FEATURE

Makers of Nesting Dolls Turn to State for Assistance

By Nadia Popova

The St. Petersburg Times

For The St. Petersburg Times Alexei Polikarpov.

SEMYONOV, Nizhny Novgorod Region — The state will place about 1 billion rubles ($28.4 million) in orders for crafts such as nesting dolls and hand-painted dishes and could reduce taxes to support craft makers whose sales have plummeted, the Industry and Trade Ministry said last week Thursday.

Ministries, state agencies, the White House and the Kremlin will all make large purchases of matryoshki and khokhloma dishes to be used mainly for gifts, a spokeswoman for the ministry said.

The measures were announced at a meeting on Wednesday between Industry and Trade Minister Viktor Khristenko and 20 souvenir makers.

One of the main measures of support should be state orders, Khristenko said at the meeting, according to a statement on the ministry’s web site Thursday. “We still have to work out the regulatory documents ... and draw up a list of the products the state will buy,” he said.

The state will also help the producers sell their crafts at crafts fairs both at home and abroad.

Speaking earlier this month, prior to Khristenko’s announcement, Alexei Polikarpov was apologetic during an interview in his cold, dimly lit office on the outskirts of Semyonov, the heart of Russia’s nesting doll industry. With sales of the country’s most famous souvenir diving, Polikarpov cut production, leaving fewer wood chips to heat his shop.

Across town at the Khokhloma Painting Plant, the country’s largest matryoshka producer, the situation was no better. Salaries were slashed along with output as the iconic wooden figures piled up on storeroom shelves.

Crafts makers in Semyonov, a town of about 25,000 people 70 kilometers north of Nizhny Novgorod, have been particularly hard hit by the economic crisis. Polikarpov said he saw domestic demand fall 30 percent in November compared with a year earlier, while foreign sales sunk by as much as 60 percent.

In January and February, domestic demand was halved.

Nadia Popova / The St. Petersburg Times Dolls featuring Obama, Medvedev, the Beatles and Harry Potter?sell in St. Petersburg and Moscow for about 500 rubles.

“We get fewer orders from souvenir shops, companies and private clients,” Polikarpov said sadly. His company, Dyuna, had almost no sales in December, despite the traditionally lucrative New Year’s holidays.

Polikarpov used to sell 400,000 rubles ($11,300) worth of dolls per month in Russia and had exports of $10,000 to $15,000 — mainly to Britain, Argentina and the United States.

Now, he said, the company’s warehouses have enough stock to cover sales for the next 1 1/2 months without producing anything. Dyuna had no profit in January and February and has just paid its employees for January.

The company cut production by 30 percent this year and has started producing wooden toys such as robots.

But Polikarpov hasn’t laid off any of his 30 employees.

“I can’t lose them, because the painting skill is invaluable,” Polikarpov said. “Even though there are fewer orders, I will be paying them at least something so they can buy some food.”

Dyuna’s artists earned 10,000 rubles per month before the financial crisis, and Polikarpov said most of them were still receiving their precrisis wages. The amount was worth about $430 before the crisis and $285 now.

Only two artists were seen in Polikarov’s workshop on Friday; the rest were either ill or not working.

Salaries were more than halved at the larger Khokhloma plant in downtown Semyonov, which had sales of about 30 million rubles ($860,000) on 100,000 matryoshkas last year.

Nadia Popova / The St. Petersburg Times A craftsman working at the Khokhloma Painting Plant in central Semyonov.

“We were loss-making in January and February,” Nikolai Korotkov, the plant’s general director, said in his office at the company’s production facility.

As sales fell 30 percent in the fourth quarter, Korotkov reduced production by 37 percent and shifted to a four-day workweek in January. The plant has reduced its output plans by 40 percent in March, compared with last year.

The low spirits also prevailed in the Khokhloma workshop, where formless chunks of wood were being turned into smiling lady dolls dressed in colored kerchiefs and flower-dotted aprons.

“I’ve been doing this for as long as I can remember,” Vera Molodtsova, 45, said while painting solid blue shawls on a doll. “So I won’t leave for any other job. There are almost none anyway because of the crisis.”

Molodtsova, a divorced mother with a 5-year-old son, said she used to take work home and paint on weekends. “Now, I do my work from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and go home done.”

She earns 3,000 rubles ($85) a month, down from 8,000 before the crisis. “It’s hard to survive on that, as I have to pay 2,500 for electricity, heating and hot water,” she said, adding that she gets 2,000 rubles in alimony.

Molodtsova and her colleagues said they had no choice but to underpay for the utilities, building up debt. Other women in the painting room said their husbands were also of little help.

“My husband used to work at a construction site in Moscow, bringing home around 25,000 rubles a month,” said Galina Yuferova, 43. “He got 10,000 in January and brought home nothing in February.”

Korotkov, who has been in matryoshka production for 35 years, said he had seen sales fall all over Russia, from Kaliningrad to Vladivostok, and couldn’t pay his workers more.

Nadia Popova / The St. Petersburg Times Molodtsova painting dolls in the Khokhloma workshop in the Nizhny Novgorod region. She earns 3,000 rubles a month.

“I sold matryoshkas for 800,000 rubles less in January and February than last year,” he said. “And I still have matryoshkas worth 6 million rubles at the warehouses, which I could be selling for the next three month without producing a doll.”

Korotkov, however, denied that there had been a dramatic change in salaries, saying they had fallen 25 percent.

Nonetheless, the business is faring better than in the 1990s, he said. “Back then, our customers used to pay with food or alcohol,” he said. “We had a special shop at the production site where people could take food instead of part of their salaries, which they used to get once every couple months.

“I hope it won’t get that hard this time,” he said with a sigh.

Dolls featuring everything from Presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev to cartoon characters and the head of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden were all selling for 500 rubles.

A vendor standing nearby said he was in a slightly better position because he was selling dolls he made personally. “But it still doesn’t save me, as my sales have dropped by 70 to 80 percent,” said Konstantin, 51. “I have some permanent customers, like souvenir shops on the Arbat, but now they buy way less.”

Polina, who operates a souvenir store on the Arbat, Moscow’s famed pedestrian street, said her matryoshka sales fell 30 percent in February from the previous year.

The dolls date back to 1890, when Sergei Malyutin, a painter from a crafts workshop in the estate of Russian railroad magnate Savva Mamontov, drew a sketch of what would become the traditional Russian matryoshka after he had seen a set of Japanese wooden dolls.

Korotkov, of the Semyonov plant, said he was confident that the matryoshka would make it through the crisis. “It’s a symbol of maternity, she is a great mother,” he said. “The matryoshka is eternal, it will survive any cataclysm.”

For others, however, the symbolism of the matryoshka was secondary. “If people don’t buy them any more, we’ll have nothing to eat,” said Valentina, 60, who has been selling the dolls at the Vernisazh market since 1991 and has seen a 50 percent drop in sales this year. “For me, the matryoshka is a symbol of survival.”

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