Soldiers are constructing whatever they can: Oil cans become stoves, artillery shells become kerosene lamps, overcoat fabric becomes wicks. Government officials regularly checked these trench “cities” for proper ventilation, light, heat and nutrition. They also became grounds for officials to disseminate the war’s goals and for connecting people from diverse regions, classes and ethnic groups.

Literature, visual arts, popular science brought together Russian scholars in fields ranging from visual arts to literature to anthropology. The aim of the interdisciplinary symposium was to examine “energy as a shaping force in Russian literature, visual culture, and social practice from the mid-nineteenth cen-tury to the present.”

One researcher in search of definitive answers to long-term health effects from Chernobyl has a radical idea about how to accelerate cleanup of the accident’s contamination: Buy the radioactive berries local residents pick, and dispose of them as nuclear waste.

Professor Brintlinger’s argument is developed along three ideas: Russian ideas about food become heightened during times of war and conflict; specific foods embody meaning beyond their sustenance value, to include national pride; and certain foods, such as potatoes, kvas and shchi, harken back to Russia’s peasant roots.