Samizdat 2022-2023

Самиздат

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

5 LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

12 мышная еда by sophia li

13 pathologic and redefining control in video games

by jack preston

SPORT

RUSSE BY ADRIEN BALNY D'AVRICOURT

8 the weaponization of the absurd in putin's russia by josie grundy

10 youth and immaturity in the works of gombrowicz and kundera

by rubygrace heaney

17 brother: an enthralling depiction of post-perestroika russia by veer puri

19 navalny's odyssey: a wind from the west? by claire rhea & anjou kang-stryker

20 a culinary journey through a post-soviet childhood

by timur saiful islam

CONTRIBUTORS

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF GENEVIEVE COBEN

GRAPHIC DESIGN

ANJOU KANG-STRYKER EDITORS

TED ALLEN-RAWDING

ANJOU KANG-STRYKER

CORMAC KRUPA-GILLMOR

ADRIENNE NEUFELD

OLIVIA NITTI

AUTHORS

ADRIEN BALNY D’AVRICOURT

JOSIE GRUNDY

RUBYGRACE HEANEY

SOPHIA LI

JACK PRESTON

VEER PURI

CLAIRE RHEA

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

In a world mired in conflict and brutality, it’s hard to find what brings people together. Politics certainty doesn’t, nor religion. But maybe dialogue, discussion and deep-dive analysis can. That’s why I believe this year’s edition of Samizdat matters.

Enjoy papers across the full waterfront of Russian and Slavic topics, from Ukrainian cuisine to diplomacy in sport, from postmodern videogames to Navalny’s legacy, from film reviews of nineties cinema, and to an examination of “schizo-facism” in contemporary political discourse.

Thank you to my dedicated editing team: Olivia Nitti, Anjou Kang-Stryker, Cormac Krupa-Gillmor, Adrienne Neufeld and Ted Allen-Rawling. Though our graphic designer faced various setbacks, he still managed to produce a fantastic cover and layout for our journal.

Switching my minor to Russian Culture was the best decision I made at McGill. My peers and I in the department are lucky to learn under the tutelage of inspiring professors (a special shout-out to Professor Beraha, who inspired my love of post-Soviet literature). Without them, producing articles of this calibre for Samizdat would be impossible.

Наслаждайтесь.

Genevieve Coben, Editor-in-Chief

L'EVOLUTION DE LA GEOPOLITIQUE DU SPORT RUSSE:

De la guerre froi D e au conflit ukrainien

ADRIEN BALNY D'AVRICOURT

La Guerre Froide a sonné le glas de la neutralité politique du sport. Au cours de cette période, il apparaît comme important terrain de jeu politique où s’affrontent les virilités athlétiques des mondes capitalistes et socialistes. En effet, si le sport maintient jusque-là un caractère apolitique précaire, les insinuations évocatrices d’équipes gagnantes et perdantes l’amènent à devenir un outil diplomatique de grande envergure parmi les nombreux fronts concurrentiels de la Guerre Froide. En particulier, l’Union Soviétique développe une affinité proche pour l’athlétisme comme embléme de la tenacité et de la bravoure de l’homo sovieticus, le menant à manier le sport comme instrument politique et symbolique tout au long de son existence.

Au lendemain de la Seconde Guerre Mondiale, les États-Unis et l’Union Soviétique mènent une guerre idéologique sur de nombreux fronts dont celui du sport. Plus encore que son rival, la fitzkultura est une véritable institution sociale chez les soviétiques, un outil fortement politisé au service d’une propagande cherchant à promouvoir les valeurs socialistes et le rayonnement de l’URSS sur la scène internationale (Washburn 490). Notamment, le parti communiste se sert du sport comme lubrifiant diplomatique afin de nouer des liens avec des nations possédant une importance stratégique pour Moscou dans le contexte de l’agrandissement du monde socialiste. Exemple notoire— l’URSS envoie l’équipe de football du Lokomotiv Moscou jouer en Birmanie et en Indonésie avant les voyages diplomatiques

de Khrouchtchev et Boulganine en 1956 (Washburn 491).

Dans le même esprit, l’URSS organise des compétitions sportives entre les armées de ses alliés pour consolider leurs ententes militaires (Riordan 338). Le soft-power soviétique se propage aussi par l’envoie d’entraîneurs dans plus de trente pays du tiers monde, facilitant entre autres la domination Cubaine sur les évènements sportifs organisés en Amérique Latine (Riordan 339). Cette stratégie permet à Moscou d’intégrer des pays socialistes dans son giron en les liant à ses institutions, renforçant sa position géopolitique de fait son influence sur ces pays.

L’Union Soviétique se sert donc du sport d’une part pour forger des alliances, mais aussi pour concurrencer et faire impression sur ses adversaires idéologiques et politiques. En effet, les événements sportifs présentent la possibilité pour ces grandes puissances de se livrer l’opportunité d’affrontements pacifiques mais profondément symboliques—nous dirions candidement, de troquer les armes pour les relais ou les grenades pour les échanges de ballon… Les Jeux Olympiques devenaient ainsi le théâtre de rivalités diplomatiques où les acteurs profitaient de l’aura de la compétition pour faire jouer leurs muscles à des fins politiques. Les États-Unis et certains de ses alliés boycottent les Jeux de 1980 en guise de protestation contre l’invasion soviétique de l’Afghanistan (Smothers). Réciproquement, l’URSS refuse de participer aux Jeux de Los Angeles en 1984 sous prétexte qu’un sentiment chauvin et hostile se

propage à leur égard sur les terres du pays hôte (Burns). Et lorsque ces deux super-puissances participaient aux mêmes Olympiades, celles-ci furent le théâtre de nombreuses controverses, notamment à l’image de la finale de basket à Munich en 1972 lorsque les américains accusent les soviétiques d’avoir triché en fin de partie pour rafler la médaille d’or (Frommers). Ces tensions sportives se procurant dans les stades deviennent donc un symbole important des animosités frustrées de la Guerre Froide, gardant en compte l’impossibilité de vrais engagements militaires entre ces puissances.

Pour en venir au présent, dans le contexte du développement des conflits russo-ukrainiens, le sport semble retrouver son importance comme front politique majeur presque trente-ans après la chute de l’URSS. Cette fois-ci, le sport russe est de nouveau « victime » des décisions de l’Occident, dont le bannissement sert de méthode d’isolation dans les sphères géopolitiques. Ces initiatives cherchent à punir la Russie pour son invasion, entre autres n’oublions pas les innombrables scandales de dopage— en privant ces athlètes de participer à de nombreux évènements sportifs et en limitant l’influence économique des oligarques russes dans le sport international. Alors que les soviétiques démontrent jadis leur férocité et leur capacité à nouer des liens avec d’autres nations à travers le sport, la Russie se retrouve désormais dos au mur, impuissante face aux sanctions des Comités Olympiques et des fédérations sportives occidentales. En effet, ces sanctions, qui fragilisent l’économie russe en plaçant d’importantes limitations sur leur capacité d’investissement, opèrent également dans l’espace symbolique des apparences, de la représentation. Leur excommunication de « l’universel » communauté des démocraties libérales dont le sport et divers spectacles médiatiques constituent entre autres son expressivité et sa vivacité— se développe aujourd’hui comme instrument de grande importance pour influencer les opinions sur la Russie parmi les nations du monde. Malgré tout, cette stratégie d’isolement sportif ne fait pas l’unanimité au sein des institutions du sport international, certains estimant les athlètes russes non-responsables des actions cyniques de leur gouvernement, et qu’ils devraient être autorisés à par-

ticiper aux jeux Olympiques sous une bannière neutre (Hidalgo). Si tel est le cas, comme aux Jeux de Tokyo 2020, nous pourrions voir des athlètes russes sous bannière Olympique aux Jeux de Paris en 2024.

