 Pokhlebkin and the Soviet Union are dead , yet Borshchland lives on . Recipes , like birds , ignore political boundaries ... The faint outline of the Tsarist @-@ Soviet imperium still glimmers in the collective steam off bowls of beetroot and cabbage in meat stock , and the soft sound of dollops of sour cream slipping into soup , from the Black Sea to the Sea of Japan and , in emigration , from Brooklyn to Berlin . 
