Anna Politkovskaya at the table

At a Russian table, one does not serve a starter, main course, and dessert in the French style. You open with zakuski (small savory and pickled bites that accompany tea or vodka), then comes pervoyé (the "first": always a hot soup, the heart of the meal), followed by vtoroyé (the "second": grain, meat, or fish). Everything stretches out around the samovar, tea flowing for hours while people talk, argue, and warm themselves. In Anna Politkovskaya's Soviet and post-Soviet Russia, this rhythm structured both the kitchen of a Moscow apartment and shared meals with Chechen families in the field.

Two absolute markers of Russian cuisine: smetana (thick sour cream) that goes on almost everything — soup, kasha, pirozhki — and dill (ukrop) that perfumes broths, marinades, and even tea. Anna, raised between New York (where her Soviet diplomat parents were posted at the UN) and Moscow, found in that spoonful of smetana and that sprinkle of dill the simple, recognizable taste of home.