Bien que le conflit russo-ukrainien n’en est visiblement et malheureusement qu’à ses débuts, le sport pourrait être amené à jouer un rôle déterminant parmi les guerres de propagande démarquant les géopolitiques au XXIème siècle. Aujourd’hui, le blanchiment par le sport, plus communément appelé sports-washing a été remis au goût du jour. A l’instar d’Hitler qui organisa les Olympiades d’été et d’hiver en 1936 pour camoufler les dangers du nazisme, de nombreux despotes contemporains organisent des événements sportifs afin d’améliorer leur réputation. Cela leur permet de dissimuler les macabres réalités de leurs régimes; à l’image de l’organisation de la Coupe du Monde de football 2022 au Qatar, une monarchie constitutionnelle négligeant certains droits de l’Homme. En ce qui concerne la Russie, elle se retrouve présentement orpheline de son atout diplomatique, rendu inerte de par son implication dans le conflit Ukrainien. Sa prééminence sur la scène sportive est derrière elle, et le pays est désormais contraint d’élaborer des alternatives s’il souhaite continuer d’étendre son soft-power à l’étranger. Le fruit de sa création—la diplomatie du sport—s’est retourné contre elle.

Works cited

Burns, John F. “MOSCOW WILL KEEP ITS TEAM FROM LOS ANGELES OLYMPICS.” The New York Times, 9 May 1984,

Colucci, Michelle and Sean Cottrell. “Sport and Diplomacy In the Aftermath of the Russia Ukraine War.” A Sports Law And Policy Centre & LawInSport Joint Survey, 2022, pp. 4-7. Frommer, Frederic J. “50 years later; the chaotic end of a US-USSR basketball game still stings.” The Washington Post, 19 October 2022.

Riordan, James. “Soviet sport and Soviet foreign policy.” Soviet Studies no. 3, vol. 26, 1974, pp. 322–343.

Smothers, Ronald. “Bitterness Lingering Over Carter’s Boycott.” The New York Times, 19 July 1996.

Washburn, John N. “Sport as a Soviet Tool.” Foreign Affairs no. 3, vol. 34, April 1956, pp. 490-499.

THE WEAPONIZATION OF THE ABSURD IN PUTIN'S RUSSIA JOSIE GRUNDY

As Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine on February 24th, 2022, it also released its public justification for the war: to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine. Much of the world viewed this claim of “denazification” as bizarre and contradictory, not least because the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, is Jewish. The incongruity between reality as described in the media and lived experience has frequently appeared in Western media headlines since the start of the war, but this strategy exists beyond the rationale underlying Russia’s “special military intervention.” It is symptomatic of a greater political strategy: the weaponization of the absurd. This state-sanctioned “absurdity” recalls the absurdist literary movement which briefly flourished in the early 20th century, before Socialist Realism was adopted as the official genre of the Soviet Union. Unlike the countercultural and satiric genres of the early 20th century, Russia’s contemporary absurdism shapes domestic and foreign policy.

The early roots of Russian absurdism are often attributed to Gogol and his renowned works such as “The Nose” and “Diary of a Mad Man.” But Daniil Kharms in the 1920s and 1930s best exemplified the complex qualities of the maturing genre. His black humour, inspired by the chaos of the Soviet Union, was antithetical to the civically-minded content the state demanded of its writers, leaving him unable to publish anything other than children’s stories during his lifetime. While absurdism is often oversimplified as a mere dismissal of the rules of logic, the genre is also characterized by a divorce between man and the world, the victimized or pitiful protagonist, and the decomposition of language. These traits

are present throughout Kharms’ work. In the opening lines of “The Old Woman,” the speaker asks an elderly woman what the time is:

“Have a look”– the old woman says to me. I look and see that there are no hands on the clock. “There are no hands here”– I say. The old woman looks at the clock face and tells me: – “It’s now a quarter to three.” – “Oh, so that’s what it is. Thank you very much”– I say and go on” (Kharms, 17).

The nonsensical rules of the world are clearly laid out. The speaker accepts that a divorce between himself and the world affects the information he has access to. Kharms’ “Blue Notebook No. 10” offers a different example. In this story, a red-haired man is said to exist, but each description of him is contradicted by the physical features that he lacks, until “there’s no knowing whom we are even talking about” and that, “In fact it’s better that we don’t say any more about him” (49). Language breaks down as every presupposition associated with the existence of a “red-haired man” is found to be false.

Though absurdism and related contemporary styles, such as futurism and the avant-garde, were quashed by growing state control, absurdism found a new home in politics and (dis)information campaigns in Russia. What was once a style of expression has become a tool of suppression. Russian propaganda, which as a concept, does not carry the same negative connotation in Russian as it does in English, can broadly be sorted into two categories: agitational and

obfuscatory. Agitational stories paint Russia as a victim, standing in defiance of Western persecution of Russian values. Such narratives claim that Russians need liberation from a nationalistic, Russophobic Ukraine, particularly those living within Ukraine’s borders. Obfuscatory media muddles truth from fiction, friend from foe, and the critical from the banal.

A recent example can be seen in journalist Peter Pomerantsev’s description of news stories from the stateowned broadcaster RTR regarding the 2014 annexation of the Crimean Peninsula. These stories claimed that Russian nationalists in the region were Western actors who wanted Russia to be dragged into war, rather than Russians who genuinely wanted a Russian intervention (Pomerantsev 177). This two-pronged approach to propaganda characterizes the weaponization of the absurd. From politically motivated trials, such as the oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky and opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s, to the cognitive dissonance that is “schizo-fascism,” the same tools of the literary absurd are used to achieve political ends.

