The Thanksgiving holiday in the United States has a checkered past. Its more recent origins lie largely in government attempts at pushing propagandistic narratives. For example, Abraham Lincoln demanded Americans be thankful for ”the advancing armies and navies of the Union” during the Civil War. George Washington instructed Americans to give thanks for the new constitution in 1789. While Andrew Jackson refused to boss around his constituents with days of mandatory gratitude, proclamations of prayer and thanksgiving have been used by many US presidents, especially during times of crisis.
In practice, however, what is now Thanksgiving Day involves mostly a celebration of domestic and family life, quite separate from any presidential imperatives. Moreover, Thanksgiving celebrations take place primarily within the private and commercial spheres of life. Preparing a Thanksgiving meal requires shopping for goods. Traveling to see friends and relatives often requires the purchase of various transportation-related goods and services. Enjoying the day is usually enhanced by consuming various forms of private sector entertainment.
These holiday activities and rituals are not fundamentally different, however, from what countless human beings enjoy on a regular basis: a meal and leisure activities with friends and family within a private home and domestic setting. These gatherings reinforce the status of the family as a fundamental building block of human society. They remind us that private meals like a Thanksgiving meal are something valuable and something distinct from public activities in public settings.
Historically, not everyone has been pleased by such things. In the Soviet Union, for example, there were concerted efforts to abolish the very concept of the domestic space and notions of “hearth and home” by consigning citizens to communal kitchens and communal living spaces. The goal was to abolish the “bourgeois” family, which was so often grouped around a private kitchen.
The Socialist War on Private Domestic Life
It should not shock us to learn that communist totalitarians once sought to eliminate domestic meals as a common aspect of civilized life. The destruction of the family as a bourgeois institution was explicitly listed among Marx’s priorities for implementing the communist revolution.
After the communists came to power in what became the Soviet Union in 1917, the new regime sought to address what were then common housing shortages by placing Russians in state-owned communal apartments—called kommunalki—where seven or more families were expected to share a single kitchen and bathroom.
Driven by both ideology and economic necessity, the communists viewed domestic meals and meal preparation as wasteful activities. Both men and women, it was believed, would be better off spending their time in factories and other settings where production of industrial goods could be maximized.
Indeed, in 1923 Lenin’s communists released a propaganda pamphlet titled Down with the Private Kitchen. As recounted by Anya von Bremzen, the pamphlet explained how “the traditional domestic kitchen was branded as ideologically reactionary” and ineffectual. The Soviet authorities pushed residents toward government-run cafeterias known as stolovayas (dining rooms). This was believed to accelerate the process of conditioning Soviet citizens with communist propaganda. Eating became a political activity.
In typical Soviet fashion, however, these new dining venues were anything but a pleasant respite and they were, in fact, “ghastly affairs.”
But from the Soviet perspective, it was all quite necessary.
