kucharka

[simon.krysl at DUKE.EDU]

Dear friends and colleagues,
I thank, again, everyone who has replied to my query about the Kommunist
newspaper in 1918. I have one further question which is not unconnected - I
was searching for (and found) Bukharin's early comments on the Lenin quote
regarding ,,cook" (kucharka) that should be taught/ can learn to rule the
state." The fate of this utopian image (if that is what one calls it) has its
curves, between Lenin in 1917, Bucharin, Mayakovsky and onward: can anybody help
in tracing it?
That is, I am particularly interested in the moment (if there ever was one)
where the task of learning - on the side both of the cook and the state, if
one follows Bucharin and later Brecht - became a static, even more utopian
description of the future state of communism. (In the times of communism (or
before) the kucharka will be able...) One would assume this changed at the
Stalin time or at least in the late 20s : but I have not seen the quote being
used by anyone in Russia after Trotsky in 1925: that is, used anywhere where
the source could be assigned.
Secondly, have you perhaps seen any literary use (in Russia)  of the figure?
And finally: I have seen a commentary saying that the word "kucharka"
(female cook, in Lenin's use) meant actually something close to "scullery
maid": is that the meaning it had in the teens and twenties of the last
century, or still?
I apologize to everyone to bother - and especially to those to whom this seems
a silly search... perhaps it is, but I have been too curious.

With many, many thanks
Sincerely yours,
Simon Krysl

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