Russian Lessons

A literary and culinary exploration of the joys and sorrows of loving a complicated place, from one of our foremost food writers.

Darra Goldstein was only ever told that her family had emigrated from Russia to the United States. She never understood why her grandmother was so despondent when Goldstein decided to become a Russianist and wanted to learn about the beauty of Russian literature, art, and food.

"Why would you work so hard to go back to this place that we did everything we could to escape?” her grandmother desperately asked.

As Goldstein learned more of her family’s history as shtetl Jews who had fled what is now Ukraine, experienced firsthand the brutality of Soviet life, and saw the idea of Russia being weaponized in the devastating war against Ukraine, she came to understand the full depths of her grandmother's sorrow.

But she also came to see the innate, embattled beauty of the Russian people. In a memoir that braids together piercing cultural criticism, dazzling food writing, and close readings of the art and writing of the many dissident artists with whom she became close, Goldstein adds warmth, depth, and great sensitivity to the question of what it means to love a deeply difficult place.

Russian Lessons is a memoir of a life’s work with Russia, told through art, literature, history, and food. It traces the deep impact of Russian oppression on the lives of its many artists, writers, and intellectuals, including Bert and Ella Wolf, Viktor Sosnora, Nikolai Zabolotsky, and many more, but it is also an impassioned defense for the good that persists in people and in art even in the face of government repression and brutality.