SC - Assistance Please - Kiev 1300s feast?

[Jenn/Yana]

I've asked my husband for some help with my reply, because while cooking is
my field, censorship in the Soviet Union is his.  I fear this reply is
getting close to being way off-topic for this list, but I hope it informs
rather than annoys.

Stefan li Rous wrote:
>...Maria Dembinska did have some trouble publishing her research on
>medieval Polish food. The manuscript for the book had to be smuggled out of
>Poland. The description of her troubles, described in the introduction,
>is one of those "truth is stranger than fiction" tales. Perhaps the fact
>that Poland was recently a satelite of Russia would make a difference.
>But I can easily see where the obstacles she faced and the opposition
>she faced from her government would also have been faced by others
>under the Russian Communist government.
<snip>
>Thank you Yana for posting this information. I just think your 
>statement on Communist thinking follows too logical a path to be
>completely true. 

My lord husband replies:

To be honest, I would be at least half willing to doubt the veracity of
that story.
As a specialist on censorship in communist/post-communist countries (Poland
included) in my modern life (meaning that I study it for a living, receive
a salary,
publish refereed articles and books on the subject, get invited to give
talks for
an honorarium...you get the idea), there are numerous cases of alleged
censorship
that had more to do with editors looking for a scapegoat to justify rejecting a
manuscript.  Furthermore, claiming that a work was "censored" today is a merit-
badge that many writers haul out now to make their works more marketable.  The
Polish censors had no instructions for censoring Medieval works (check "The
Polish Black Book" if you want to see the complete instructions of what was and
was not censored in communist Poland).

In the Soviet Union itself, pre-1700 history works were largely freed from
official
censorial control by the 1960s.  Even under Suslov's rather tight controls,
certain
subjects simply did not interest the censors.  I have a directive in my
possession
listing a wide variety of documents no longer under censorial supervision
(dated
in the mid 1950s) that includes cookbooks.

Editors might well have practiced "self-censorship" (deciding not to
publish a work
for fear of the censors) but, again, why?  If the state had come out on several
occasions and said they did not care, why would anyone hold back for fear
of the
censor's red pencil?

Can I prove that censors have not silenced potential period cookbooks?  No, of
course not.  But my suggestion that they have NOT is backed by observation and
logical inference that includes work with the archives of censorship agencies, 
interviews with publishers, editors, and censors in the communist world. YMMV.

- --Paul Wickenden of Thanet
Paul W. Goldschmidt
goldschp at uwplatt.edu
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