You never know what scam will be visited on your weary head when you buy a cartoon of eggs from the Dixie supermarket. When the country’s reigning tyrant instituted reverse sanctions against the infidels of the west in 2015, all imported dairy products, eggs, and lots of other produce disappeared from the shelves, prompting a shameless wave of newly hatched brands made to look as if they had been produced in Finland and other straunge strondes.

Now that the triumph of the will known as import substitution has filled some of the yawning gaps on the shelves, the new three-card monte in the Russian food industry involves imitating “corporate responsibility” and “best practices.”

I happened upon a sterling specimen the other day, again after buying eggs at the Dixie in our neighbourhood. I opened the carton to find this message from the producers.

“Oksky Eggs: Delicious and Fresh. Dear Friends! I offer you a product that my children, acqaintances, friends and, of course, I myself enjoy eating. I guarantee that we monitor the entire production process at Oksky Eggs. I promise I will always be in touch. I will be attentive and responsive to all your messages. Whatever the issue, write to me at my personal email address: 0076@okskoe.com. Ivan Grishkov, Commercial Director, Oksky Poultry Farm JSC.”

Sounds nifty, eh? It gets better when turn the little slip of paper over.

“PRODUCER’S GUARANTEE. Each egg is stamped with the production date, the number of the henhouse, and the poultry farm’s trademark seal. [Producer] [Category of egg] [Production date (date and month)] [Henhouse number]. || Oksky Eggs: Delicious and Fresh. Oksky Poultry Farm JSC, 390540, Russia, [Ryazan Region], Ryazan District, Village of Oksky. Tel.: (4912) 51-22-62. Email: sbit@okskoe.com. Website: www.okskaya-ptf.ru.”

A farmboy myself, I have no wish to malign my brother and sister Russian farmers. So, I should point out that the three Oksky Eggs left in our fridge are indeed stamped as advertised.

The rubber hits the road, however, when you take a gander at the poultry farm’s slick website, where you are treated to this tear-jerking video about the happy lives led by the chooks at Oksky Poultry Farm.

It’s a veritable vision of the good life, isn’t it?

At the end of this accidental disco anthem to cruel and unusual hen exploitation, a woman identified as “Yelena Anoshina, poultry barns supervisor,” reading from cue cards, says, “A modern electronic system generates the most comfortable conditions for the birds. It makes sure they are fed and watered. And I am personally responsible for this.”

I can only imagine the dialogue that would ensue if an enlightened consumer or, god forbid, a animal rights advocate tried to call Mr. Grishkov and Ms. Anoshina on their imitation of “corporate responsibility” and “modern poultry farming.”

The kicker, however, is that you will find these half-hearted attempts at instituting customer friendliness and gesturing in the direction of best (western) practices all over corporate Russia these days. Of course, you are more likely to find real friendliness and good quality in a mom-and-pop Uzbek dive or even a hipster coffeehouse, but oddly enough the impulse to do things better and shed the shabbiness and sheer meanness of the “Soviet consumerist hell” (Joseph Brodsky’s phrase) actually shapes the behavior of the mostly younger and early middle-aged people working in places like banks and certain government offices as well.

The only problem is the Russian ruling elite still wants to keep kicking rank-and-file Russians in the teeth on a daily basis, so the rules, regulations, red tape, and imperatives of the resurgent post-Soviet surveillance state and the kleptocratic oligarchy running the country mostly reduce the natural kindness and gentleness of these pleasant, soft-spoken cogs in the machine to naught. {TRR}

_______________________________________

Diskoteka Avariya (Accident Discotheque), “Disco Superstar” (2001)