Sorry, I'm talking about Parmesan

From the very beginning of the conversation about Putin’s sanctions against the nutritional needs of the population, some awkwardness is noticeable in the statements of that group of Internet users who could afford expensive and rare products that were inaccessible - and often not very interesting - to the average Russian. Like, we’re not worried about ourselves, I, of course, will trample without Camembert and Parmesan, and I even preferred it before (then it’s not the simple “Russian” cheese from Pyaterochka, but some local rarity, unknown in the world, like smoked cheese “pigtailed” from that one and only correct seller at such and such a market). But we are worried about the fate of patients who need gluten-free products, allergy sufferers will have to do without goat’s milk, goods for the poor will become more expensive and their quality will deteriorate without imported ingredients - in general, we are suffering uncontrollably, shame on the regime that offends the weak.

Let’s be honest, the purpose of the anti-consumer sanctions was not to turn the ordinary Russian cheese from Pyaterochka from a completely edible substance into that terrible putty made with palm oil, which is now filling the shelves of national stores. This is so, an unexpected side effect, from illiteracy and inability to calculate the consequences - who prevented rennet from being included in the list? Harassing allergy sufferers and getting sales on street corners in St. Petersburg of peaches that had been crushed by bulldozers and dragged from the trash heap by citizens was also hardly part of the plans.

But what was practically the main goal was to take away what was unnecessary.

Prevent people - especially those who can afford more - from spending money on indulgences that are delicious, too good, more enjoyable than urgently needed. Not to pull the bread out of your mouth, but the cheese from the sandwich. Not to take away the potatoes, but the peach. The state needs currency, yeah, yeah, remember? And, turning the arrows from ourselves, who seem to have lost only the small joys of life, to the suffering and weak, we bashfully admit that yes, it is unnecessary, yes, self-indulgence, and since self-indulgence is unnecessary, then it is not a sin to take it away. And that in general it’s not our business to decide whether we have the right to indulge in self-indulgence. It is not bread that is taken away, not a vital product for special needs.

No, protect your extra. When everything unnecessary is taken away, there will be no one and nothing to protect what is necessary. The excess protects you: it creates space for personal independence, a reserve of strength beyond what is necessary for basic survival, the will to resist circumstances and the consciousness of your right to take care of yourself. Your extra also protects those who no longer have anything extra: when those with the most resources only have the strength to survive, there will be absolutely no one to stand up for the weak.

So excuse me, I'm talking about Parmesan. About tasty things, about festive things, about what is for a good life, for a slightly smug, cheerful mood and, to be honest, for a kind of not entirely deserved pride in oneself - the feeling of being a qualified, discerning consumer, who has a full cup, who has the opportunity to choose and sort through. Well, about the real possibility of choice.

Where does all this discourse about the literally, physically greedy elite come from: “oh, parmesan-jamon, the children don’t have enough bread”? Indeed, in the past, before the war, to understand food, to spend not only “extra” money on it, but also energy, attention, and intellectual resources, became almost good manners. However, behind this gourmandism and epicureanism that swept society in more or less prosperous years, behind the epidemic of gastronomic columns written by the best pens (Parkhomenko writes about food in Kommersant, Makarevich as the host of a cooking show on TV - remember?), behind the restaurant boom , behind the wave of super-popular books and blogs about food (who hasn’t heard the name of the legendary Stalik, you don’t have to read further), behind the craze for cooking, which overnight turned from a woman’s everyday burden into a fashionable hobby of successful people, there is something more than conspicuous consumption, on a par with red jackets, Mercedes-Jaguars and watches for 620 thousand dollars . There's not much conspicuous consumption there, let's face it. Well, who will see you in “Jean-Jacques”? Only other visitors to Jean-Jacques, who have nothing to envy you about. Well, who will understand your jamon? Only another such connoisseur, who, if not visiting jamonerias on vacation, has at least read about the methods of preparing this unique Spanish ham. Who will see you in your own personal kitchen with a collection of Provence recipes and a tablet with a French-Russian translator?

The culinary boom of the 2000s was much more about something else. About the development of everyday culture, including, yes, consumer culture - much higher than that which was inherited from Soviet times.

About taking care of yourself and your loved ones - not through I can’t, not with the stress of everyone, but detailed and thoughtful, from excess, from a good mood and love for life. About, accordingly, confidence in oneself and in the future: the money is not the last, and the energy to try for one’s own pleasure to depict portioned pike perch and naturel in one’s own kitchen in a saucepan is certainly not the last. About the ability to listen to your needs, which was pretty much beaten off by the Soviet background and subsequent lean years - at least to recognize what you want to eat now, and what type of cheese - so I will insist on cheese! - Do you prefer it, with white mold or blue mold, hard or softer, do you really really like bright-smelling aged cheeses, or what the heck, we’d like something simpler and more familiar. And about the elimination of Soviet humiliation: shortages; disgusting quality of products; stuffy queues and rudeness around any more or less edible or wearable good; cheating and risky combinations to obtain similar benefits by bypassing the general queue. And the passions that unfolded in the service of everyone at least a little privileged around “orders”, “loads”, access to distributors? I brought my first and, it seems, only grocery order home at the age of 17 as a low-level employee of the Library of the Academy of Sciences. The impression was strong: the parents who worked at the school did not have access to such joys.

