“ïzhakultura” is an independent project about food culture that was founded by Olena and Artem Braichenko in 2017. It is the first resource in Ukraine dedicated to the history of Ukrainian cuisine, where scholars, chefs, food critics, and food anthropologists discuss history, culture, and art through the prism of food. Over the five years of its existence, ïzhakultura has included gastronomy research, the publishing house ïzhak, and numerous thematic events, which not only deepen Ukrainians’ knowledge of their own culture, but also tell the world about Ukraine. Here Olena Braichenko talks about ïzhakultura’s work since February 24.
We had big plans for 2022, and we hoped that finally we would be able to work more and produce more high-quality content. But then came the war. Our printer and warehouse were on occupied territory. And what was most horrible, my parents were under occupation as well. For the first three months, I didn’t even open my computer. I didn’t check my email. I just read the news. And then, when the Kyiv region was liberated, we learned that all our books were still intact, and my parents were alive… Many of our readers were getting in touch: “Where did you go? Write. We think it’s interesting. We want to read.” And that gave us strength.
Later, when my daughter and I relocated to the United Kingdom, the term “identity” took on new meaning for me. All your social capital is rooted in another country, your whole background dissolves into this new reality. You are just a mom with a child.
At the same time, being in a foreign environment prompted a certain reorientation: we created an English-language version of the ïzhakultura website and changed the prism through which we conveyed information. Before the war, we were primarily oriented towards a domestic audience, and now we’ve broadened to include foreign audiences. For Ukrainians we published a series on food in the 1990s, because many of the practices that are now enabling people to survive are part of our recent past. Think about our grandmothers’ words about the necessity of building up a stockpile of food. Or the ability to grow food. The ability to preserve, to can, to dry food, to properly distribute food resources.
Two years ago, on 2 December 2020, we published a text by Tetiana Pastushenko, “War for Breakfast, Crisis for Lunch.” That feels like so long ago! Back then this article was mostly read by a professional audience: lecturers, students. And now, according to our analytics, it’s being reread.
We also noticed that people are spending more time on our site. For example, we see that people are spending ten or fifteen minutes on a text that might be expected to take three minutes—which means that people are probably using Google Translate or something like that. Statistics also show us that the percentage of foreign readers is growing.
In Autumn 2022 we launched the special project “Experience of War: Ukrainian Food and Nutrition” with the support of the Mykola Klid Memorial Endowment Fund and the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies. To date, we have published our first article, “Stories of Food and Nutrition in Wartime: Experience and / of Research.” I think this project establishes a methodological framework, “Experience and / of Research”, that will be useful to many other researchers. It gives a structure to the most emblematic changes that occurred in Ukraine after Russia’s full-scale invasion on February 24 using the example of food. The first text is by the sociologist Alla Petrenko-Lysak; her approach is more structurological than analytical. This publication is available in both Ukrainian and English.
The second article will be about jokes and memes about food and how they helped us live through the beginning of the invasion, such as: “polunitsia-palianytsia”, this shibboleth for identifying Russian occupiers that relied on food terms; the jar of tomatoes that a woman used to knock a drone out of the sky… We think it’s important to explain to foreigners why all this is no longer about food, but about something bigger. Like, for example, “oladky,” pancakes. Not everyone has seen the video where residents of the Kharkiv region, who have just been liberated after half a year of occupation, greet Ukrainian troops. Their building has no windows. They’re all bundled up. And they thank the Ukrainian soldiers, and one woman says: “We have some pancakes left over, will you have some?” That is, it’s a story about humaneness, because it’s not just food that we’re sharing…
I am firmly convinced that everyone who has survived occupation needs to be seen not as a victim, but first and foremost as a person. So adhering to ethical norms when gathering their stories is extraordinarily important. I have experience using ethnographic methods to collect oral histories, methods that include observation.
