Mikoyan—first name Anastas, patronymic Ivanovich—was a petite Bolshevik from Armenia with a hawk nose angling over a mustache trimmer and more dapper than that of his fellow son of the Caucasus, Stalin. His gait was quick and determined, his gaze unsettlingly sharp. But petitioners in his office would on occasion be offered an orange. Fellow Kremlinites also knew that Anastas Ivanovich grew an exotic, some might say extravagant vegetable called asparagus at his dacha. Anastas Mikoyan was the narkom (people’s commissar) of the Soviet food industry. If writers were “engineers of the human soul” (per Comrade Stalin), then Mikoyan was the engineer of the Soviet palate and gullet.
Three years before Mom got hooked on sosiski made by the Mikoyan Meat Processing Plant and opened the green cookbook he’d sponsored, the narkom had his suitcases packed for a Crimean vacation. It was a holiday he’d long promised his wife, Ashkhen, and their five sons. He dropped by the Kremlin to say goodbye to his boss and old comrade, whom he addressed with ty, the familiar intimate form of “you.”
“Why don’t you go instead to America,” Stalin proposed unexpectedly. “It, too, will be a pleasant vacation; besides, we need to research the American food industry. The best of what you discover,” he declared, “we’ll transplant here.”
Mikoyan gauged the Supreme Leader’s mood: the proposal was impromptu but serious. Even so, he demurred: “I’ve promised Ashkhen a holiday.” Mikoyan was famously family-minded.
Stalin must have been in good spirits.
“Take Ashkhen with you,” he suggested.
Who knows how Soviet food would have tasted had Stalin not allowed the narkom’s wife to join her husband. Had the Mikoyans sunned themselves on the Black Sea instead.
One wonders too how the Armenian managed for so long to retain Stalin’s favor while other Politburo members were “liquidated” or saw their wives off to the gulags. “Anastas seems more interested in cheese varieties than in Marxism and Leninism,” Stalin would quip without reproach. Perhaps this escape into the world of sosiski, kolbasa, and condensed milk was Mikoyan’s secret of survival. Formerly ascetic in the old Bolshevik manner, Stalin by now was developing quite a palate himself.
Mikoyan and his foodie squad landed in New York on the SS Normandie on a sweltering August morning in 1936. In their stopover in Germany they had drawn giggles with their identical new “European-style” outfits. For two months the Soviet expedition covered 12,000 miles of America by car and train, coast to coast. They toured fish, ice cream, and frozen fruit plants. They inspected production of mayonnaise, beer, and “inflated seeds” (Mikoyan-speak for popcorn). They studied corrugated cardboard and metal jar lids. Wisconsin dairies, Chicago slaughterhouses, California fruit farms—not exactly the holiday Ashkhen had been promised. They ate intently at self-service cafeterias. (“Here,” noted Mikoyan, “was a format born out of the bowels of capitalism but most suited to communism.”) They studied Macy’s display strategies—models for the trendsetting department stores that would emerge in Moscow by the end of the decade.
In Detroit, Henry Ford told Mikoyan not to waste time on meat production. “Meat’s bad for you,” he insisted. Soviet workers should eat vegetables, soy products, and fruit. The Armenian narkom found Ford most peculiar.
Urbane but unsmiling, Mikoyan could barely restrain himself in his rather dull late-life memoirs from gushing about the wonders of his American trip. Here was the efficient industrialized society for Stalinist Russia to emulate. Was it flash freezing or mechanized cow milking (take that, Stakhanovite milkmaids) that impressed him more? Maybe the fruit juices? True, Russia didn’t have enough oranges, but Mikoyan dreamed of turning tomato juice into a Soviet national drink. (Mission accomplished: in my school days I gagged on the red stuff.) The ever-practical narkom showed no ideological qualms about adopting techniques and mass standardization from the capitalist West. These were the internationalist Soviet thirties, before World War II unleashed Stalinist xenophobia. Unlike evil, devious Britain, the United States was considered a semifriendly competitor—though having American relatives could still land you in the gulag.
Perhaps what struck Mikoyan most was the American guy at a stainless-steel griddle who swiftly cooked a curious-looking kotleta, which he inserted into a split white bun, then flourished with pickles and dabs of red sauce. “For a busy man it is very convenient,” marveled Mikoyan. Didn’t Soviet workers deserve this efficient, cheap, filling snack on their parades, their outings to Parks of Culture and Relaxation?
Mikoyan plunked down Stalin-approved scarce hard currency for twenty-two American hamburger grills, with the capacity to turn out two million orders a day. Burger production launched in select major cities, to some acclaim. But World War II intervened; the bun got lost in the shuffle. Soviet food planning settled instead for a take-out kotleta, unsandwiched.
“So that’s it?” I gasped, reading Mikoyan’s memoirs.
“So that’s it?” gasped Mother when I passed her the book.
Our mythic all-Soviet store-bought kotleta—the lump-in-the-throat nostalgic treat from five generations of childhoods. That’s what it was? An ersatz burger that mislaid its bun? Mikoyan’s account of the origins of Soviet ice cream further wounded what was left of my food patriotism. Morozhennoye—our national pride? The hard-as-rock plombir with its seductive cream rosette I licked at thirty below zero? The Eskimos on a stick from Mom’s childhood outings? Yup, all the result of Yankee technology, imported by Mikoyan. The savvy Armenian even coveted Coca-Cola but couldn’t wangle the syrup recipe. As for sosiski and kolbasa, those other ur-Soviet food icons… they were German sausages that, in Mikoyan’s words, “changed their citizenship.” So much for our ideologically charged native madeleines.
Mikoyan returned from America loaded with samples, information, and brand-new wardrobes for himself and his wife. The Mickey Mouse pens he carried home for his sons were promptly stolen at the boys’ school for Politburo offspring.
Given Russia’s still rudimentary consumer conditions, the narkom was able to introduce a surprising number of American novelties—from mass-produced ice cream (hitherto made by hand) to kornfleks to the concept of prepackaged foods. A 1937 newspaper ad even urged Soviets to embrace a “spicy aromatic condiment” that “every American housewife keeps in her cupboard.” Ketchup! Occasionally Stalin objected. Russian winters were long, he said, and there was no need to produce the GE-style home fridges that Mikoyan wanted. What’s more, heavy-industry factories were preoccupied with defense orders. So until the end of the war Soviets made do with a box outside the window.
Stalin took great personal interest in Mikoyan’s business. The Leader took great personal interest in many things. When he wasn’t busy signing execution orders or censoring books or screening Volga-Volga, the Standardbearer of Communism opined on fish (“Why don’t we sell live fish like they did in the old days?”) or Soviet champagne. A fan of sweet bubbles, he wanted to ban brut production wholesale, but here Mikoyan held firm. Suds? Indeed. Mikoyan recalls how with his bloodthirsty henchmen Molotov and Kaganovich, Stalin fingered, sniffed, and critiqued trial soap bars, deciding which should go into production. “Our comrade Stalin has a boundless resource of wisdom,” gushed Mikoyan of the soap venture. Clearly, the bathing habits of Homo sovieticus were a matter of great national concern.