Breakfast Time in Paintings by Russian Artists

Here is a twee col­lec­tion of paint­ings by var­i­ous Russ­ian artists pic­tur­ing break­fast time in Rus­sia of dif­fer­ent peri­ods, from 1918 through­out to late 1970s. It pro­vides some insights into an every­day life of sim­ple peo­ple and their meals on the go, before work, very low key and casual.

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Still life: Morn­ing. By Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin, 1918. Just like any­where else in the world, eggs are pop­u­lar and the dog is hungry.

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The Book on Tasty and Healthy Foods: Una Dolce Vita, Soviet Style

The every day Soviet life was far from lux­u­ri­ous, how­ever, the gov­ern­ment had its ways of mak­ing peo­ple believe that life was good and con­stantly get­ting bet­ter. An inter­est­ing means of achiev­ing it was a notable culi­nary book pub­lished in the USSR – The Book On Tasty and Healthy Foods. This book, a few inches thick, turned out to be more than a col­lec­tion of recipes – it is con­sid­ered to be an ency­clopae­dia of the Soviet epoch, an insight into the ordi­nary life of the Soviets.

life1 500x323 The Book on Tasty and Healthy Foods: Una Dolce Vita, Soviet Style

The most famous image behind the Russ­ian food, caviar was lit­er­ally impos­si­ble to buy (let alone exor­bi­tantly expensive!)

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Queues

In the Soviet times there was a great short­age of all con­sumer prod­ucts. Clothes or food were no excep­tion. In order to buy some bread peo­ple were ready to spend hours and hours queu­ing up.

1983. A long queue into the footwear store. The length of the line implies that peo­ple would expect to buy imported footwear  which was of bet­ter qual­ity and fash­ion­com­pared with the Soviet stuff.

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Queue in front of footwear store

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