“Schizo-fascism” is a term coined by Yale historian Timothy Snyder in the wake of the War in Ukraine. It refers to the practice of fascists calling their enemies fascists, displacing their ideology and violence onto someone else (Gessen 2022). The hypocrisy in Russian talking points is no secret, with the pro-Kremlin political scientist Dmitry Drobnitsky declaring on Vladimir Solovyov’s pro-government talk show in 2022, “Russians are Russophobic, and Jews are the worst anti-Semites,” with the Russian Foreign Minister echoing similar sentiments soon after (Gessen 2022). Words like these lose meaning and not only appear grossly inappropriate as justifications for war, but the point at which they became warped is lost. In an interview with Masha Gessen regarding the policy of referring to Ukrainian forces as “Nazis,” a Russian news editor said that they believed they lacked the schooling necessary to make that decision for themselves, and so deferred to the language of the authorities but were confident that “truth exists… it’s just that it’s unknowable” (Gessen 2022). This answer demonstrates just how much propaganda focuses on spreading doubt and confusion rather than planting a single, clear message. It is worth noting that this task of “denazifying” Ukraine came

only a year after the adoption of a bill that banned any attempt to deny the Soviet Union’s success in triumphing over fascism in World War II and days after the introduction of a bill that would impose fines for doing so (TASS 2021; Lawfare 2022). By controlling the language of the media and public, people are left reliant on approved distributors of the truth. The purposeful break between the reality promoted by the state and that experienced by citizens has ideologically isolated the Russian public from the outside world.

Putin’s frequent quotation of Tsar Alexander III’s belief that Russia “has only two allies– the army and the navy” demonstrates a worrying degree of fear-mongering that Russia is surrounded by enemies out to get ordinary Russian people. Similarly, the transformation of language– words lose their clarity and may even come to have their opposite meaning– functions to confuse the audience. The shifting associations of what it means to be fascist or antisemitic erode the real threats they present, and they are instead used as fodder for nationalistic and victimizing narratives. The resulting sentiment is that “if nothing is true, then anything is possible” (Pomerantsev 2014). The government itself is not absurd, but the methods employed to produce confusion, apathy, and distrust mirror the techniques that defined the most iconic Russian absurdist works of the 20th century. The declaration of Socialist Realism as the official genre of the Soviet Union in 1934 signalled the demise of absurdism, but it remains unclear what will bring an end to the Russian absurdism of today.

Works cited

“Duma adopts in First Reading Ban on Putting Soviet Union, Nazi Germany on Same footing.” TASS 25 May, 2021.

Gessen, Masha. “Inside Putin’s Propaganda Machine.” The New Yorker, 18 May, 2022. Hirsch, Francine. “Putin’s Memory Laws Set the Stage for His War in Ukraine.” Lawfare 28 February, 2022.

Jaccard, Jean-Philippe. “Daniil Kharms in the context of Russian and European Literature of the Absurd.” Daniil Kharms and the Poetics of the Absurd, edited by Neil Cornwell, St. Martin’s Press, 1991. Kharms, Daniil. “The Old Woman.” Incidences edited and translated by Neil Cornwell, Serpent’s Tail, 1993.

Pomerantsev, Peter. “The Kremlin’s Information War.” Authoritarianism Goes Global, edited by Christopher Walker, et al., John Hopkins UP, 2016.

Pomerantsev, Peter. “Russia and the Menace of Unreality: How Vladimir Putin is revolutionizing Information Warfare.” The Atlantic 9 September, 2014.

Sorokin, Vladimir. “Russia Is Slipping Back into an Authoritarian Empire.” Interview conducted by Martin Doerry and Matthias Schepp. Spiegel International, translated by Christopher Sultan, 2 February, 2007.

YOUTH AND IMMATURITY IN THE WORKS OF GOMBROWICZ AND KUNDERA

RUBYGRACE HEANEY

Witold Gombrowicz’s Ferdydurke and Milan Kundera’s The Book of Laughter and Forgetting are two playful and, at times, bizarre novels with roots in the Central European tradition. With Gombrowicz from Poland and Kundera from the Czech Republic, both writers come from the oft-ignored and largely disputed region of Central Europe. The two lived parallel lives, each experiencing youth in homelands dominated by foreign empires but ultimately leaving their respective motherlands for new lives in the West. In many ways, their stories are analogous as the two authors use their literary work to contemplate the image of youth and immaturity. The authors reach opposing conclusions: Gombrowicz finds a unique creative power within the grotesqueness of immaturity, and Kundera questions youth’s futile thirst for righteousness, which inevitably leads to litost– a state of despair.

Gombrowicz’s Ferdydurke revolves around ideas of youth and immaturity, with special consideration for how immaturity lends itself to creativity and form. It tells the story of a thirty-year-old man, Joey, who one day wakes up and finds himself as a young boy again. Try as he might, Joey cannot convince those around him that he is actually a grown man. Every day, Joey transforms more and more into a schoolboy as he confronts questionable professors, rotten boys, and modern girls. Throughout, Gombrowicz repeats words associated with immaturity and youth: green, schoolgirls, legs, chickie, pupa… to name a few. Repetition

plays a vital role in creating a sense of permanence in our memories, just as a schoolchild might memorize by rote. As Gombrowicz writes, it is through repetition “that mythology is most readily created” (Gombrowicz 70). By repeating these words, he drums the idea of immaturity into his reader’s heads, and in doing so, Gombrowicz demands the reader confront their own immaturity. He marries immaturity and creation in Ferdydurke. Immaturity allows for both imperfection and freedom in a way that nurtures creativity. The human obsession with perfection is a violation of self, for which the solution is immaturity. Gombrowicz argues that in the milestones of our development, we are only ever “halfShakespeares” and “quarter-Chopins,” and to swagger as if we were the real thing would only reveal our shortcomings (Gombrowicz 75). Essentially, we are imperfect beings who create imperfect art, and to pretend otherwise would be grossly ignorant and fraudulent. Ferdydurke, however, celebrates this imperfection. A certain freedom can be found by removing ourselves from the expectations of perfection. Through immaturity, you can be anything because immaturity subverts people’s expectations of who you are. Without these constraints we open ourselves up to change, to transformation, to newness, and to art. With this freedom, we can create unhindered by society, and so Gombrowicz declares the power of immaturity in creation.

In The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, Kundera treats youth as a thing lost to the past, which people can only

aspire to regain. Composed of seven separate narratives, The Book carries through it the thread of youth, each story presenting a variation on the theme. In one vignette, Kundera reveals how in old age, people begin to shrink: they look back at their youth and things that were once normal-sized appear larger than life. The process of moving from childhood to adulthood and back to childhood again is a common motif within the novel. The theme first appears with the character Mama, as she enters old age and widowhood, and again with Tamina as she finds herself on the island of children. Kundera does not, however, treat this reversal as a necessarily positive phenomenon. For Kundera, youth is a time of angst and self-pity. Kundera has said that the story of Tamina originated from a dream: “imagine being forced for the rest of your days to remain surrounded by children, without ever being able to speak to an adult. A nightmare” (Carlisle). Considering his younger years which consisted of foreign empires controlling his homeland, Kundera’s disdain for youth comes as no surprise. For him, youth is a place of blind naivety. Kundera’s own youth was one of high ideals and fear, which he links to immaturity (Carlisle). In The Book, he describes two phenomena related to youth: the feeling of litost and the desire for belonging. He describes litost as a “state of torment created by the sudden sight of one’s own misery” (Kundera 167). Kundera further explains that it is a consequence of inexperience, specifically the inexperience in understanding the imperfections of humanity. Youth expect perfection and thus experience litost when disappointed by their own inadequacy. We can see that Kundera relates youth and a yearning for the ideal, lending them to immaturity. Second, he writes that youth desire “rings” to dance in. By this, Kundera means to say that in youth, we want to be a part of movements and change. He himself joined the Communist movement as a young man, something he later came to regret for “it was the young who supported terror, in great numbers, through inexperience, immaturity, their all-or-nothing morality, their lyric sense” (Carlisle). According to Kundera, what may begin as a simple desire to belong can lead to the blind following of crusades. In The Book, Kundera tells a cautionary tale against the dangers of the youthful predisposition towards a passion for ideals which can emerge from immaturity and

naivety.

