And he hasn't seen anyone order amaretto in a long while. Every newspaper and television show was obsessed with showing how bad this country is and how hopeless we are and how good life is in the West. Now it's cool to be Russian again. Western companies that once found it easy to sell anything with English on the package now take pains to obscure their ownership of Russian brands. In advertising, as in politics, plays on patriotism are in.
Russian bears sell beer and kerchiefed babushkas star in cutting-edge music videos.
The trademark onion domes of Russian churches decorate labels for chocolate bars and dumplings. Far from being an oxymoron, Russian Style is a cigarette brand made by a Western tobacco firm just for the Russian market. At a time when globalization means more of the same around the world, Russia is defying the trend by turning inward again. Marketing surveys confirm how dramatic the turnabout has been for a country that once embraced all things Western as the antidote to 70 years of communist deprivation. Before 1998, according to the firm Comcon, only 48 percent of Russians said they preferred to buy domestic goods when considering quality and not just price.