Taste for life. William Pokhlebkin
If you ask, what attitude story Pokhlebkina has to "Military Review"? My answer is the closest. He was a front-line chef (it was in those difficult conditions that his talent developed), and in his popular books historical themes were always closely intertwined with culinary themes. Evidence of this is in the words of the scientist himself:
“The absence of culinary culture is not only a gap in the general cultural development of a person. For citizens of our multinational country, the inability to navigate the culinary skills of the Russian people is an indicator of weak political culture, indifference, and indifference to national phenomena and processes that characterize the social life of our country. ”
The name that determined the fate
Born this extraordinary man 20 August 1923 year in Moscow. Parents said they called their son after William Shakespeare. And the surname Pokhlebkin was in fact a revolutionary pseudonym for his father, Vasily Mikhailov. The family has preserved the story of how William's great-grandfather, who served as a cook for the masters, was preparing noble stews. Hence his nickname. This strange combination of a high name and a peasant surname was reflected in the character of the boy. He grew up susceptible, vulnerable, many fantasized and enthusiastically watched what is happening in the kitchen.
If for someone the cooking process was an ordinary event, then for him it was magic, in which each action entailed new and new discoveries.
... When the war came, William was 18 years old. He went to the front, and because of his quick wit and great intelligence, he was taken to the scouts. However, in battles under the capital of Pokhlebikin, the contusilos did not return to the front line — he was sent to the regimental headquarters as a polyglot, speaking fluently in three (and by the end of his life in seven!) Languages. Around the same time, he began to actively engage in the soldiers' kitchen. Or rather, he invented real culinary masterpieces in the military field.
About this period of his life, he writes in the book "Secrets of good cuisine" (here he tells about himself in the second person):
"... Both parts received the same vegetables: potatoes, carrots, cabbage, a little dried parsley and onions, not to mention spices: pepper, lavrushka. But the chef from the next part" drove "of them only two dishes: today having concentrated cabbage for two or three days, he made cabbage soup, and tomorrow, on the contrary, by choosing potatoes from the warehouse that was not received in the past days, he prepared potato soup with carrots. Our cook made different soups and sometimes main dishes with the same products, who called the “vegetable disorder” - he apparently coined the name himself, for nowhere in it didn’t appear in cookbooks. In winter, this vegetable stew was especially desirable and desirable. In the summer, when a part was in the steppe, he sent an order to gather wild garlic and spelled, in the forest - berries, mushrooms, saran roots, nuts, near settlements - nettle and quinoa. No matter how often they collected these random additions to dinner, he put any small amount into a common pot. And the familiar dish acquired a new flavor and smell, was perceived as completely unfamiliar and ate with great appetite and therefore with greater benefit.
The first ever quinoa soup to our soldier-cook was brought in exactly in the army, and it was a truly wonderful, long-remembered dish. It has greatly shaken the idea of a swan as the classic food of the hungry and disadvantaged created by literature in many.
There were other examples of the creative approach of a modest battalion cook to the usual soldiers' lunch. Once, already at the end of the war in the spring of 1944, maize (corn) flour arrived, which was sent by the allies. No one knew what to do with it. In some places they began to add it to wheat flour when baking bread, which caused it to become brittle, quickly become stale, and caused soldiers to complain. But in another way they could not use this essentially valuable food product. The soldiers grumbled at the cooks, the cooks scolded the commissaries, who, in turn, cursed the allies who fused us with maize, which the devil himself would not understand. Only our chef did not hurt. He immediately took the crescent rate instead of daily gram supplements, sent a reinforced outfit to the steppe, asking him to collect almost everything - quinoa, alfalfa, shepherd's bag, sorrel, wild garlic, and made delicious corn tortillas with greens, bright , yellow outside and hot-green inside. They were soft, fragrant, fresh, like spring itself, and better than any other means they reminded the soldiers of the house, of the imminent end of the war, of a peaceful life.
Two weeks later, the cook made hominy, almost the entire battalion met this national Moldovan dish for the first time. The soldiers regretted that the maize had been sent too little, and would have been willing to exchange wheat flour for it.
... The fighting mood of the soldiers was not least created by the cook, his skill, his talent ..., food not only literally, as physiological fuel, but also in a purely emotional sense influenced the growth of the spirit, helped to forge the victory, contributed significant contribution to the combat training of soldiers .... "
Compromise is not for him
When the outcome of the war was already clear, William Pokhlebkin sent a letter to the head of the Main Political Department of the Red Army, in which he noted that it would be good to send all capable people who no longer bring visible benefit to the front for training, so that they would gain knowledge and actively engage in restoring peace of life. In response, a study permit came.
