食品領域的俄式反擊戰 Banning Brie and bulldozing geese
Two years ago, a group of Moscow restaurateurs made what on paper looked like a sound business decision. They chose a trendy location — Moscow’s Gorky Park, an oasis for hipsters — and opened a gleaming new restaurant called Oyster Bar, which planned to purvey molluscs and other imported delicacies to the city’s cosmopolitan elite.
兩年前，一羣莫斯科餐館老闆做出了一個理論上貌似不錯的商業決定。他們選擇了一處時尚之地——潮人聚集的莫斯科高爾基公園(Gorky Park)，開辦了一家名爲“牡蠣酒吧”(Oyster Bar)的全新餐廳，準備爲莫斯科的國際化精英羣體提供牡蠣和其他進口美食。
One year later, in the wake of western sanctions, Vladimir Putin announced Russia would ban an array of American and European food products, including cheese, beef and seafood. Oyster Bar tried to rebrand — boldly renaming itself No Oyster Bar and relying on a menu of local ingredients — but the gamble didn’t pay off. The restaurant closed a few months later.
一年後，隨着西方國家的制裁，俄羅斯總統弗拉基米爾渠京(Vladimir Putin)宣佈禁止進口來自美國和歐洲的大多數食品，包括奶酪、牛肉和海鮮。牡蠣酒吧試圖改頭換面——大膽地更名爲“無牡蠣酒吧”(No Oyster Bar)，並依靠本地食材提供餐品——但這次押注並未奏效。餐廳在幾個月後關張。
The fate of Oyster Bar seems to fit a familiar narrative. Threatened by increasing western influence in Ukraine and the rise of Nato, Putin is hitting back against the west both in Ukraine and through a culture war at home, where a propaganda campaign has made Moscow’s pro-western, oyster-eating minority the enemy.
對於牡蠣酒吧的命運，我們似曾相識。由於受到西方在烏克蘭影響力日增以及北約(NATO)擴大的威脅，普京既在烏克蘭也通過國內文化戰對西方進行回擊。在俄羅斯，一場宣傳戰已將莫斯科親西方的、喜歡吃牡蠣的少數派變成了敵人。
It is an allegory straight out of Tolstoy’s playbook. InAnna Karenina, the corpulent, adulterous, French-speaking Oblonsky orders a meal of Flensburg oysters, Parmesan and Chablis. His friend, the proletarian hero Levin, prefers cabbage soup and porridge.
這是托爾斯泰(Tolstoy)劇本中常有的一幕。在《安娜慍列尼娜》(Anna Karenina)中，臃腫、荒淫、操着法語的奧勃朗斯基(Oblonsky)要了一桌包括弗倫斯堡牡蠣、帕爾馬乾酪和夏布利酒的大餐。而他的朋友、無產階級英雄列文(Levin)更喜歡捲心菜湯和粥。
On the Oblonsky-Levin scale, I probably lean more to the former. Returning to Russia from abroad, I’ve been known to stick copious amounts of jamón, Brie and Parmesan in my handbag. Yet during the ban I’ve found myself eating things such as scallops from Murmansk and crab from Magadan — and licking my fingers after every bite.
如果將奧勃朗斯基與列文放在天平的兩端，我可能更傾向於前者。很多人知道，我從國外回到俄羅斯時，手提包裏總是塞滿了伊比利亞火腿、布里乾酪和帕爾馬乾酪。然而，在禁令期間，我發現自己吃東西——如來自摩爾曼斯克(Murmansk)的扇貝和來自馬加丹(Magadan)的螃蟹——時，每咬一口都要吮吸自己的手指。
Alexander Yezhel, an expert in the Russian mollusc industry, is inclined to agree with me. A former colonel for Russia’s security services with piercing blue eyes and a permatan, Yezhel reinvented himself upon retirement as a small-business owner. His trade: oysters.
俄羅斯牡蠣行業專家亞歷山大葉熱列(Alexander Yezhel)傾向於同意我的觀點。這位有着一雙銳利的藍色眼睛的俄羅斯情報部門前上校，在退休後當起了做牡蠣貿易的小企業主。
Yezhel says Oyster Bar didn’t survive because its owners were “dilettantes”. For stalwarts, such as his own company Zhemchuzhina (Pearl), switching to local molluscs from Russia’s Far East and Black Sea regions has been good for the bottom line. Because the domestic oysters are cheaper, he can sell them at a higher mark-up than the French ones he used to import, a business strategy that has led to a 50 per cent increase in Zhemchuzhina’s profits, he says.
葉熱列說，牡蠣酒吧之所以倒閉，因爲其所有者“不專業”。對於內行的公司，比如他自己的Zhemchuzhina（意思爲珍珠），轉而銷售來自俄羅斯遠東和黑海地區的本土牡蠣帶來了不俗的業績。他說，因爲本土牡蠣更便宜，較之過去進口的法國牡蠣可以賺取更高的差價，這一商業策略已經使公司利潤增加了50%。
This is the Kremlin’s dream scenario and illustrates the two-pronged goal of the food ban: to boost patriotism and give Russians a chance to thumb their noses at the west, while also giving a fillip to Russia’s agricultural industry, which has lagged behind since the fall of the Soviet Union.
