Seeing Red

I am not ashamed to say that this issue’s column was inspired by toilet paper. Точнее (rather), by a recent purchase of toilet paper at an itinerant Moscow рынок (market), otherwise known as a row of trucks and minivans parked by the side of the road, selling their cargo.

The product in question was branded “Красная цена” (“Red Price”) and the paper, produced by the Adischevskaya Paper Factory in Kostroma region, reminded me of my favorite American idiom: “you get what you pay for” (or, in bureaucrat-Russian: cooтношение цены и качества – price/value ratio).

In fact, красная цена is an idiom related to haggling (торговаться). What visitor to Russia hasn’t heard that “red in Russian often meant beautiful, hence Red Square.” But when applied to ценообразование (pricing), things get more complicated. The Dictionary of Economic Terms gives the following definition: “Красная цена — цена сделки, удовлетворившая и продавцов и покупателей” (“Red price – the price of a deal that satisfies both sellers and buyers”). But I prefer the definition in the dictionary of the Russian Language Institute: “Самая высокая цена, которую можно дать за что-либо” (the highest price one is willing to pay for something).

Quite often the buyer is not happy with the seller’s price. As a proverb from Dal’s dictionary has it: У купца своя цена, у покупателя – своя (The merchant has his price, and the seller has his.) So, if you are haggling for, say, a samovar at Izmailovo Flea Market, you can say: “Красная цена твоему самовару – сто долларов” (“My red price for your samovar is $100”). Note the use of the dative.

This line would be perfect, for instance, if the seller first used the cliché line, “Если будете покупать, цену сбавлю.” (“If you are going to buy it, I’ll cut the price.”)  A synonym for сбавить is скинуть (to slash).

If you find a price to be prohibitive, you can express your outrage with, “Это грабёж” (“That’s a rip-off”). Or: “Креста на тебе нет” (“You don’t bear a cross” i.e. you are ungodly, shame on you). A piquant, old Russian line would be, “Какую цену заломил!” (“You’ve really jacked up the price!”). And a good starting position for any haggler is a casual, “Ладно, беру за полцены” (“Oh, alright, I’ll take it for half-price”).

Of course, there are plenty of times when haggling is out of the question and you just have to pay the going rate. In Ilf and Petrov’s classic novel The Twelve Chairs, the smooth operator Ostap Bender extorts money from all manner of less-than-honest Soviet bureaucrats. They regard their payments as bribes. When one mark tries to minimize the damage, Bender’s sidekick, Ippolit Matveyevich (“Kisa”) intones, “Я думаю, торг здесь не уместен.” (“I believe haggling is inappropriate here.”) This has become a крылатая фраза (literally a “winged phrase,” a catch-phrase) which is often creatively paraphrased in modern day Russia. Recently I spotted the following ad in the paper Из рук в руки (From Hand to Hand): Тойота, 2006 года выпуска, пробег 50000 км, $15000, торг уместен (2006 Toyota, 50,000 km, $15 000, haggling appropriate). And in a recent political article about Russo-Ukrainian gas negotiations, the headline read: Россия довольна газовыми контрактами с Украиной, но торг уместен (“Russia is happy with its gas contracts with Ukraine, but haggling is appropriate”). Ultimately the two sides found their красная цена.

But back to my story. I was seeing red, unhappy with the потребительская стоимость of the “Red Price” toilet paper. Потребительская стоимость (“use value”) is an economic term that indicates a product’s quality, its capacity to satisfy a consumer’s specific need. So I visited another рынок. There I was bowled over by the marketing creativity of the Syassky Paper Factory, based in Leningrad region. They had named their product “Мягкий знак” (“Soft sign”, i.e. Ь). I bought a 12-pack without even trying to торговаться, thinking that торг здесь неуместен.

It was a sort of an impulse buy (товар импульсивного спроса). But I have to say that the Ь lived up to its name.