Gombrowicz and Kundera explore youth and immaturity in their respective works yet conclude with contrasting judgments. While both agree that the yearning for youth is a desire hidden deep within us all, the two authors seem to disagree on whether this is a negative or positive desire. For instance, the entire premise of Gombrowicz’s Ferdydurke is a middle-aged man returning to teenagehood. It is a story of the instinctive inner child of humankind, or as Gombrowicz puts it, “the child [that] runs deep in everything” (Gombrowicz 101). Similarly, in The Book of Laughter of Forgetting, Kundera includes several stories, such as those of Tamina and Mama, in which an adult character returns to their childhood. Despite the apparent agreement between the two on the significance of our inner child, Gombrowicz and Kundera relate youth, immaturity, and imperfection in different ways. Gombrowicz finds a great creative power within immaturity, stemming from the freedom it grants. Conversely, Kundera focuses on the ingrained litost of youth, which is more destructive than the Gombrowiczian youth. Although the two authors differ in their stances towards youth and immaturity, together they reveal different sides to the idea of youth in literature.

In Gombrowicz’s Ferdydurke and Kundera’s The Book of Laughter and Forgetting themes of youth and immaturity are recurrent. Despite their similar èmigrè backgrounds, Gombrowicz and Kundera draw on these experiences in contrasting ways. The Gombrowiczian youth is that of creativity and freedom; it is the chance to break from tradition and forge new paths. Gombrowicz takes immaturity’s often destructive and ridiculous qualities and grants it a higher yet still absurd meaning. Conversely, Kundera finds in the gungho an all-or-nothing attitude of youth and potential for torment and misery when met with disappointment, which he attributes to the litost of youth.

Works cited

Carlisle, Olga. “A Talk with Milan Kundera.” New York Times May 19, 1985. Gombrowicz, Witold. Ferdydurke Yale University Press, 2012. Kundera, Milan. TheBookofLaughterandForgetting.Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 1999.

Lutsky, Klara K. TheAestheticsofUnfinalizability:BoundarysubjectivityandLoopholeNarrative in theNovelsofKunderaandGombrowicz New Jersey, Rutgers University, 1998.

PATHOLOGIC AND REDEFINING CONTROL IN

VIDEO GAMES

JACK PRESTON

es the ability to bring out of the gamer what Aristotle calls ‘catharsis’” (Deep Game Manifesto 1). But what is this “deep game,”and what is Pathologic?

Давным-давно одна мышка жила, Которая увлекалась едой человека.

Вино и хлеб, Она опустошила погреб, И наполнила кошачью животишку.

Давным-давно одна мышка жила, Которая увлекалась едой человека. Вино и хлеб, Она опустошила погреб, И наполнила кошачью животишку.

“Why was I born? Why do we exist? It’s not about what you should do to make things better… but being aware of your own existence. And so Russians don’t drink to becomehappy, or to forget their problems. They drink to achieve toska.’

– NikolaiDybowski(SocietyofDead Poets59)

The Ice-Pick Lodge 2005 game Pathologic or Мор. Утопия is a difficult video game to write about. Game criticism is straightforward: you examine the mechanics, the graphics, the story, and you conclude with whether the game is worth playing or not. Writing about Pathologic is so problematic, primarily because nobody should ever play it; the graphics are hideous, the mechanics infuriating, the story is dense and exceptionally wordy (as a text-based game, it has more words than War and Peace), and the original translation was impressively poor. But despite these problems, it is also one of the most remarkable achievements of storytelling I have come across.

It is easy to say what Pathologic is not. It is not fun. It is not pretty. Most importantly, it is not “a video game” in the traditional sense. Pathologic’s aims are more ambitious than maximizing sales; IPL and lead designer Nikolai Dybowski are interested in “the deep game,” the part that “possess-

Pathologic is a 2005 survival horror game by Russian developer Ice-Pick Lodge, re-released in 2012 with an updated translation. The player takes on the role of one of three doctors, the Bachelor, the Haruspex, and the Changeling, who try to cure a plague in a remote town in the Russian steppe over twelve days. This is the basic definition but says nothing of the experience. Pathologic is about dying. It is rooted in the postmodern tradition, imbued with a distinctly Russian form of anguish, toska– a deep mourning and melancholy that Dybowski expresses in the opening quote. IPL spokesperson Alexandra Golubeva was once asked, “like Russia, in Pathologic everybody dies in the end? Isn’t that true everywhere?” She replied, “Yes, but in Russia - faster” (GamingBolt Pathologic Interview). This sentiment points to the spiritual heart of Pathologic– the removal of a player’s sense of control and the forced acceptance of their place in this constructed world. Modern story-driven games lean towards giving the player control over their experience, incorporating more RPG elements to make the player the masters of their experience. Pathologic, however, utterly strips the player of control. You have six stat bars; health, immunity, hunger, exhaustion, infection and reputation. These require constant maintenance and get worse over time. All either need money or time to improve, two things you do not have. And the clock never stops.

софия ли

Мышиная еда

The player is constantly weak. Starvation hits in minutes, and the plague spreads over more and more of the town. Hand-to-hand combat is slow, does very little damage, and is inconsistent in the range of its attacks. Damage does not heal automatically and must be medically treated, which costs money and lowers other stats as well. Everything is a trade-off, which invariably hurts you later; even eating to stave off starvation becomes a difficult decision during hyperinflation. Once you acquire firearms, the situation does not improve much; higher calibre weapons have few rounds, take forever to reload, and all guns are very inaccurate. There is a scenario just after the player acquires a revolver that holds six bullets, and is immediately forced to face off with seven enemies. Good luck.

The game is a first-person shooter, but the best way to survive is to sell your gun the moment you get it. The game forces you to leave yourself vulnerable and powerless because of the danger of the other status effects.

Selling the gun works because of the game’s economy, and entire academic papers have been written on how Pathologic uses capitalism as a survival horror element (Novitz 63). Day 1 as the Bachelor is not that hard. You go to bed feeling secure, with enough money in the bank, wondering why everyone online told you this game was so hard. Then you wake up to find that prices have risen tenfold. To avoid starvation, the player is forced to sell the gun– the only item of value and the only means of protection.

