Life offers few certainties but there are surely advantages to being a demographer and a country bumpkin. It makes you less cynical where most people are, and more cynical where trepidation is expected. The good place to start this essay is to say that I self-identify as a country bumpkin for a good reason. There are just three places I lived in and know well. Just three. One is a godforsaken location in the South-West of today’s Russia that might as well remain nameless, who cares after all..? Is it not just bears drinking vodka and playing balalaikas there? Another one is the majestic Jerusalem, second to none, I might have been born there if not the Romans. None of them prepared me for the third, and so far, the last: the South of England, the United Kingdom. Cambridge, to be precise. There are other small stations in the middle but they matter less for the purpose of this story.
When I first came to Cambridge, UK, my son was little. Maybe 2 years old. I took him punting. It is that kind of Cambridge tourist activity. Locals do not do it, I was simply very new. You hire a boat and a guide who takes you for an hour up and down the river Cam, in-between the colleges, and tells you a little about the colleges on the right and on the left and a few jokes. The boat is large, you share it with other tourists. It is fairly bearable if you have a child. As you go, you encounter no end of birds. Ducks, wild geese, swans. I pointed them out to my son, named them, told him the differences between the male and the female ducks and informed him, in conclusion, about the culinary properties of each kind of bird. Ducks, you know, taste a lot like game, and wild geese are different, they taste like domestic geese and very fatty. I never tried swans but my guess would be -they are like chicken.
“Why are you talking about how all these birds’ taste?’-she said. She was platinum-blond, maybe late 60s, sounding vaguely American, a tourist with whom I was fortunate enough to share a boat. “We do not eat them, they are ornamental…”. She was speaking in the best tradition of the Russian nobility. I am always taken by this “we”. “We, Nicholas The Second…Emperor and Autocrat of all Russia, King of Poland, Grand Duke of Finland, proclaim…”. “Thank you , Your majesty”-I almost said. I did not though, but I would have been prouder of myself if I did.
So-why? Why did I say what I said to my son? Because I grew up in a culture where (1) animals are eaten by humans, (2) ducks and geese, wild or not, are eaten by humans and (3) subsistence crisis was over the corner at all times. Those people who did not hunt or fish routinely were at a disadvantage. All that is to say: eating what is (no longer) eaten in the West is perfectly normal. I promise you. It is. And, in the more scientific moments (that should inform the daily life though they do not very often), you recognise it yourself, my dear Western reader. The moment you allow that ‘different cultures exist’, you said it yourself. And the moment you said that ‘ different cultures enrich the West’, you said it yourself. Enrichment is an act of bringing something where it was not before.
In “Population and Nutrition”, Massimo Livi Bacci, an Italian historical demographer, describes in detail some of the historical European diets. Some of them sound as utterly unliveable. They were border-line liveable in fact, the point he is trying to make throughout the book. Yet, the main thing that would strike the modern and the postmodern reader is just how desperately hungry people were at all times . When they were not desperately hungry they were peckish. Problem number one of the pre-or non-capitalist societies was gaining some weight not losing it. I remember this myself, and vividly, it is not something that, once experienced, is (he-he) forgotten. Everything that could be eaten, was eaten. How did the French come to eat frogs? Oysters? The same way the historical Icelandic people came to eat ravens’ cadavers and Russians bark from the trees, during the period of the Great Hunger. The siege of Leningrad in the 1940 and the Golodomor of the 1930s are described in the Soviet/Russian popular culture as times when cannibalism was attempted. I am not aware of the firm proofs of that, but the existence of this twist in urban legends is a strong indication of something in its own right. This, together with the “cultural differences”, sorts a lot of things out. Strange and unusual things can be eaten by people, due to their upbringing or /and at times of economic distress. In fact, it would be weird if it did not happen.
Funny that….All that aside, when Soviet immigrants came to America in the 1970s and 1980s, some of them, impoverished and shell-shocked by the cost of living, wondered how the situation could be helped by those ornamental ducks in public parks. I confess to speaking to one of them. He caught and ate a bird from the park. Now, the life may not be the same for you, I know,,,yet, it happened. Little did you know, my Western reader, all that fighting for the release of the Russian Jewry from the life-long Soviet captivity, all that “let-my -people go” led to that!
And when you regained your breath, let us see what is happening with Donald Trump who recently had the temerity to suggest that Haitian immigrants ‘eat dogs, cats and pets”. The truth of the matter, I know nothing about Haiti. Or close to nothing. Let us see. As a Jew, I know that its population is not very different in size from Israel, below 11 million. As a demographer, I know that it is a cultural isolate: a French speaking nation in an environment totally dominated by English and French speaking culture. As a product of the Soviet education, I know (from the history book for ages 14-15) that Haitian uprising of slaves (may be 19th century? Help me here) was the ONLY successful one in human history in a sense that it led to the establishment of the independent political entity run by these former slaves (am I right?). That is all. But when I heard “Haitians eat pets” from Trump, I imagined desperately hungry people. I could easily believe it. For some reason , I remembered the sorrel and nettle soups that were still cooked in the USSR of the 1980s. Only the basic version, without the romantic eggs that are added by the British chefs to this miserable ‘delicacy’. Just sorrel and salt water. Unlike Kamala Harris, I did not feel like shaking my head condescendingly at the pets’ news. (Her advisors should tell her stop that, this does not make her appear more credible). If this, or things like this, do not happen, then I do not exist.
Back to the Haitians, I have no idea about their cuisine and how Western pets fit into it but I hope their situation improves to the point where they can afford meat, or better meat. Back to Trump, it would be important to note that in 2018 President Trump signed into law the ‘Dog and Cat Meat Prohibition Act’, which “ prohibits shipping, sale and transportation of animals for the “purpose of slaughter for human consumption, except for Native American tribes performing religious ceremonies”. The Act was a joint Republican initiative and an initiative of the animal welfare groups, e.g. Animal Hope and Wellness Foundation. The main purpose was to discourage the practice in East Asia but also in response to reports that it is present, on a much smaller scale, in the USA. Have you heard that mentioned anywhere? No? Odd that…It is important in this context. Just because Judith Butler said nothing , it does not mean it is not important. They say that wholesome political life requires a vision, that sense of direction, purpose, the sense of place where one wants to be in the future. I would also say that it requires a sense of the past, where we came from. Not just culturally. Materially. Almost invariably, we came from a desperate place. Remembering that alone will go a long way. In this particular case, it should help with separating the essential truth in political arguments from the style and tone in which they are delivered. Or, as the Russian saying goes, in “separating the meat from the flies”.