As Restaurants Close and Economy Worsens, Another Revenant of Soviet Past Appears – the Stolovaya

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 21 – Now that economic conditions are worsening and restaurants are closing or becoming ever more inaccessible to impoverished Russians, a Soviet-era institution that many had thought was gone forever is making a return, the stolovaya or canteen in which poorer Russians can get cheap food.

            Dmitry Akkerman, an analyst for the Siberian Economist, says the return of the stolovaya is especially widespread in Siberia and the Russian Far East because prices for the fresh fruits and vegetables regular restaurants need are going up far more quickly than prices of cheaper things stolovayas provide (sibmix.com/?doc=22119).

            That is because these regions grow few of their own fruits and vegetables and have to bring them in from elsewhere often at increasing expense. The situation is a little better in Russian regions along the Chinese border which can get such products from there; but that source of supply, while increasing, is subject to disruptions.

            Russians still want to eat out or are forced to do so at lunchtimes, Akkerman says; but they can no longer afford restaurants. Those are closing. In the capitals, fast food chains are taking their place because their prices are lower; but elsewhere and especially each of the Urals, stolovayas are.

            Akkerman suggests that this pattern is likely to continue well into the future, something that means among other things that Russians will experience a decline in the quality of the food they consume given that stolovayas as in the Soviet past make price rather than quality the centerpiece of their business plans.