Pokhlebkin’s entry into the Faculty of International Relations at Moscow State University was no surprise to anyone. He studied well, but because of the four on Marxism-Leninism, he did not receive a red diploma. After graduating from the university, Pokhlebkin took up science - received a candidate degree and even wrote a large study on the history of Croatia. Then he headed his brainchild for six years - the magazine "Scandinavian collection", which financed from his own pocket. Therefore, he lived as an ascetic - no frills.
William had another trait that irritated many of his contemporaries, he was crystally honest and critical of his worthless and lazy colleagues. I was not even afraid to criticize that colleagues from the Institute of History of the USSR Academy of Sciences spend their working days in smoking rooms and gossip, but there is no real work.
This performance was not forgiven to Pokhlebkin - they restricted access to the special security of the Lenin Library to the state archives. With "collective science," Vasily Vasilyevich said goodbye and moved on to "individual creativity."
There are still a few touches to the character of this hero - some loved him and considered him a genius, others perceived him as a city madman or a dissident. He was attentive to details, and if he came to the truth, stood his ground to the end. Compromise and Pokhlebkin stood at different poles.
It is because of this that in science he was completely "blocked oxygen", and for many years he was forced to survive. Experimentally, I found out that you can live and even work on tea and Borodino bread. So he wrote himself, but colleagues who visited him recalled that he was emaciated to exhaustion. However, cheese, sausage or butter rejected as a present, arguing that they are accustomed to live on their modest ration, and here they can “spoil” and want more oil, and this thought will disturb him.
It all started with tea
At the same time, hungry for him, the scientist writes his first work on cooking and it is about tea - the Pokhlebkinu theme is very familiar, because he was the owner of a large tea collection. In 1968, the book went to print.
Here are some quotes from it:
"Mixing tea with lemon in one dish is a purely Russian invention."
“It should be emphasized that the British strictly adhere to the rule of pouring tea into milk, and in no case the opposite. It is noticed that pouring milk into tea spoils the aroma and taste of the drink, and therefore such a mistake is considered as ignorance. ”
The book was so fresh, non-trivial, that it began to be discussed in the kitchens and even at meetings of dissenters, which could not but irritate. And soon there were negative reviews in the Soviet press. Critics did not understand why such a familiar drink as tea, which fits in three letters, you need to write such a large book?
But the scientist William Pokhlebkin found what he knew, knew how, and what he liked. He began to be invited to magazines as a columnist, he had Tasty Stories, and he tried almost all of his recipes himself.
“Cooking, and especially national cooking, is not a“ stomach problem ”, about which a supposedly“ enlightened ”person has nothing to wrestle with (let the cook take care of it!), But a heart problem, a problem of mind, the problem of restoring the“ national soul ” - he reasoned.
He was very fond of Russian cuisine and devoted a lot of lyrical lines to it. He also spoke about Russian soup with a thousand-year history, and about black bread and kvass.
Despite dozens of cookbooks, most often the name of William Pokhlebkin is associated with the monograph “The History of Vodka”. She came out in 1991 year. And its goal was to prove that vodka was born in Russia, and not in Poland (at the end of 70's, Poland declared its right to this brand). Relying on historical sources, the scientist once again proved to the world that vodka is exclusively our invention. The monograph by William Pokhlebkin “The History of Vodka” was awarded the Lange Ceretto Prize.
Revenge is a cold serving dish.
We have not told about the personal life of William Pokhlebkin. He was married twice. In the first marriage, his daughter Gudrun was born, and in the second - the son Augustus. Like most creative people, most of all in life, he Pokhlebkin loved his work, so the main love of his life was science.
He experienced the collapse of the USSR very hard: as a historian, he understood that nothing good would come of it. Therefore, he wrote letters, sharply and openly spoke in the media. He told friends that he was being watched and threatened because of his political position.
Who knows what caused his murder? Is this a motive or rumors that secret collections and millions are kept in a typical Khrushchev’s popular writer?
Found William Pokhlebkin at the beginning of April 2000, in his apartment. Investigators have counted on the body of the scientist 11 injuries allegedly inflicted by a long thin screwdriver. Moreover, there were no signs of hacking or robbery in the house. The killer was never found.
They buried this unusual scientist and culinary specialist at the Golovinsky cemetery.
“One of my credo - life, socio-political, culinary - is that you can not ignore the historical past, both on a universal human scale and nationally. Otherwise, history will inevitably revenge itself — all those who have forgotten that the world existed long before they were born, ”wrote William Pokhlebkin.
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