Kitchen Table Quarterly is a journal preoccupied with history— true history. 

In 1986, Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev adopted a policy of glasnost and perestroika. For decades, history behind the Iron Curtain was burned or shredded or hidden in classified files. Whole generations grew up without knowing the stories of how they’d come to call a particular place “home,” or how their great-grandparents had lived and, eventually, died. All of these things simply weren’t talked about. If anyone happened to ask questions, answers came back simplified, sanitized. So people were left only knowing what they were told, but not what had happened. But this changed with glasnost and perestroika. Instead of relegating history to the darkness of secrecy, it was allowed to step into the light. 

None of us exist in a vacuum. We are all an amalgamation of everything that came before. We are made of our elementary schools, our diagnoses, our religions, our former lovers. We are made of the wars our nations fought in and the ones that drove us from our homelands. We are made of the cake we ate hoping to ease heartbreak and the soup that our fathers cooked to soothe us when we were sick. 

All of this is history. It is the lives of our parents and our grandparents. It is the strengths and frailties of our traditions, the traumas and joys of our people, the victories of our ancestors and the ruins of our cities. It is as gruesome as war and as comforting as a morning cup of coffee. 

Before the dissolution of the Soviet Union, people only shared their histories in whispers. BBC’s Moscow Correspondent Angus Roxburgh wrote, “In the pervasive atmosphere of fear and suspicion, the only people you could really trust were your closest family and friends.” And with them, you sat in your kitchen, around the table.