{"id":437677,"date":"2025-09-20T04:06:50","date_gmt":"2025-09-20T04:06:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/437677\/"},"modified":"2025-09-20T04:06:50","modified_gmt":"2025-09-20T04:06:50","slug":"in-strong-roots-russias-invasions-cant-kill-ukrainian-cooking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/437677\/","title":{"rendered":"In ‘Strong Roots,’ Russia’s Invasions Can’t Kill Ukrainian Cooking"},"content":{"rendered":"

Why do Russians do the things they do? Why, specifically, do they commit atrocities and reject democracy? It\u2019s a question pondered by many terrific thinkers<\/a>, writers, activists, analysts<\/a>, diplomats, and so on. I have spent too much time on it myself<\/a>.<\/p>\n


\n \"Strong<\/p>\n

Strong Roots book cover
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

Strong Roots: A Memoir of Food, Family, and Ukraine<\/strong><\/a>, Olia Hercules, Knopf, 288 pp., $30, August 2025<\/p>\n

In 2025, after more than three years of war and occupation in Ukraine, a much better question is this one: Why do Ukrainians resist Russia so fiercely?<\/p>\n

Many of the answers can be found in Olia Hercules\u2019s wonderful new memoir, Strong Roots<\/a>, which examines Ukraine\u2019s recent history through the prism of her relatives\u2019 experiences.<\/p>\n

Hercules is a celebrated, London-based chef and native of the Russian-occupied Kherson region, and food plays a central role in Strong Roots. It\u2019s not a culinary history, however, but a story focused on sensation\u2014the bright, vibrant feel of specific places, points in time, rich tastes, lists of ingredients that read like poetry. The details of her prose are dizzying, from the \u201cfractal patterns\u201d of famous Ukrainian sunflowers to \u201cthunder scratching its belly\u201d against the factory buildings of Ukraine, which has both a \u201cnatural beauty\u201d and is an \u201cindustrial behemoth,\u201d she writes.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

A woman smiles while being interviewed on a stage for cooking.<\/p>\n

Olia Hercules demonstrates her cooking skills while interviewed by Hersha Patel during the ONBlackheath Festival in London on Sept. 10, 2016.Lorne Thomson\/Redferns <\/p>\n

The central theme of Strong Roots is life itself, the desire to live and persist, which stands in stark contrast of the Russian state\u2019s celebration of glorious death<\/a> and Russia\u2019s apocalyptic, hysterical insistence that the world must bow to it, or else die in a burst of nuclear fire<\/a>. (As a foreign policy analyst, I maintain that this is a bluff, but one that tells you something terrifying about Russia itself.)<\/p>\n

Ukrainians, as Hercules will show you, are simply not like Russians when it comes to their politics and the ideology that drives said politics. They are too in love with life, even as Ukrainian lives continue to be snuffed out and maimed by Russia\u2019s creaking war machine.<\/p>\n

In recounting the history of her family, Hercules paints a vivid picture of repressions and deportations, of human beings bashed against the rocks of history on the whims of whatever psychopath, from Nicolas II to Stalin to Putin, was in control in Moscow.<\/p>\n

The memoir is a litany of tragedies, but it is never bitter. As Hercules tells the story of her maternal grandmother, Liusia, she states, \u201cif she was given a chance to live her whole life again, and if there was no other way but to repeat it exactly as it was, she would do it. She would live her life once more, she would endure the horrors again, if only she also had the chance to live through all the good moments, too. She loved life so fiercely.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Ukrainian<\/p>\n

Ukrainian soldiers in the woods queue for food as it is served.<\/p>\n

Members of the Territorial Defense Forces, a support force to the Ukrainian army, have dinner after exercises near Bucha, Ukraine, on July 13, 2022.Sergei Supinsky\/AFP via Getty Images <\/p>\n

Liusia and her family suffered forced exile and poverty, the mass famine of the Holodomor, and the terror of Stalinism. But she didn\u2019t allow it to darken her heart, or to sour her hearty cooking\u2014real Ukrainian cuisine, not the bland gruel imposed by the Soviets. As Hercules notes, the Soviet Union stripped local cuisine of its flair and taste across the board, with strictly imposed rules for all ingredients, including seasoning, and a joyless approach to meeting one\u2019s nutritional needs that bordered on punishment.<\/p>\n

As a native of Ukraine myself, I found Hercules\u2019s journey through her family history to be so familiar that it flattened me. It\u2019s not just the history of what Stalin did then, and what Putin is doing today, it\u2019s both the raw grief and the joy that accompany the narrative.<\/p>\n