The game is in constant dialogue with both the player and the genre of video games, playing off and subverting expectations. Certain things in video games are taken for granted, like the tutorial level. Early on in video games, the player is walked through the mechanics in a contrived scenario, and most players switch off here. Pathologic knows this and manipulates the player’s complacency.

The Bachelor is run through the tutorial by the two characters pictured in Figure A below. The absurdity of this episode demonstrates the most crucial aspect of this game’s storytelling; the player-character is not the player In most games, the lead character/player gap is minimized as they chase immersion, but here it is emphasized for maximum effect. In the tutorial, the characters address the player rather than the Bachelor, which plays out by explaining very

concepts. The Bachelor is very confused when he is told that “hunger is sated with food,” for example. This is part of the game taking away the control you expect to have as the player. Many conversations will have you choose one of several rude, stupid and often humorous options; the Bachelor needs to build alliances with powerful characters, but the player can only choose to say to these characters, ‘I don’t believe you. And I don’t like you. Actually, that’s too mild a statement. I feel an innate resentment toward you,” or, “so you are a child, huh? I’ve just learned I don’t like children.” The player is forced to play a character so absorbed in his own ego that he discards opportunities to make valuable allies.

Pathologic’s “deep game” dialogue situates this game in Russian postmodernism. Lead developer Nikolai Dybowski is a practicing philosophy professor, so these ideas penetrate deep into the fabric of his art. For him, once a means of storytelling has accessed a method of creative expression that is only possible through that medium, it becomes art. He wants players to see his games as “events” rather than entertainment (Deep Game Manifesto). The real story lies between the developers and the player, not the pixels on the screen. According to Mikhail Epstein, Postmodernism, consists of “the production of reality as a series of plausible copies,” constructed using a series of signs and signifiers, and a sense of playfulness and irony (Epstein 189). Pathologic drips with both. It creates multiple realities by constructing multiple genres– a traditional first-person shooter game, a survival horror game, and an open-world game. But on a closer look, Pathologic is none of these. It is a first-person shooter, but you are encouraged

not to shoot. It is a survival horror in presentation, but the real horror comes not from monsters but from the most terrifying stressors of all: resource management and capitalism. And while the world is open, your path is tightly controlled by the glacial pace of walking, the packed schedule of quests and the ever-spreading plague. You can go anywhere, but you will almost certainly get the plague. Even the quests are mere signs pointing toward a coherent game. According to some ancient Reddit threads, the player does not actually have to do anything. The game will reach an end state as long as you survive the twelve days, and if that is not the most deliciously subversive irony in video games, then I have misunderstood the concept. Only Pathologic can use mechanics like this to drag a story out of the player, messing with their emotions in ways no other art form can. This is the “deep game.”

Here we reach the core mechanic of the entire game– the plague itself. You will likely catch it at some point, and it is difficult to cure. There are scarce antidotes, occasionally sold by street vendors and at least once acquired by murdering a child in cold blood. However, it is in your best interest not to use them. The only way to get the “real” ending(s) is to save your cures and use them on the characters that depend on you. You must grit your teeth through hours spent on the edge of starvation, bleeding money on medicine and constantly losing health, while carrying on your person the very item that will immediately solve your problems. Everything about this game signifies a story about curing the plague, but it forces you to live with it for potentially over twenty hours.

At the end, you are invited into a walled garden by “The Powers That Be.” The player finds two giant children playing with a model of the town, who explain that the whole thing was simply a game they played with dolls; what you thought were your decisions were just part of their game. Though controversial, frustrating and absurd, this ending is fitting. For hours, the game has subverted your expectations, exploited the flaws and conventions of traditional video game logic and manipulated you with constructed mechanics.

It goes even further. If that scene breaks the fourth wall, it only leads to a new stage (literally). If you complete all the side objectives, the player is invited to a theatre by “The

People that Executed the Whole Thing.” There you meet two characters from the tutorial who appear regularly throughout the game. These ARE the game’s lead developers, directly addressing you through the screen. They executed the whole thing. They say, “the hero is a doll, but so are the children. The real game is what is happening between us.” Here, you are invited to continue the conversation as the player-character or as yourself. All games are dialogues between the players and the developers. Pathologic literally invites you onto the stage, taking away the medium through which this conversation is mediated. They built this town to have you experience their ideas, and now they take it all away. They strip you of the reality they created, leaving nothing between you and them. After so much time engaging in an implicit meta-dialogue with the developers, it is apt that the game ends in making it explicit.

The developers are open about the game’s failures, and how they feel about you finishing it. They apologize for the parts of the game that the technology or their budget could not accommodate, noting that this is not the exact experience for which they strived. They make it clear that none of it was real or truly mattered but tell you that that’s okay.

Imagine The Truman Show had ended with the director meeting Truman outside of the dome, only to talk through him to the audience in the cinema, and ask if they enjoyed the film, all while Jim Carrey flounders in confusion.

I opened this piece with an interview with Dybowski, found in “In the Society of Dead Poets” by Carl Johan-Johansson. Toska is an untranslatable Russian concept, a profound spiritual melancholy, an “unspoken, instinctive understanding on a different plane” (Society of Dead Poets 59). In his book on postmodernism, Epstein discusses how Russia was so open to postmodernism because its people were used to living in rapidly constructed realities: the Rurikids establishing the country from nothing, Peter the Great raising a new Paris in a “Finnish Swamp,” the USSR constructing a Soviet reality, and glasnost’ turning this world upside-down. Russia was a “country of facades” (Epstein 191). I think toska explains it– a deep, primordial understanding that the individual has no control. Dybowski calls Russia a “tragic nation” (Society of Dead Poets 60), a vast, empty steppe full of generational trauma. In the middle of that steppe, perhaps we

Figure A

we can find a plague-ravaged town where three doctors fight in vain to stop the unstoppable, not realizing they have no control. Maybe. It certainly isn’t anywhere else.

Pathologic achieves things that the medium has seldom matched in two decades, but it is a niche for a reason. It is riddled with problems, mostly due to the lack of funding and time. Today, eighteen years after release, it really isn’t playable. Luckily, another game that does everything this one does and more. That game is called Pathologic 2.

Works cited

Auerbach, David. “Pathologic 2 and Ostranenie.” Waggish, 2019.

Bailey, Andrew. “Critical Compilation: Pathologic.” Critical Distance, 2020.

Brewis, Harry. “Pathologic is Genius, and Here’s Why.” YouTube, uploaded by Hbomberguy, 2019.

Dybowski, Nikolay. “About the Studio and its Projects.” Teletype.in, 2022.

Dybowski, Nikolay. “On the Threshold of the Bone House, or as Game Becomes Art.” Russian Games Conference Report, 2005.