Within the framework of Documenting Ukraine, I am planning to record the stories of women who fed the occupiers. This is an extremely heavy topic, not least because of the threat of stigmatization. My working hypothesis—based on the example of the Kyiv region—is that the people who fed the enemy army were mostly elderly women who, first of all, had nowhere to go and no way to leave, and, second, didn’t want to leave behind the home where they were born, where their parents lived… And in addition, they owned large numbers of livestock.
We know many stories of cats and dogs, because the people who worked to save them are active social media users. In contrast, the villagers who physically could not leave their cows or goats don’t talk about their experience in the public sphere. And the women who experienced this sort of trauma don’t talk about it openly for various reasons—including the fear of being judged. All these stories are slowly emerging as they tell them among people they are close to, such as at the banquets after the funerals of fellow villagers.
A part of my own personal story is the history of my parents, who were forced to live in a cellar. This experience was truly no less traumatic. People were forced to divide up a limited amount of food, and there were often children with them in the cellars. So this is also a matter of community. I mean that the communal preparation and consumption of food under occupation creates a different type of communality. When I went to visit my parents after their area was liberated, they held a big dinner at their house, inviting the neighbors who were living in the cellar with them, and they all sat around the table recalling various stories. I saw that my parents have a connection with these people that even I don’t have. There is a love and care that can be shown to others precisely through food. My sister even quipped that a “tourist came to visit” when I was there—people who left before occupation are jokingly referred to as tourists.
Just as I can’t fully grasp my parents’ experience, I’ve noticed that foreigners often can’t really make sense of the Ukrainian reality. For example, within the food industry a trend popped up a few years ago of eating “nose to tail”—that is, finding a use for every part of a pig, rabbit, goose, duck, or other animal. And this elicited a certain degree of bemusement in Ukraine, because for much of the population this is their everyday reality, not some sort of new trend.
Now I am starting to return to observing and analyzing the changes underway today, the tendencies, the latest research. And I am trying to integrate this into ïzhakultura; now we are consciously emphasizing our present situation and our long experience of survival. We have practical knowledge that is not only helpful in wartime conditions, but will be of use in places that are dealing with problems of food shortages or, indeed, overproduction of food through climate change or other circumstances. So I am convinced that there are powerful voices and experience in Ukraine that can be helpful not only in Europe.
We can see, for example, that people in developed countries go by expiration dates listed on food packaging, as manufacturers are required to list it. In contrast, Ukrainians—who often buy food not in stores but at markets—know how to choose food items based on their taste and smell. So when the electricity is shut off, which means refrigerated food spoils much faster, it automatically triggers a different way of assessing whether things are safe to eat. But does someone who has no experience of this, has never developed this habit, do that?
And we would like to talk about this more, both for a foreign and a domestic audience. There are two key themes that might be of interest to foreigners: what is Ukrainian cuisine all about, what’s fresh and interesting in it? And second, how are people living and surviving there right now?
For some Ukrainians, I think the step of cultural and mental separation is extremely important. This is happening here and now on the level of emotions, feelings, hatred and rejection of Russians and everything Russian. And it is also important to see the scope and depth of our colonial past and of decolonization on all levels. Here we need to draw on our knowledge, including of the history of Ukrainian cuisine, of research in the field of gastronomy. We will try with all our might to develop this, to popularize the academic approach, to recount little-known pages in the history of Ukrainian cuisine, to shape new approaches to understanding and interpreting the Ukrainian culinary heritage. Of course, I can’t guarantee this, we are an independent project with no state funding or financial support from a major company, we don’t sell advertising.
So all of our lofty scholarly and creative projects keep colliding with the banal realities of everyday life, survival, and finances. I am certain that we will be able to find support, and we will continue our work, and if not, it will be yet another consequence of Russia’s war, in the form of invisible and indirect losses. Which we will continue to talk about and analyze for many years to come after our victory.
Interview conducted by Kseniya Kharchenko, Documenting Ukraine Project Manager