Like Hercules, I am haunted by nightmares and sleep paralysis demons today, as Russia\u2019s war continues to rage on. I tell people that I would like to die already. I am tired. Living thousands of miles away from my native land, under a peaceful Western sky, I am overwhelmed with survivor\u2019s guilt.<\/p>\n

But, also like Hercules, I am hopeful in an angry way. It\u2019s a hopefulness borne out of love for family and friends, our quaint traditions, our loud dinner parties. Nobody really parties<\/a> like Ukrainians, in my experience.<\/p>\n

Ukraine is a big place, home to many different kinds of people. I am originally from Kyiv and haven\u2019t done much hanging out in the Kherson region during peacetime; my knowledge of it comes from my late father\u2019s memories of the region, where he sometimes traveled for work, and his love for its local watermelons. He insisted, loudly and repeatedly, that it was a beautiful part of the country that the Soviets trampled with their idiotic policies\u2014like the destruction of natural habitats\u2014and their habit of making people live in cheap, ugly buildings<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Seeing my father\u2019s words echoed in Strong Roots made me recognize the thread of indignation that unites Ukrainian families from different parts of the country. Hercules devotes an ample amount of space for explaining how Russification of the region under the Soviets drove vibrant local traditions to the periphery of existence and destroyed the landscape.<\/p>\n

\n
\n

\"A<\/p>\n

A flooded kitchen.<\/p>\n<\/dt>\n

\n\t\t\t\tA flooded kitchen following the destruction of the Kakhovka dam in Kherson, Ukraine, on June 7, 2023. Alex Babenko\/Getty Images\n\t\t\t\t<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n


<\/p>\n

\n
\n

\"A<\/p>\n

A volunteer serves food from a giant pot onto many plates.<\/p>\n<\/dt>\n

\n\t\t\t\tVolunteers prepare food for people displaced following the destruction of the Kakhovka dam in Kherson on June 11, 2023. Alex Chan\/SOPA Images via Getty Images\n\t\t\t\t<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n


<\/p>\n

Putin, of course, is now trying to finish the job. His likely destruction of the Kakhovka dam<\/a>, recounted in the book, is just one example of the terrible nihilism that radiates from Moscow. How does one face a deranged enemy like that? With weapons, of course, but also with remembering who you are, and that you are fighting from what love.<\/p>\n

Strong Roots is a beautiful exercise in preservation. The prose is a patchwork of pain and furious, enduring affection; whether she\u2019s describing ingredients for a borsch made for her displaced parents or delving into how the Ukrainian language treats the word \u201chome,\u201d Hercules is poignant and vulnerable and defiant all at once.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy did I grow up believing Ukrainian literature was tedious and peripheral, but Russian literature was profound and globally important?\u201d Hercules asks at one point\u2014a question that many of us in the diaspora have also asked, with shame and confusion in our hearts. \u201cWhy did we use Ukrainian language in a pejorative way?\u201d<\/p>\n

This article is featured in the FP Weekend newsletter, a curation of our best book reviews, deep dives, and other reads that take a step back from the drumbeat of the news. Get the lineup directly every Saturday.\n <\/p>\n

This article is featured in the FP Weekend newsletter, a curation of our best book reviews, deep dives, and other reads that take a step back from the drumbeat of the news. Get the lineup directly every Saturday.<\/p>\n

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Generations, the book makes clear, were not only taught but forced to do so. The wages of disobedience were violent death at worst and exile to the margins of society at best. The same is being done<\/a> by Russians in Ukraine\u2019s occupied territories today.<\/p>\n

The book asks, how dare they? And also: Who cares about them, when we are who we are? Pour another round and tell another story. Face the darkness and remain yourself as much as you can.<\/p>\n

There is a lesson here for anyone and everyone who contemplates dark times. These times call for extreme bravery, yes, but also extreme grounding, a grip of history as tough as any roots. As Hercules\u2019s brother Sasha, who volunteered for the war effort immediately after the full-scale invasion, told her, \u201cIf we miss this moment, we will never close this circle.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Why do Russians do the things they do? Why, specifically, do they commit atrocities and reject democracy? It\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":437678,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7654],"tags":[3444,31,148274,2000,299,87623,6219,657,771],"class_list":{"0":"post-437677","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ukraine","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-democracy","10":"tag-demography","11":"tag-eu","12":"tag-europe","13":"tag-fp-weekend","14":"tag-homepage_regional_europe","15":"tag-ukraine","16":"tag-war"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115234658503013217","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437677","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=437677"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437677\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/437678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=437677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=437677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=437677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}