Did Russian peasants eat tomatoes?

[lumierefrere]

Thank you Andrey for filling in the details and I'm so sorry about your greatgrandfather. How brave those poor people must have been to stand up for themselves. How they must have struggled to survive.

Barb

[dokutaaguriin]

Andrey's story sounds familiar....
The story my mother told me about my Ukrainian great grandfather was that since he absolutely refused to give up his land to the Communists, they shot him.

Jeff who loves a strong tomato soup base for his Borscht.

[Andrey_BY]

Barb, actually these people were not so brave but were very hungry after they've got a very good crop of grains and vegetables and lost it right afterwards.

Jeff, I can smell your traditional Ukrainian borshch (the right name for this soup!) on the other side of Atlantic

[Jimche]

Andrey,

Great post. Very informative and interesting. My girlfriend is originally from Bulgaria - her uncle left there about 30 years ago and she came to the US in the early 90s. She has great memories of the family gardens that they had there, and in particular, the many gardening lessons she learned from her grandmother. I understand that they did save seed for some vegetables the part of Bulgaria where she grew up (Novi Han, north of Sophia). They did have some things done collectively, as she describes how the men of the town would work together, bringing crops to market.

A somewhat funny thing is that her grandmother loved to use DDT, long after it was banned even in Bulgaria. I guess it worked like nothing else for the Colorado Beetle, which attacked potatoes. When I first met her, Galina told me such great things about the food in Bulgaria, particularly the peppers. I had a hard time believing this, though, because everything I had read here in the US about food during the Communist era was negative: long lines waiting to buy rotten fruit and vegetables, things like this. That may have been true is some places, but probably not as pervasive as our own propoganda made it seem.

Another funny thing is the name of the Bulgarian pepper lots of people grow: Chervena Chushka, which means, "Red Pepper". I can picture some American or western European seed saver asking a market merchant in broken Bulgarian what the variety name is for this wonderful pepper, and getting a response like: "What, that? What's it look like to you? It's a red pepper!" ... and the seed saver dutifully notes, Chervena Chuska.

Jim

[Andrey_BY]

Jim,

yes, I've seen many names similar to so common Chervena Chuska in SSE Yearbook seed collection. I believe they are from foreign gardeners who visited farmer markets in Eastern Europe and have adopted any words from the sellers of these seeds in response to their question much like you, Jim, said

As for Bulgaria there was a bit different situation there. Like in other Warsaw Pack countries Bulgarians had to follow Soviet Union model of life, but their ancient agricultural traditions and warm climate always give them much more liberal gardening and food supplying system.

[Raymondo]

Well, not much tomato talk but what a fascinating thread!

[clara]

I've asked Reinhard Kraft about the two Ludmillas (Ludmilla's Pink Heart und Ludmilla's Red Plum), because he was the first to introduce them and here's what he told me (I add the original text because here are some folks who understand German very well):

"Fast alle Kasachstan-Sorten die ich bisher von Ludmilla erhalten habe, hat sie vor 14 Jahren aus ihrer alten Heimat mit nach Deutschland gebracht oder von dort noch lebenden Verwandten zugeschickt bekommen.
In ihrem Dorf in Kasachstan bauen fast alle Tomaten zum Verkauf oder zur Selbstversorgung an. Es existiert dort schon seit langer Zeit eine große Vielfalt an Sorten, aber keine (außer vielleicht Ochsenherz) hat einen Namen wie bei uns hier üblich. L. Pink Heart und L. Red Plum bauten schon ihre Großeltern Jahr für Jahr an und das war vor mindestens 50 Jahren, also sozusagen Familienerbstücke - benannt habe ich sie allerdings. Sehr interessant fand ich, dass sie schon in ihrer Kindheit schwarze=braunrote, weiße und grünreife Tomaten kennen gelernt hat. Woher die Sorten alle stammen und ob sie noch genau so sind wie vor 50 Jahren wird sich wohl nicht mehr klären lassen.
Ludmilla und ihr Mann sind leidenschaftliche Gärtner und schaffen es, sich beinahe selbst zu versorgen. Neben einer Unmenge an Tomaten und Paprika bauen sie z. B. auch Gurken und Melonen, Kartoffeln und Schwarzbeeren an."

"Nearly all Kazachstan-varieties I've gotten from Ludmilla are those she has brought with her 14 years ago when leaving her native country or which were sent to her from relatives. In her Kazachstan village, nearly all people are growing tomatoes for self supply or for selling. Since a long time, there's a large number of varieties, but none (perhaps apart the oxheart tomatoes) has a name as ours usually have. Ludmilla's Red Plum and Ludmilla's Pink Heart were grown by her grand-parents since at least 50 years, thus family heirlooms, but I gave them their names. For me it was very interesting, that Ludmilla knew black = brown/red, white and green when ripe varieties from her childhood. Problably nobody will be able to clarify where all these varieties have come from and whether they have changed in those 50 years.
Ludmilla and her husband are passionate gardeners and nearly manage to supply theirselves with everything. They grow - beside tons of tomatoes and paprika (sweet peppers) - cucumbers and melons, potatoes and blachberies."

