite the social turmoil in Russia during much of the twentieth century, a modest eatery was still operating at this address until the mid-1990s, outlasting the Soviet Union.

The 1917 menu below comes from the Café Paris in Archangel (Arkhangelsk), an ice-encrusted port on the far-northern White Sea. Due to its remote location 750 miles north of Moscow, the city was able to resist Bolshevik rule until 1920, becoming a stronghold of the White Army, a loose confederation of anti-Bolshevik forces. Interestingly, this menu was discovered in the papers of a British naval officer stationed at Archangel who some believe may have had a role in intelligence. Dated September 6th, this à la carte menu appeared only seven weeks before the Military Revolutionary Committee in St. Petersburg (now named Petrograd) launched the so-called October Revolution, directing armed workers and soldiers to capture key buildings, including the Winter Palace.2, 3 Whether or not the Paris Café was a nest of spies, it was almost certainly a hotbed of political and military activity during this critically important period.

The menu is translated below, showing the dishes served during the traditional dinner hours in the afternoon. It is not known whether the café served a light supper in the evening.

Cafe “Paris”

Telephone 708

Menu for 1:00 until 6:00PM

Wednesday, September 6, 1917

Shchi (a)

Bouillon with egg

Soupe Printanière

Nelma with Hollandaise sauce (b)

Forshmak (c)

Meatballs in sour cream

Beef brisket, Sauce Piquant

Veal Fricandeau with cucumbers

Prostokvasha (d)

Coffee in a glass

——

S. M. Pavlov Printing House, Arkhangelsk

Notes on Russian dishes:

a. Shchi is a cabbage soup made with fresh or salted cabbage and traditionally served with boiled potatoes. Other vegetables like celery root, turnips, or parsley root are often added. In addition, beef brisket or pork are also used.

b. The nelma is a semi-migratory fish belonging to the family Salmonidae that is distributed in the basin of the Arctic Ocean from the Ponoi River to the Mackenzie River.

c. Forshmak, a mixed (or layered) herring dish, is found in Russian and Jewish cuisines. The skinned and deboned salt herrings are soaked in milk and often minced with caramelized onions and grated apples, before being combined with various other ingredients, such as mixed cold meat, mashed potatoes, sour cream, and breadcrumbs.

d. Prostokvasha is a cultured, low-fat fermented milk, much like yogurt, only slightly less firm.

Death to capital, or death under the heel of capital! (1919)

In March 1918, the Bolshevik Party changed its name to the Communist Party. When a full-scale civil war erupted in Russia that summer, just as the First World War was ending, President Woodrow Wilson decided to intervene, sending three regiments to the northern ports of Murmansk and Archangel. This expedition of  5,000 troops was named the American North Russian Expeditionary Force, known more simply as the Polar Bear Expedition. Supported by British-led troops, the U.S. military provided assistance to the anti-Bolshevik forces, while engaging in direct combat with elements of the Red Guard and the Red Army.

American troops arriving in Vladivostok (1918)

At the same time, the American Expeditionary Force Siberia, comprising about 8,000 soldiers, arrived in Vladivostok, the far-eastern port on the Sea of Japan. The military menu below from Christmas in 1918 shows the traditional holiday fare, including roast turkey with all the trimmings. Although the troops surely appreciated this touch of home, some of the men may have found this menu somewhat ironic, given the logistical problems in receiving basic food and supplies, not to mention the difficulties in getting their ammunition and water-cooled machine guns to function properly in the sub-zero weather. For whatever reasons, it appears that no such menus were sent to the American troops still in Russia on Christmas the following year.

The allied intervention, or invasion, depending on the point of view, continued until April 1, 1920, when the last American soldiers were pulled out of Siberia, nineteen months after they arrived. The smaller expeditionary force at Archangel had already been withdrawn the previous year, after nine months of fighting. By the end, it was reported that 424 American soldiers had died from all causes during the expeditions. Two years later, the Communists established the Soviet Union, a single-party state that lasted until 1990.

A menu shows what a specific group was eating on a given day and may even pinpoint where they were located, but it usually does not provide clues as to why they were there. Even so, a menu can raise some interesting questions, prompting a process of discovery and reflection.

Notes

1. Built by architect Avraam Melnikov in the 1820s, the former orthodox church houses the Russian State Museum of the Arctic and Antarctic.

2. The dates on these Russian menus are based on the Julian calendar. The date September 6th on this menu corresponds to September 19th on Gregorian calendar, or Christian calendar, used in the west. Russia adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1918.

3. The prices are shown in rubles and kopeks, or cents. The dollar-ruble exchange rate continuously slipped during the First World War, dropping from about 50 U.S. cents per ruble in 1914 to 28 cents during the first quarter of 1917. The value of the ruble rapidly plummeted when Russia descended into anarchy later that year. In October, the American consul general in Moscow advised a colleague that “the Russian official rate is purely fictitious, nominal, and constantly changing.” New York Times, 7 December 1990.