Epstein, Michael. After the Future: The Paradoxes of Postmodernism and Contemporary Russian Culture Amherst, University of Massachusetts Press, 1995.

Ice-Pick Lodge. “Pathologic 2 Kickstarter Campaign.” Kickstarter, 2020.

Johansson, Carl-Johan and Tomas Gunnarsson. “Döda Poeters Sällskap | In the Society of Dead Poets.” Fienden #2, 2013.

Lotus, R. “Pathologic 2: The World Unsettled.” Bullet Points Monthly, 2020.

Lusk, Gerry. “How Video Games can Learn from Theatre.” YouTube, uploaded by Glusk, 2020.

Mitchell, Jared. “A Body, Divided: Pathologic.” Herotopiazine 2017.

Novitz, Julian. “Scarcity and Survival Horror: Trade as an Instrument of Terror in Pathologic.” Transactions of the Digital Games Research Association vol. 3, no.1, 2017, pp. 63-88.

Pathologic, Ice-Pick Lodge. 2005.

Pathologic 2 Tinybuild, 2019.

“The Deep Game Manifesto.” Ice-Pick Lodge 2001.

“Reading the Lines: Essays on Pathologic 2.” Grace In the Machine, 2020.

Sayed, Rashid. “Pathologic Interview: An Enemy You Can’t Kill.” GamingBolt, 2015.

Smith, Adam. “Secrets of the Ice-Pick Lodge: Pathologic Reimagined.” Rock Paper Shotgun, 2014.

Smith, Quentin. “Butchering Pathologic (Parts 1-3).” Rock Paper Shotgun, 2008.

BROTHER: A THRILLING DEPICTION OF RUSSIA'S POST-PERESTROIKA TRANSITION VEER PURI

Aleksey Balabanov’s neo-noir crime masterpiece Brother (1997) depicts the tumultuous post-Perestroika period in 1990s Russia, an era which laid the groundwork for present-day Putinist Russia. The film illustrates the sociocultural consequences and by-products produced by the ascendency of capitalism following the demise of the Soviet Union. The post-Perestroika era was one of rapid change, as hasty privatization schemes and access to free markets opened up unprecedented economic opportunities for Russians. At the same time, the absence of law and order engendered uncertainty and distrust, and civilians were left to their own devices to survive. The regime shift exacerbated political corruption, and organized crime flourished. Balabanov’s protagonist Danila came to embody an antidote to the instability and chaos of the “wild” nineties, a time where “hustling” was a necessary means of survival in a “dog-eatdog” world.

Brother tells the story of Danila Bagrov (played by Sergei Bodrov), a 22-year-old man who has just returned home from serving in the Chechen War. Danila is unemployed with no financial support from his family, and his violent behaviour will likely land him in prison. His mother urges Danila to move to St. Petersburg to work with his brother Viktor (played by Viktor Surkhorukov). Unbeknownst to the family, Viktor works as a contract killer for the gang, and Danila is soon caught up in the world of crime.

Danila has a do-or-die mentality and is willing to bend the rules to make ends meet. His choice to become a hitman reflects the ruthless individualism and “hustle” at

play in a newly capitalist world. He doesn’t think twice about the impact of his dangerous decisions, such as the families of those he kills. Balabanov counterbalances this individualism with aspects of leftover socialism in 1990s Russia. While Danila is a criminal, he also acts as a vigilante, helping others even when there is no benefit for himself.

When Danila first arrives in St. Petersburg, he becomes allies with a homeless German market vendor named Hoffman (played by Yury Kuznetsov) when Danila saves him from a thug attempting to rob him. While their worldviews differ, Danila and Hoffman become friends and help each other survive; Hoffman even helps Danila bury the bodies of his victims. In a way, Danila is a Robin Hood figure, compensating his allies with his ill-gotten gains before leaving St. Petersburg. He attempts to pay Hoffman, who refuses to take his money, content in his destitute state. However, Danila manages to give money to his drug addict friend, Kat (played by Mariya Zhukova). Kat appears to act as a kind of allegory for capitalism; his acceptance of the money symbolizes the transactional nature of capitalist society, where money is exchanged without personal obligation. In contrast, Hoffman’s refusal of Danila’s money embodies a more benevolent facet of socialism, in which citizens mutually help each other for the betterment of society as a whole. The duality between the two ideological poles of socialism and individualism captures this period of transition and adjustment in post-Perestroika Russia, with the older Hoffman hanging on to the past while the young Kat reaches into the future. Danila’s morally grey vigilantism transcends the discrepan-

SAMIZDAT

-cy between the two outlooks.

In contrast to the socialist ideal of collective harmony, Balabanov’s Brother illustrates a rather different reality characterized by individualism, survival and competition. The prevalence of “mob mentality” is demonstrated through the tension between the rival gang members and their alliances. Within the framework of “mob mentality,” decision-making is driven by emotional rather than rational concerns; gang members must defend their teammates no matter the cost, even if it ends in bloodshed. The individual only protects the group to the extent that it protects himself, whether in the case of a criminal organization or a lovers’ quarrel. While group affiliations fluctuate throughout the movie, the one constant is Danila’s connection with the underdogs, and he goes to extreme lengths to help complete strangers. He saves Hoffman from the thugs and forcefully ensures citizens pay their passenger fee to board the trolley.

Many elements in Brother reveal the tensions of the post-Perestroika era, which struggled to reconcile with the legacies of the Soviet Union. Most notably, Viktor corrects Danila when he calls St. Petersburg by its Soviet title, “Leningrad,” denoting Danila’s lasting connection to the past. The abundance of Western goods showcases the increasing prevalence of materialism. During the Soviet era, foreign goods were only accessible through the black market, but industry privatization led to the widespread availability of consumer goods in the 1990s. Notable brands are everywhere: Viktor drinks Hennessy, Kat eats a McDonald’s burger and Danila purchases clothing from Littlewoods. Balabanov blends the socialist culture of the past with the newly emerging capitalist culture of the 1990s, with Danila’s Walkman Player as the pivotal intersection of the two eras. The use of Nautilus Pompilius, an influential Soviet rock band, for the film’s score further illustrates how cultural remnants of the past lingered even as Russia moved away from its Soviet history.

Overall, Brother is an enthralling viewing experience and a great use of 97 minutes. Aside from providing a holistic and informative context to post-Soviet and pre-Putinist Russia, it is action-packed and heart-throbbing without being overly excessive. The acting and score are nothing

short of phenomenal. It is impressive how Balabanov produced such a fantastic piece of cinema with only 50,000 dollars. Ironically, its commercial success resonates with the economic success many hopeful Russians sought at the time. I highly recommend it to all, not only those curious to learn about post-Perestroika Russia but anyone who wants a fast-paced dopamine release. I am excited to watch the sequel and am curious how Balabanov develops these dialectical themes of socialism and individualism as the two brothers traverse across the Bering Strait to the home of capitalism– the United States.

