A refined mirage: Konchalovsky's post about Stalin's Roquefort cheese sparked a debate on the Web

Two days ago, director Andrey Konchalovsky published a short recollection of his grandfather and grandmother, in which there were such strange lines: “While filming“ Siberiade”, “Noble's Nest”, and “Uncle Vanya”, I filled these films with the smell of my grandfather and grandmothers - they had breakfast early, drank coffee; to the coffee there were butter rolls, butter and Roquefort, good Roquefort, even those of Stalin's times".

In response, the director received many sarcastic remarks from the network community.

“I appreciate the thoroughbred. This is all from litter to litter - exterior, docked tail, erect ears, thoughtful mating. This is the only way to get a real, unalloyed, elite mongrel...”, - writes journalist Mikhail Shevelev.

Another journalist, Kirill Shulika, believes that Konchalovsky is a little "lost" in time:

“Roquefort of Stalin's times. And this despite the fact that the grandfather is one of the most powerful Russian artists Pyotr Konchalovsky, and the grandmother Olga Surikova is the daughter of that very Vasily Surikov. And indeed, before the arrival of Soviet power, both found a real Roquefort and heard the real crunch of a French roll, but the granddaughters brought everything to Stalin, in fact, as usual..."

Activist Vera Afanasyeva advises in the spirit of the times:

“So we must forbid France to use the word“ Roquefort ”for cheese! It turns out that the correct Roquefort is Stalinist!"

However, there were responses with a different pathos, including those who defended the Soviet Roquefort:

Roquefort cheese has been successfully produced in the USSR, in particular, at the Uglich cheese plant since the 1930s. The Soviet GOST for the production of Roquefort is also available. Moreover, there are many memories of blue cheese lovers who bought it in those years on the Internet. There was not much in the USSR, but there was Roquefort. True, he was not popular - many Soviet citizens considered him "spoiled".

And the publicist Vadim Olshevsky responded to this discussion in verse:

Fritters, coffee and porcelain

Remembers the poet's son.

And cheese, of course, Roquefort -

Thanks to Stalin for this

It is curious that Konchalovsky also found defenders, and, what is most surprising, from among the modern "intellectuals". It is about these who Victoria Musvik writes in her publication:

“It is still surprising how a part of the post-Soviet intelligentsia has clearly elitist views aligned with the views of those who defend the positions of the Soviet nomenklatura. In yesterday's "dispute about Roquefort" there were remarks that, they say, the "mob" envies the real Soviet intelligentsia / former aristocrats. And this rabble could not understand the Roquefort. The latter is especially funny, taking into account what the cheese makers write: this “Stalinist Roquefort” was too salty, naturally, it cannot be compared with the French one. Having recently tried to reproduce it "according to the Soviet OST", they were forced to admit defeat: the modern public is already too accustomed to good cheeses, it will not eat this Soviet creation. The recipe was changed. In general, the sophistication of the taste of "good Soviet roquefort" is a big question, of course. It is clear what they ate, what happened. But I was personally very interested in this replacement of the discussion of Stalinism with remarks about pseudo-refinement and envy of the elites.

This kind of thing is heard all the time. Recently, I was unpleasantly struck by Revzin's text about Gorbachev (written in 2016 in GQ, but I did not see it then). In general, interesting, but there were lines about the fact that Gorbachev was from peasants, and his mother was a very simple woman. But the peasants, they say, do not need anything, if only there was no war. Everything good and subtle in Gorbachev in this text was deduced from the values of the intelligentsia, which (I quote literally) "are not peasants, they needed a lot of things." All this in a rather strange way goes into an absolute cut with the experience of my family, where the descendants of precisely repressed peasants are still the most consistent anti-Soviet and anti-Stalinists, who very well recognize the traces of this ideology in modern politicians. But after 2014, some of those who came from the intelligentsia have completely drowned in an ethical mess. Moreover, it was from the peasant relatives that the covenants came down to me to be brave, to try new things and that "a girl can do anything." Actually, the most daring women after 1917 were also my peasant grandmothers and great-grandmothers.

And yesterday I read that Konchalovsky in an interview after the film about the shooting in Novocherkassk said that, they say, Khrushchev had in vain debunked the personality cult of Stalin - it was a "primitive decision." That he agreed with Mao, that Khrushchev was an idiot and betrayed communism, but the Chinese comrades did not. That Khrushchev is not very smart (but smarter than Yeltsin). And the main thing, perhaps: Konchalovsky connects this with the fact that Khrushchev was a "real peasant." I didn't quite understand the bizarre position: it turns out that the uprising of the workers was needed by Konchalovsky, who around himself creates a reputation for such a sophisticated dude with a Roquefort just to criticize Khrushchev and side with Stalin?

I think more and more recently that the idea of a "common cause" was a mirage of the late eighties and nineties. Recently, a friend of mine drew attention to the fact that in Parfenov's program about 1968 there is no revolutionary Paris, only Prague. We discussed there whether this was the general position of the intelligentsia of the nineties, associated with the rejection of the entire left agenda after the collapse of the USSR. I believe that no, it was not. Because our wonderful Kosikov told us about 1968 and about his influence on European thought in the foreign countries of the philological faculty of Moscow State University. We have read Foucault, Barthes, Genette and other leftists. This did not prevent us and our teachers from unequivocally rejecting Stalinism and repression. In general, positions in intellectual circles were different. And this also later manifested itself in those new institutions (universities, publishing houses, foundations, and so on) that were built. I hope their story will be written. A history of differences.

And especially I hope to live up to the moment when such arguments about the peasants will not be quite comme il faut, but a little, well, in general, ashamed.

Roquefort to attract attention!"