In the ideological debate between China and the Soviet Union in the 1960s, it was often seen in newspapers that China criticized the Soviet Union's "beef with potatoes" productism, but many people did not know what "beef with potatoes" was all about.

This matter has to start from the late 1950s. At that time, when Khrushchev, the general secretary of the Soviet Union, visited Hungary, he said in a speech at a mass rally that when it came to * * * capitalism, Hungary could often eat "Gulasi". "Gulasi" is a typical and well-known dish in Hungarian cuisine. That is, beef and potatoes are stewed with red pepper and other seasonings in a small pottery pot until the juice is thick, and then poured on rice, which is delicious. Hungarian food is very famous in Europe. Europeans often praise Hungarian food with "Gulasi", just as they praise China food with "Peking Duck".

The translators in the editorial department of Reference News of Xinhua News Agency were puzzled by the word "Gulasi" when translating Khrushchev's speech. If it is literally translated as "Gulasi", China readers don't know what it is, and it's too long to add parentheses after it. So I chatted with several reporters about the translation of this word. It happened that some of them knew this word and had eaten this dish, saying that it was just "roast beef with potatoes". The publication of Reference News was urgent every day, and then several editors decided to translate it into "Roasted Beef with Potatoes". Now it seems that this translation is not exact, and it does not express the representativeness and extensiveness of this dish in Hungarian food, which later caused many misunderstandings.

Khrushchev's remark is just a joke to please Hungarians, not to say that the standard of * * * productism is that everyone can eat "roast beef with potatoes".