這是克里姆林宮夢想的一幕，而且展示了食品禁令的雙重目標：提振國民的愛國主義，給俄羅斯人一個蔑視西方的機會，同時也可以刺激一下自蘇聯解體以來一直處於落後狀態的俄羅斯農業。
The stimulus the ban provides is great in theory. But it does little to solve the industry’s longstanding problems: primarily, poor logistics and a lack of incentive to modernise and make the industry more competitive. While Yezhel’s oyster business may be booming, it is still dependent on the entrepreneur’s warehouse of aquariums in the Moscow suburbs. So fragmented is Russia’s national logistics system that it is quicker and easier for a shipment of oysters to travel from the country’s Far East to central Russia via Moscow than it would be to make the journey between the two destinations directly.
進口禁令帶來的激勵在理論上是巨大的。但對於解決該行業長期存在的問題基本上沒有幫助：主要是糟糕的物流，以及缺乏現代化、提高俄羅斯農產品行業競爭力的激勵機制。雖然葉熱列的牡蠣生意或許很紅火，但它仍依賴於這名企業家設在莫斯科郊區的水族倉庫。俄羅斯的全國物流體系如此割裂，以至於一批牡蠣從遠東地區經由莫斯科到達俄羅斯中部，要比直接在這兩個地區之間運輸更快速、更便捷。
The ban isn’t making Russian food products more competitive but creating an artificial lack of supply and driving up food prices in the process.
進口禁令並未讓俄羅斯的食品更具競爭力，卻人爲製造了供應不足，在此過程中推高了食品價格。
Annual food inflation has risen to 20 per cent in Russia since the ban. Yet few in Russia seem to either make the connection between the two or to mind. In a poll conducted this month by Levada Centre, Russia’s most respected polling agency, two in three respondents said they viewed the ban positively.
自實施禁令以來，俄羅斯年度食品通脹率已上升至20%。然而，在俄羅斯，似乎很少有人將兩者聯繫起來，或者在意這一點。俄羅斯最受尊敬的民調機構列瓦達中心(Levada Centre)本月做的一項民調中，三分之二的受訪者表示，他們支持這一禁令。
Authorities risk alienating a larger swathe of the population with its newest decree, which declares that any sanctioned European or American food products that have found their way into Russia must be destroyed on the spot.
俄羅斯當局最近冒着惹惱更多俄羅斯民衆的風險頒佈了最新法令：任何禁運的歐洲或美國食品，一經發現進入俄羅斯，必須當場銷燬。
Since the ban took effect on August 6, Russian state television has shown blanket coverage of the staged destructions, which at times appear like a parody of Russian bureaucracy. In one video, a dour Russian official gravely reads out the death decree for three frozen Hungarian geese found in a Tatarstan food shop. With half-a-dozen witnesses watching, the geese are then carefully arranged on the ground and run over multiple times by a bulldozer.
自該法令8月6日生效以來，俄羅斯國家電視臺對銷燬禁運食品進行了鋪天蓋地的報道，有時看起來像是在“高級黑”俄羅斯的官僚主義。在一段視頻中，一名臉色陰沉的俄羅斯官員嚴肅地宣讀着對在一家韃靼斯坦人開的食雜店發現的3只匈牙利冷凍鵝的銷燬令。在6名見證者的注視下，這些鵝隨後被煞有介事地排列在地上，然後用推土機反覆碾壓。
In a country that lived through the Leningrad blockade and bread lines, the destruction decree has not been as widely popular as the ban. Nearly half of Russians polled by Levada said they viewed the new measure somewhat or very negatively, arguing that the food should be donated to the needy instead.
在一個經歷過列寧格勒(Leningrad)大圍困和購買麪包都要排隊的國家，銷燬令並沒有像進口禁令那樣得到廣泛支持。勒瓦達中心調查的俄羅斯人中，將近一半受訪者稱，他們對新措施持有一定程度或者非常負面的看法，認爲應該把這些食品分發給窮人，而非銷燬。
One friend said her 95-year-old grandmother had watched the broadcast of the destruction, convinced that the authorities were only destroying food that was rotten or dangerous, so difficult was it to believe that they would raze it for another reason.
一位朋友說，自己95歲的祖母看了銷燬食品的電視轉播，但她相信當局只是在銷燬腐爛或危險的食品，很難相信會因爲其他理由將食品全部銷燬。
The new decree may not be working entirely. On a recent evening at a Mediterranean restaurant in Moscow, my waiter cheekily confided that the halloumi on my plate had come from Greece, one of the sanctioned countries. Banning Brie and bulldozing geese is an easy matter on paper. Getting rid of the systemic problems — well, that’s another matter.
新法令可能也無法徹底實施。最近一天晚上，我到莫斯科一家地中海風味餐廳用餐，服務生嬉皮笑臉地對我吐露，我盤中的哈羅米芝士來自希臘——禁運國家之一。禁運布里乾酪、碾壓冷凍鵝在理論上都很簡單。而擺脫系統性問題——嗯，那是另一回事了。