I hope that you understand my poor translation..., but I think the two Ludmilla's story might be of some interest for those who will grow it this year.
clara

[carolyn137]

I hope that you understand my poor translation..., but I think the two Ludmilla's story might be of some interest for those who will grow it this year.

*****

Clara, your translation was just fine and thanks for contacting Reinhard to find out more about the Ludmilla ones b/c it helps to clarify that they were not acquired in Germany.

I grew both Ludmilla's Red Plum and Ludmilla's Pink Heart this past summer, listed them in the 2009 SSE Yearbook, also offered them here at Tville in my seed offer and also will be sending them to the seed companies that I usually send my best new varieties to for trial.

And this summer I expect to be growing Ludmilla's Yellow Giant.

[Andrey_BY]

Great history post, Clara! Now it is clear that tehse are heirloom tomato varieties.

I know that there were some villages in some Soviet Republics like Kazakhstan (somewhere quite distant from the Central European part of USSR where people have been suppling themself with all vegetables and fruit. I don't know where this Ludmilla's village is located but I believe she is from either Central or Southern part of Kazakhstan where the climate is usually much warmer than in the North part (near Russian Siberia). There they could have tomatoes as a main crop vegetables and have used seedsaving to maintain their seed production because they were too distant from big towns and Soviet agricultural policy.

One remark: Russian name "Людмила" we write with only one "l" (Ludmila)

[amideutch]

Just read through this thread and have gleaned quite a bit of new information on Kazackhstan and it's varieties form Andrey and clara. Next year I intend to plant several Kazackhstan varieties. If they are anything like the Ludmilla's we should get some interesting results. Ami

[clara]

< One remark: Russian name "Людмила" we write with only one "l" (Ludmila)>

Andrey, many, many years ago, I learned (a little bit) of Russian language; there were additional lessons (optional) at my secondary school, but I have to admit, I nearly forgot everything, just can read (slowly). If I remember well, the second letter of the name Людмила has to be pronounced as "ju" or "yu"; therefore: Shouldn't we call these tomatoes "Lyudmila's or Ljudmila's" Pink Plum etc.? We really have good luck to have a native speaker here at TV! So, please, Andrey, what is the correct transcription? Thank you for clarifying this!
clara

[carolyn137]

Carolyn has her basic Russian book out in the front room but has to rely on Andrey, Alex and Tania to help her with some of the Russian tomato variety names from time to time.

But I think it's good to remember that Reinhard named them and named them:

Ludmilla's Red Plum
Ludmilla's Pink Heart
Ludmilla's Yellow Giant

.....however else they might be translated to a different language.

All to say that right now I'm dealing with a problem with someone at another site who says X variety is from Germany b'c the variety name is in German, and I'm trying to share with her that a variety may originate in one place and receive a variety name there, but people and their tomatoes move around and so one variety can exist as spelled differently in several different languages.

[Andrey_BY]

Yes, Clara, Russian language is very rich so we can translate (transliterate) from it in many ways. Lyudmila, Liudmila or Ludmila

[clara]

Something more, I'm thinking about: The L(y)udmil(l)as coming from Kazakhstan, hence being of Russian/Kazakh origin from people with German roots, why did Reinhard choose an English name? I admit, two of the names sound a little bit ridiculous to me translated into German:

Ludmillas rote Pflaumenförmige = Ludmilla's Red Plum
Ludmillas pinkfarbenes (or: rosa) Herz = L.'s Pink Heart

but Ludmillas gelber Riese = L.'s Yellow Giant really sounds good.

Carolyn, did you talk with Reinhard about his way of naming varieties?

clara

[carolyn137]

Carolyn, did you talk with Reinhard about his way of naming varieties?

****

No, I haven't Clara and won't be doing that.

It's really up to each person who names a previously unnamed variety to do what they want to.

If a variety is named in English, he usually but not always keeps that name. Same with French and other varieties.

But he's the one with Sungold Select and Sungold Select II and now Big Sungold Select and he named all of those in English.

Maybe it's b'c he interacts with many others from different countries, I don't really know the reason.

But there's a variety called Sara Black, bred by someone here in the US and he did change that one one to Sarah Schwarze, and I know that did cause some confusion since some folks thought it was a German variety, but maybe that's b'c the person who bred it gave it an untrue fictious history going back to Germany anyway. Complicated situation.

I've had to name lots of varieties that came to me unnamed and in some cases I've asked the person who gave me the seeds to name them and in a few cases the person giving me the seeds and I have interacted together to name them.

With Neves Azorean Red I started a thread at GW and asked folks to help me name it since I wanted to show what I thought was best in terms of naming a variety. There were 22 folks who posted in that thread and I ended up sending seeds for NAR to all of them/