The Soviet food shortage was an order of magnitude more humiliating than an ordinary shortage caused by poverty, crisis or some other misfortune - precisely because of the lack of choice and, in some way, because of the intentional humiliation. Unfortunate personal circumstances, an illness, a misfortune - this is what plunges a person into poverty now, what you can complain about, what you can overcome, this is what you can ask for help from others and perceive as a fact of personal fate. In a planned economy, shortages of basic consumer goods—combined with overproduction of tanks and high-profile spending on world peace—felt like a deliberate policy.

The authorities have the opportunity to ignore the wishes of the people living in the country and tell them: good, high-quality, tasty food is too much for you.

This is a self-indulgence, less important than any other task, from conquering space to turning rivers. Bread, the minimum ration necessary for physical survival, was considered important by late Soviet times, at least at the level of declarations. Self-indulgence was not only not encouraged and not taken into account as necessary - it was actively condemned, ideology prescribed to fight it, and people were punished for the desire for it. It was self-indulgence, calling a spade a spade, without equivocation: the desire for an individual consumption profile, unlike the standard set by mass production; taking into account special needs related to health (no one has ever heard of lactose-free milk, but what it costs to maintain the required diet for patients with much more common diabetes - legends can be made about this); an impudent desire to eat tasty food (that is, what your personal body accepts), and not just nutritious food (that is, according to scientifically based, uniform standards for all, long ridiculed by modern nutritionists). And, of course, all forms of enjoying the process were subject to separate condemnation: from wandering around restaurants to efforts to “get” extra delicacies from the standard diet. It’s easy and pleasant to talk about the ideological suppression of cultural needs and your heroic struggle against it. The fact that people living in the country have been suppressing internal contact with their most basic needs, for example, food, for decades, and have been fighting against manifestations of individuality in this area, is somehow not accepted, it’s a shame. It all comes down to stories about the shortage and disgusting quality of what was there, about the time spent in queues - but nothing about what was happening in the heads and, excuse me, souls (the stomachs, I assure you, were not happy about this either: not to feel, what you put in your mouth is very harmful).

Having barely felt at least some material well-being, the post-Soviet person discovered the freedom to choose more or less high-quality products already provided by the market (at a time of extreme poverty, in the 90s, it was rather annoying) - and culture began to work to heal trauma, to correct behavior in the “correct”, nature-conforming direction: towards greater thoughtfulness, greater attention to one’s own “wants” and “likes”, to legibility and willingness to devote energy and time to a rather important sphere in life, frankly speaking. There was nothing elitist in this culinary and gastronomic movement: while wealthy citizens with minimal cultural capital across Europe were mastering Parmesan, the middle and lower middle class, everyone who could afford at least something was getting used to clean peaches in season and year-round bananas , distinguished soy chocolate from natural, fresh meat from frozen, took packaged salads for lunch instead of belyash, exchanged recipes for chicken in cream sauce and refused rich mayonnaise as a mandatory component of a meat dish.

Look at “folk” forums with recipes on the Internet - you will see a lot of interesting things.

And washed potatoes, peeled, from a jar, herring, factory-made, and not scorched, I’m not afraid of this word, vodka - became the standard even for the poor, saving many from fussing with dirt and from the dangers of poisoning. This is not about all residents of the country; of course, poverty has not gone away. But about everyone, except for the completely disadvantaged - about the majority, about the middle, base layer.

Bulldozers defiantly crushing on TV - pay attention! - not any camemberts, but tomatoes and peaches, heads of inexpensive ordinary hard cheeses, slightly more tasty analogues of that same “Russian” from “Pyaterochka”, which counter-sanctions have already turned into a pumpkin, appeal to that very majority with approximately the same message, which is more the wealthy, educated stratum got hit in the face at the time of the introduction of sanctions “on jamon and camembert.” An emotionally loaded, extremely bright and intelligible picture: a bulldozer is driving through a delicious food. According to primitive, “from the stomach” pleasure, joy from life; if possible, take care of yourself, your loved one, and your loved ones; by a basic sense of security and selfhood, individual separateness. By the feeling that you exist, that you are important, that you are valuable, that you deserve the best on your most natural, pre-intellectual layer - for some, you know, peach, for others camembert.