Document of the Day: Cooking Classified Soviet Borscht With FOIA
For over 50 years, the Central Intelligence Agency kept a rather tasty document hidden away: a translated copy of the Soviet Army’s 1948 “Manual for the Cook-Instructor of the Ground Forces in Peacetime.” Our attention was drawn to this by the enterprising MuckRock, a GIJN member in good standing that specializes in unearthing and analyzing government records. The cookbook, found in the CIA’s declassified archives, lists the cook’s duties as well as a dozen recipes — including varieties of borscht, like “borscht with sauerkraut” and “borscht with beet leaves.”
The document’s cover sheet was withheld in full, so there is no explanation for why this manual was translated into English in 1956, eight years after it was first published.
Click to read full PDF.
MuckRock challenged its readers to cook borscht using one of the recipes. David and Shannon Perry not only obliged, but live-tweeted their experience.
For the full cookbook, be sure to check out Muckrock’s Cooking with FOIA series.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License
Read Next
News & Analysis
Tips on Making FOIA Requests About COVID-19
Despite government restrictions, journalists around the world are using freedom of information laws to understand the COVID-19 pandemic and the response of international, national, and local authorities. GIJN’s Toby McIntosh outlines how to craft an effective freedom of information request and provides tips and suggestions on where to make requests and important questions to ask.
News & Analysis
A Funny Thing Happened on Our Way to FOIA
After nine years and over 60,000 requests, MuckRock — the Massachusetts-based news site that specializes in using the US Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) — has been witness to some pretty impressive efforts to keep public information from the public. In the spirit of Sunshine Week, they compiled some of the weirdest, wildest and downright hilarious redactions they’ve received since launching in 2010.
News & Analysis
Writers Under Surveillance: Hunter S Thompson’s FBI Files
The power of the pen — writers are so dangerous that the US Federal Bureau of Investigation deemed it necessary to start surveillance on many of them, including Hannah Arendt, Allen Ginsberg, Ernest Hemingway, Susan Sontag, and Hunter S Thompson. The book “Writers Under Surveillance” gathers some of these investigation files that were obtained with Freedom of Information Act requests by MuckRock.
News & Analysis
How Well Do Online Freedom of Information Tools Actually Work?
Online FOI tools have gone global, but how well do they really work? UK-based nonprofit mySociety, which makes the Alaveteli FOI platforms came to some surprising conclusions about the sites’ impact and who uses them. Read the reports’ highlights to find out.