 Janina de Guzman Crowds gather at the gates of the Vladivostok Bread Producers Combine to buy flour and macaroni at wholesale prices. |
This week, Vladivostok residents did something they haven't done for a while -- queue for bread. And then pay more for it.
On Sept. 8, the price of the local factory Vladkhleb's standard white loaf rose 32 percent, from 3.4 rubles (26 cents) to 4.5.
Since the ruble started its downward slide Aug. 17, the price of food products, including imported staples like oil and sugar, has risen two, three, even four times. The rush to snatch up products before prices jumped again has created long lines and empty shelves, recalling food rationing in the early 90s, and raising the specter of hunger for impoverished pensioners.
In Russia, nothing sets off the panic button like a threat to bread supply.
"It's not just a food," explained Andrei Kalachinsky, associate professor of journalism at the Far Eastern State University. "It's a barometer. You take bread away from a Russian, and he knows something is wrong."
Rumors on the eve of the price hike drew swarms of people to Vladkhleb's kiosks. Fearing an onslaught of price hikes, people stocked up on the one food Russians say makes a meal.
"The situation is awful," said Marina Levchenka, a 60-year-old pensioner, shuffling home on sore feet with three loaves of bread. As she spoke, bread ran out at the Narodny Avenue store behind her, sparking a dash for the store around the corner. "It's just crazy," she said, watching the melee.
Vladkhleb apologized for the price increase, citing exhausted reserves, and a 50-300 percent price increase for ingredients like butter, vegetable oil, and yeast.
"Despite our SOS signal, no measures have been taken," the factory stated in a letter in the Sept. 9 issue of the Vladivostok newspaper. "Every extra kopeck of bread price upsets you and us very much."
In the letter, Vladkhleb called for tax breaks and special rates on energy, transport, and rent to help keep bread prices down, and it urged the Pacific Fleet to pay up a 6 million ruble ($465,000 according to Sept. 11 rates) bread debt.
Meanwhile, krai and municipal administrators established price controls on staples and flirted with declaring a state of emergency. Vladkhleb's executive director Yevgeny Kaminsky promised Vladivostok residents "would not go without bread" but did not rule out raising prices and decreasing the selection of baked goods.
Despite Kaminsky's promise, some residents of Vladivostok were left without bread. Vladkhleb ceased supplying bread to the city's underfunded psychiatric hospital, which as of Sept. 1, owed the bakery 136,000 rubles ($10,540) for a year of free bread.
Head physician Vladimir Ushakov was disappointed, but not bitter. "[Kaminsky] has no reserves. He's in great economic difficulty, in no position to be feeding us for free."
Among the general public, reaction to the one ruble price hike ranged from panic to shoulder shrugs.
For pensioners eking out an existence on 350 rubles ($27) a month, extra costs are a life-and-death issue. Some bought up to 10 loaves at a time to store in the freezer, or to bake dried bread sticks for hungry days ahead.
"Old people lived through World War II, and they know what hunger is," said Ivan Zolotov, representative of the Veterans Council of Fruzensky District, one of the city's five districts and home to 18,000 pensioners.
Zolotov runs a coupon system based on agreements with two Fruzensky stores, where pensioners can purchase bread for a ruble less.
"The price break is very important to them," said Zolotov. Especially this month, since pension payments have been delayed by at least a week.
One 72-year-old pensioner said the 30 rubles she saves with the program pays for sugar to sweeten her tea.
Nikolai Krapivin, owner of one of the stores that offers discounted bread, says serving about 1,000 pensioners a day incurs monthly losses of 35,000 rubles ($2,713).
"But I want to help them," he said. "Nobody else is."
On Sept. 10, city government social workers were hashing out a plan to help the city's needy, but it was not yet finalized, said Ludmila Kamenova, assistant director of the city's department for the protection of the population.
Ivan Toryanik, head of Primorye's social protection department, said the krai administration's response to the economic crisis has been hamstrung by the lack of government in Moscow.
"We understand when there is a crisis and the prices go up the government should react," said Toryanik. "But there is no government, and [Acting Prime Minister] Chernomyrdin has said there will be no talk of indexing pensions or salaries."
A 40,000 ruble relief package has been distributed to needy families, and a 5 million ruble transfer is expected from Moscow, said Toryanik.
"Our children homes and schools won't go hungry," because Primorsky Food Corporation is making credit repayment to the krai in produce, he said.
For Vladivostok's well-off, more concerned with accessing frozen bank accounts than coughing up an extra ruble, the long bread lines simply irked.
As the week unfolded, bread lines shrank, with prices holding steady between 4 and 4.5 rubles a loaf. The ruble strengthened from a high of 20 to 12 rubles to the dollar by the week's end, though most economists said the gain is probably temporary. The nomination of Yevgeny Primakov as a conciliatory candidate for prime minister boosted hopes for prompt political and economic stabilization.
Still, lines continued to form outside the Vladivostok Bread Products Combine, where wheat from Omsk and Kazakhstan is ground into flour. The flour is sold to the public wholesale, as are the macaroni produced from the flour.
"We have enough, everything will be okay," said director Fail Bariyev. For the time being, his prices are stable.
"For three years it was quiet," said Tatyana Ustinova, a 68-year old pensioner, who waited in line at the combine for a couple kilograms of cheap macaroni. "There was everything. We thought we were already like America, with normal lives, and now this."
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