NAVALNY'S ODYSSEY: A WIND FROM THE WEST? CLAIRE RHEA & ANJOU KANG-STRYKER

Over the last decade, Alexei Navalny has appeared to maneuver towards a captaincy of the Russian opposition movement. In the West, the lawyer-turned-politician is best remembered as the survivor of an assassination attempt by the FSB in August 2020, becoming the recognizable name of the Russian struggle against authoritarianism. The murky circumstances of this event—namely, the involvement of an arcane nerve agent, Novichok—were particularly illustrative of the violence and underhandedness that has proved characteristic of Putin’s march towards dictatorship. Navalny’s plight would remain in the spotlight: his arrest in January 2021 on his return to Russia from Germany provoked the largest anti-government protests yet observed under Putin’s tenure. Public outrage was further compounded by the release of Navalny’s documentary Putin’s Palace scheduled shortly after his arrest, which shed light on government corruption and exposed the construction of an extravagant palace complex to Putin’s name on the shores of the Black Sea. For his contumacy, Navalny was sentenced to a two-and-a-half year prison sentence in February 2021, supplemented by an additional nine years in March 2022 through a judicial process described as “illegitimate” by Amnesty International (Haski). Though Navalny remains imprisoned, his associates uphold his political efforts via his online platforms.

While we must naturally concede Navalny’s vital role in laying bare the deceits of Russian politics domestically and internationally, critics have raised questions concerning his efficacy as the face of the Russian opposition. His bids for presidency through the conventional channels of electoral

politics have seemed a naïve gesture towards change, while numerous lacunae—if not controversies—have undermined his campaign. Can a middle ground be found?

Certainly, in the grand scheme of things, the failure of Navalny’s efforts has stimulated controversial debates regarding the longevity of his influence. Despite the scale of the 2021 protests and his ensuing international notoriety, this period of mass demonstration ultimately remains a short-lived episode when set aside recent developments. The protest movement proved incapable of dissuading the government from its persecution of Navalny– likely the opposite. Observers of the situation are no strangers to the difficulties of facing the deeply entrenched structures of state censorship and political repression, which have proved nearly impenetrable for effective forms of opposition over the last decade. The mass detention of protestors and the use of violence by state authorities were once again customary recourses against dissent. In one illustrative statistic, the Russian human rights project OVD-Info demonstrates that an average of around one in five protestors fell under detention during the early months of 2021 (OVD-Info). This crackdown was further cemented by the arrests of journalists and political figures deemed disloyal. We must not forget Putin’s habit of green-lighting political assassinations organized against dissidents of his regime—with a nod here to the fates of Politkovskaya, Nemtsov or Maganov. Political repression ratcheted up with the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. On March 4, 2022, Putin’s government passed censorship laws which provide imprisonment for up to 5 years for “discrediting”

military operations and up to 15 years for disseminating “unreliable” information (Oremus). These measures seem to have curbed any traction of an effective antiwar movement.

With such a bleak portrait of Russia’s political landscape, it is tempting to question the impact of Navalny’s efforts. However, we must be equally weary of discrediting the signifi cance of his activism. It is likely that Navalny’s actions in exposing corruption, which goes back to 2013, have fostered an irreversible political awareness amongst Russians. According to one study, the Russian public is consistently more engaged with politics, specifi cally the younger generation, who appear more critical of Putin’s regime, willing to acknowledge their lack of civil rights and the superfi ciality of their country’s electoral politics (Kennan Institute). This development is demonstrated by the unprecedented scale of protests during recent years and the mounting social tensions which have surfaced through the claws of Russia’s state censorship. Navalny’s use of online platforms and expository fi lms has proved to be a groundbreaking strategy for raising public awareness in an age where representation and mass media are paramount in mobilizing political action. However, this has also worked to his detriment—Navalny has often been subject to accusations of xenophobia, in part due to a 2007 video where he is seen to depict Muslim militants as “cockroaches” needing to be exterminated, as well as his sympathetic comments made to the anti-immigration movement in recent years (Haski; Starr).

Those hoping for more radical change will consider Navalny, at best, a meek compromise. Self-characterized as a “nationalist democrat” and candidate on the centre-right, some have noted how Navalny’s devotion to exposing corruption has left considerable lacunae in his preparations for an attractive political agenda (Coalson; Lane). His rhetoric can also be said to tread a fi ne line of personalized politics, at times exhibiting a populistic undertone refl ective of his lack of a coherent political model for the future. Furthermore, his bid for presidency in 2018 demonstrated a tepid adherence to the conventional channels of electoral politics in Russia, failing to mobilize any considerable political support.

On the other hand, groups such as Voina or Pussy Riot—feminist protest and performance art groups—have

offered hope of an opposition which transgresses the traditional protocols of political activism, rejuvenating the very fabric of protest in Russia. Of course, their shock acts also run the risk of alienating large segments of the population from opposition movements. Yet the former chess superstar and political activist Garry Kasparov urges us to look beyond the personalities which may incarnate anti-government action in Russia, arguing we must instead focus on the universal democratic struggle against authoritarianism (Vindman; Kasparov). In this way, Kasparov also refutes Western scruples into the controversies of Navalny’s ethno-nationalist comments as a diversion from the fact of his resistance, something he warns plays into the hands of Putin’s smear campaigns of his opponents (Hounshell).

Regardless of the position we take, the future of the Russian government seems uncertain. With a continuous effusion of rumours concerning Putin’s declining health and troubling reports of disunity amongst Russia’s war effort, we may be arriving at a critical juncture for the opposition. As we may see, despite Putin’s imprisonment of Navalny, it appears he may never be able to fully rid himself of the key.

A CULINARY JOURNEY THROUGH A POST-SOVIET CHILDHOOD

food they had never tried. Their refi ned palates, trained on Segal’s frozen pizza deals and 2 Chow, were up for trying something different.

Work cited

Coalson, Robert. “Is Aleksei Navalny a Liberal or a Nationalist?” The Atlantic, 29 July 2013.

Haski, Pierre. “La faute d’Amnesty International envers Alexei Navalny.” L’OBS, 2 March 2021.

Hounshell, Blake. “A Chess Champion’s Warning About Ukraine and U.S. Democracy.” The New York Times, 4 October 2022.

Kennan Institute. “Civic Engagement and Political Participation of Russian Youth.” Wilson Center, 15 September 2020.

Lane, Anthony. “The Bitter Russian Truths of ‘Navalny.’” The New Yorker, 24 April 2022.

Oremus, Will. “In Putin’s Russia, ‘fake news’ now means real news.” The Washington Post, 11 March 2022.

OVD-Info. “Списки задержанных в связи с акцией в поддержку Алексея Навального 21 апреля 2021 года.” OVD-Info, 21 April 2021.

Starr, Terrell Jermaine. “We need to have a talk about Alexei Navalny.” The Washington Post, 1 March 2021.

Vindman, Alexander and Garry Kasparov. “In Russia, it’s not Navalny vs. Putin. It’s democracy vs. Authoritarianism.” The Washington Post, 22 March 2021.

