In August 1939, Russia and Germany signed a non-aggression pact. The following October, Major Davidson-Houston was spying for the British Army, and “Siberian Picnic” is his public account of his 5,772-mile Trans-Siberian “Hard Class” train ride in late October 1939, which was long, dirty, and cold was no picnic.
Curiously, Davidson-Houghton took careful notes of the train food, presumably to detract readers from his hidden reason for the journey. Breakfast was sweet coffee, black bread, cheese, and excellent butter or rice porridge with butter, steak, and black bread. Lunch (or supper) was coffee, pirogie, dried muksun (a freshwater whitefish), and a mug of sugar water. Dinner included vodka and caviar. During a stopover, he dined in a restaurant in Omsk on November 7th, the anniversary of the Russian Revolution, that had “a table richly decorated with fruit, hams, cold meats, and a pig’s head, from which issued a cornucopia encrusted with sweetmeats.”
See J.V. Davidson-Houston. “Siberian Picnic.” Blackwood’s Magazine 245, no. January/June 1939 (January/June 1939 1939): 293-313.