The political upheavals of the 20th century completely wiped out the former privileged classes and many traditional upper and middle class dishes went down the path of oblivion. The very idea of a separate Belarusian cuisine was treated with suspicion. Only after World War II did it occur to the communist authorities that the proclaimed ‘flourishing of national culture’ should also be evident in the cuisine. The only source permitted for such a culinary reconstruction was the heritage of the poorest peasants as of the 1880s, a time when primitive rural lifestyle was already on the wane. Chefs were instructed by the Party to create the new Belarusian cuisine from scratch. Dish names, recipes, "authentic" kitchenware – all were reinvented anew, as though ten centuries of history had never existed. Only the sudden advent of independence in 1991 brought an opportunity to restore these lost traditions, and a great deal still remains to be done here.