During a cold night in December, my two roommates and I found ourselves huddled around the dinner table. Placed before us was a spread of food that has roots in Eastern Europe but holds a special place in my childhood memory.

The palate I selected had been a constant fi xture growing up, no matter how the seasons changed or my age. I decided to introduce my roommates to some of the staple foods I used to see around Christmas and Easter time.

If this read inspires an appetite for Soviet cuisine, you can fi nd the following items at Marche Euro-Victoria on Avenue Van Horne. Marche Euro-Victoria is an unassuming little shop, stocking only three shelves and a tiny butcher’s section tucked away in the corner. It has a selection of everything needed to create a Soviet culinary experience.

I asked my roommates Ashray and Aske to review

With the fi replace blazing and snow falling outside, we took a break from our studies and dove into a nostalgic assortment of my childhood foods and memories. Ashray Malleshchari is originally from Bangalore, India, while Aske Hjarnaa is from Copenhagen, Denmark. Coming from all around the globe, our vastly different experiences with food gave us a great foundation to explore what was set before us. I am from Toronto, but my heritage is part Bengali, part Eastern European, and I grew up speaking Russian and English at home. My mother grew up in Soviet Moldova and immigrated after the Soviet Union collapsed. As a result, my earliest connections to Moldova and my mother’s childhood were through the foods she passed down to us.

Blinis: 6/10

Blinis are circular, thin, and resemble crepes. They are pancakes made from buckwheat fl our and cooked on a hot pan, often for breakfast, and served with smetana (sour cream) or jam. It’s easy to lose track of how many you eat when they’re fresh off the pan; 20 or 30 in one sitting is dangerously possible. Aske noted that blini with caviar is served in Denmark, advertised as a traditional Russian dish. They need to be eaten in combination with a jam or sauce of some kind; by themselves, they are not very fi lling and are rather plain. Try a blini if you’re in the market for a pancake

TIMUR SAIFUL ISLAM

alternative and think that crepes don’t sound dangerous enough. I picked up about 10 of them for $2 from Marce Euro-Victoria.

Cheesecake Bars: 10/10

Cheesecake bars, unfortunately named “Curd Snacks,’’ are a Baltic treat. They are made of tvorog, a soft white cheese similar to cream cheese, that is frozen and enveloped in chocolate. They come in a variety of flavours, ranging from chocolate to apricot. These are from Lithuania, a region of the former Soviet Union that has undergone extreme economic change and is now considered a Western partner belonging to NATO. However, these cheesecake bars are holdovers from the culinary past of the Soviet Union, which incorporated a wide range of republics and cultures. The cheesecake bars are delicious; the chocolate melts in your mouth while the frozen cheesecake stays solid. Ashray said he would eat them all day if possible, and Aske loved the rich flavour. The fruits inside the cream create an irresistible taste and add to the natural sweetness that the tvorog has. The cheesecake bars earn a 10/10 for their variety, richness, and uniqueness. We highly recommend them as a dessert.

Kvas: 10/10

Imagine a sweet drink with a base of molasses and rye. Kvas is similar to a mix between the sweetness of Coca-Cola and the flavour of a sweet non-alcoholic beer. Kvas is traditionally served throughout Eastern Europe. I remember visiting Moldova as a kid, getting kvas on the roadside and enjoying its colourful flavour profile. The kvas I found was brewed in Canada but remains similar to the quality of the authentic drink you would find in Chisinau. Ashray loved kvas and thought it was the ideal drink and was unique to Eastern Europe. Aske noted consistent similarities between the foods of Scandinavia and Eastern Europe. Poor climates and lack of access to spices result in foods that are primarily salted or preserved in some sort of way. We found that food from these countries focuses on a few essential staples: rye, potato, and meat. The sweetness of the molasses balances the rye-bread flavour to create a mix that is easy to drink. If you are tired of sodas and want a beer-like taste

while going about your day, kvas is the ideal drink.

Moldovan Chocolate: 4/10

Moldova is famous for its wine and fruit production and has an award-winning distillery called KVINT in its Transnistria region. They have a variety of fruits, including apricot and prune dipped in a chocolate glaze. The first was in blue packaging, and we could not read the description since the label was in Moldovan, so we were in for a surprise. Upon opening the package, we found a small piece of dark chocolate about the size of your pinky. As we bit into it, we found a hard core of prune inside. The prune was dried and had a sweetness that disappeared as quickly as we bit into it. The chocolate broke into pieces like shards of glass in our mouths, then slowly melted. The following chocolate was wrapped in pink packaging, and again, this was all we could discern about it until the first bite. We took an adventurous bite and found a dried apricot encased in the same chocolate. Although the apricot was sweeter, we could not overcome the dryness of the chocolate and the overall lack of flavour

Riga Smoked Sprats: 6/10

The Riga sprats were a solid contender for the most unique item. Whether you’re in the cold climates of Eastern Europe or enduring the chilly winter months in Montreal, sometimes an oily preserved fish just hits the spot. The sprats came in a black can, branded with the words ‘Latvia’ and ‘Riga’ and the Riga skyline drawn in gold. The sprats once lived in the Baltic sea off the coast of Latvia and were prepared following the ancient tradition of preserving food for harsh winters. They are similar to sardines but far more fatty and oily. It is essential to eat them with bread, ideally a hearty rye that can soak up the oils and sit in your stomach better. A warning: eating too many leaves you feeling ill. The best way to serve and eat sprats is in small and balanced quantities. Consider a can of Riga sprats if you’re in the market for extra Omega 3 and 6..

-ished in Central Asia during the Stalinist period. Due to the absence of napa cabbage in Central Asia, carrots were used as the main ingredient of kimchi. The carrots are shredded and marinated in spices and vinegar. Korean carrots were unknown to South Korea in the 1990s and early 2000s. The carrots have a peppery kick and pair well with sprats or bread. Usually, they are served as a side in combination with a classic former Soviet Union dish, mashed potatoes and kotleti. They can be used as a palate cleanser and are excellent for those interested in exploring a variety of flavours on their plate. It is the perfect complement to any potato and meat-based dish, adding a flavourful vegetable component. Another favourite, they get 8.5/10 for their versatility.

The food on this table represents a journey through my childhood. Growing up, I had the opportunity to move across three continents, over six different schools, and have made friends in cities worldwide. Throughout all of this, I found that the only constants have been the trips to the Eastern European grocery stores that we were able to find in every place my family settled down. Friends came and went, leases ended, and flights were taken around the globe, but the thread that connects all of these moments is food. Each item has a special place in understanding the intricacies of culture and identity. I would give them a try; food is one of the few universal components that all living beings share. Take a trip to Euro-Victoria on a Saturday afternoon and see what sparks your interest. I promise that an intriguing adventure awaits you.

Korean Carrot: 8.5/10

Korean carrots, or morkovchka, have a weird history. They were created by the Korean diaspora that flour-