A couple weeks ago, my Russian language professor took us on a field trip. We piled into a van and drove to the nearest Russian grocery store, in Springfield. Entering the store felt like being absorbed into another world. Our trip was a fascinating and humorous language-learning experience. But shopping there almost two months into Putin’s war in Ukraine has generated some questions. How has this Russian American business been impacted by the war? Everything from production and trade issues to cultural tensions come into play.
Victory International, Springfield’s Russian supermarket, was established in 2001, after the fall of the Soviet Union and prior to the annexation of Crimea in 2014. This was a period of relatively placated cultural tensions between the United States and Russia, as Red Scare-infused anti-Russian rhetoric phased out and Putin had only just become president. Theoretically, this was a decent time for a Russian supermarket to open in Massachusetts, but since Putin’s influence has permeated the former Soviet region and beyond, there has been a cultural shift in the United States.
The store carries primarily Russian and Ukrainian food. After our trip, I called the store to ask how they get their products, and if they had seen any changes since the start of the war. A woman answered, speaking to me in Russian. When she realized I am not yet fluent in Russian, she passed the phone to a man who spoke more English. He told me that since the invasion of Ukraine, certain products have been low in stock and arriving in smaller portions. He said this has resulted in a noticeable decline in sales of those items. He was unsure where exactly these products originated, but noted that many items the store carries are shipped from a warehouse in New York (I suspect they end up there after being produced in Eastern Europe).
I also asked this store employee about any changes related to their customers in the last couple months. He said that people don’t bring their personal feelings into their decision to shop at Victory International, and that he hadn’t noticed a decrease in the number of customers since the end of February. From my own observations, most of the people in the store were speaking Russian. It could be that the primary customer base is Russian American people, who might be more likely to continue shopping there, a place with familiar food and community. But for businesses more widely known outside of people with cultural ties, the war has led to seemingly more drastic financial issues.
The Russian Tea Room, a famous restaurant in New York City, has been impacted by the increase in anti-Russian sentiments in the United States. The first thing to appear on its website is a pop-up explaining that “the Russian Tea Room renounces Russia’s unprovoked acts of war in the strongest possible terms… Just as the original founders, Soviet defectors who were displaced by the revolution, stood against Stalin’s Soviet Union, [the current owners] stand against Putin and with the people of Ukraine.” I have observed many businesses, not just ones tied to Russian culture, feel compelled to declare their pro-Ukraine positions. And I think a component of this is useful; the more we talk about the horrors of the war, the more pressure is put on our institutions to somehow defend Ukraine. But these shows of support seem to have become more of an obligation for businesses, out of fear of being identified as pro-Russia in the war. This burden is intensified for places like the Russian Tea Room, which must actively counter what some people assume about their allegiances. A CNN article noted fewer customers at the restaurant last month, comparing it to the experience of a Ukrainian diner which has seen an extraordinary increase in customers since the invasion of Ukraine.
Many American businesses carrying Russian products, named something “Russian” or operated by Russian immigrants or their descendants must appeal to people who do not have ties to Russia. This has become more difficult because of the cultural implications of people’s opinions on the war. Gallup released an article discussing its own polling from before the war, as well as more recent outside polling. “As would be supposed given Americans’ support for Ukraine in the face of the Russian invasion, the public has very negative opinions of Russia and its leader, Vladimir Putin, with concomitantly positive views of Ukraine and its leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy.” These opinions translate into the symbolic actions of American people, from showing support to Ukraine by hanging the Ukrainian flag, to condemning Russian violence by boycotting anything vaguely Russian.
I see two opposing extremes in many reactions to the war. In the United States, the divide, for once, does not seem to be in the belief of what is right or wrong; people are overwhelmingly against the war and in support of Ukraine. A spectrum of expressions of this shared belief has come out of our general agreement. If pouring out your vodka is on one end of this spectrum, then I think making every public structure blue and yellow is on the other. The former seems to be the least useful, especially when it is applied to small Russian American businesses. Canceling your reservations at the Russian Tea Room not only does not help Ukrainians, but it also hurts an American business, and this restaurant has nothing to do with the war.
The Associated Press released an article explaining some of the more extreme expressions of support for Ukraine. “Angered by the deadly violence and the humanitarian crisis resulting from Russia’s war on Ukraine, some Americans are taking it out on Russian businesses and brands in the U.S. — or anything that sounds Russian. Business owners and experts say it’s the most intense anti-Russian sentiment they’ve seen. They also call the behavior irrational and misplaced.” The article went on to discuss “Olga Sagan, the owner of Russian bakery Piroshky Piroshky in Seattle… [She] described a recent call from someone threatening a terrorist attack on her store.”
Within the last two months, opposition to Putin’s ideology and the atrocities of this war has morphed into hostility towards Russian culture in general, as well as Russian American people and businesses. The employee of our local Russian grocery store found only the barriers to production and trade with Russia to be of issue for the business’s functioning. Victory International may have avoided some of the problems with customer retention and profits—especially when buses of Smith students roll up to shop for Russian groceries. But many Russian American businesses face a difficult cultural shift, as some Americans apply flawed logic in their attempts to support the Ukrainian people and condemn Putin’s war. I’ve found that skipping my field trip and decreasing the profits of a local business would have done no good for the people living in a war zone.
