Some Old Believers refused to eat the tsars’ recommended new staple food, the potato, because it was an import from the godless West – potatoes were generally hated among the Russian peasantry on their first arrival, before their value in making vodka became apparent. ‘Tea, coffee, potatoes and tobacco had been cursed by Seven Ecumenical Councils’ was one of the Old Believers’ rallying cries, and at various times, dining forks, telephones and the railways were to suffer the same anathemas.
