Translator’s note

The Soviet Union is the world’s largest and most heterogeneous nation with a unique ethnic and regional make-up. In addition to the fifteen soviet republics whose cuisines are covered in this book, there are a further twenty ‘autonomous regions’, all but four of which are in the largest, the Russian republic. Each of these is formed round other national groups and is considered too small to merit the status of a full republic. Some twenty other national areas also exist, as well as a multitude of nationalities too dispersed to form such areas.