The Soviet Union was a nation built on absurdity and contradiction. Towards the end of its life, the absurdity became more pronounced, as the country tried to reckon with its future and, eventually, its impending collapse. My favorite way this manifested was in advertisements. In a nation that was without market competition, one might wonder what the point of advertisements was. An ad for chicken was effectively just an ad for the concept of chicken, not for any particular brand’s chicken. So, why make ads at all? According to Harry Egipt, the Estonian director of many of the most famous Soviet commercials, major industries had to spend 1% of their budget on advertising. So it was that you would have ads for products that faced no competition and were often completely sold out anyway. Here’s Egipt’s most famous (or infamous) commercial, one for chicken. If you don’t like seeing how the sausage gets made, maybe don’t watch it.

See you all at practice,

Lev Bernstein

Secretary, Quiz Bowl at Eesti Reklaamfilm, 1979-1989