Kotleta in a bun

Few people know outside Russia know about Anastas Mikoyan and I think some 90% of Russians think that Mikoyan is a sausage brand. This is true – Mikoyan is the most popular brand of meat products in Russia named after Anastas Mikoyan – the People's Commissar for external and internal trade from 1926 till 1939. He is known for “importing” dozens of American food technologies from the US to the Soviet Union. The idea was to build giant food producing plants and America was then the only country in the world to offer frankfurter producing factories with an output of 100 tons a day. American businessmen loved Mikoyan. On a single trip after one short “excursion” into a factory that produced 80 tons of frozen convenience food a day he could say, “We want five of them. Now!” Thanks to Mikoyan Russians learnt the taste of industrially produced food: ice cream, sausage, frankfurters, canned milk and mayonnaise, etc. Not that there was no ice cream or sausage in the Soviet Union before but it was home made - not by giant khladokombitants or myasokombinats.

Some products imported from America by Mikoyan were success but some failed. For example, Mikoyan wanted hamburgers to become popular Russian fast food. But ‘kotletka in a bun’ even after special promotion and advertising campaigns couldn’t win the hearts and stomachs of Russians. Actually the Soviet advertising was almost always about forcing people to eat something they don’t like.