**: Tea fox sees the world.
In Almaty, the largest city in Kazakhstan, I deliberately found a hotel in an old residential area, surrounded by old Soviet apartments of 5 and 9 floors, the so-called Khrushchev Building.
The guy at the front desk laughed at himself, as long as it is an old and ugly gray-brown house, it is basically left by the Soviet Union. According to him, around the old house, about a thousand dollars per square meter. During my days in Almaty, I came into contact with quite a few young people who were disgusted with everything that the Soviet Union had left behind.
Khrushchev House.
If you go back 60 years, the Soviet Union was experiencing an initial socialist boom. In 1954, the Soviet Union built a large number of simple houses, which were called "Khrushchev Buildings", which solved the housing problem of a large number of ordinary people, allowing them to move from basements, sheds, and dilapidated houses to new homes. The Soviets, who had experienced the devastation of World War II, realized that they had their own houses, potatoes in pots, and beef in bowls, and became the envy of most countries.
The "Khrushchev Building" was once a beautiful sight and a "hero" in solving the housing crisis, but since the 1980s, it has become synonymous with the ossification and decay of the Soviet Union.
The front desk manager of the hotel, who has lived in the Khrushchev Building since he was a child, said that almost all the ordinary houses in the urban area of Almaty are Khrushchev buildings, which are in poor condition, unreasonable in design, lack of living facilities, and even exaggeratedly speaking, more simple than the cage in the zoo.
I once visited some of the Khrushchev buildings left over from the Soviet Union, and if there is one word to describe them, it is rough . The hardware, the façade, and the interior decoration are all very rough. As for the interior package, of course, it cannot be expected that the design of 50 years ago will meet the living requirements of today's people. By today's standards, the residential areas of the former Soviet Union are completely devoid of supporting facilities, especially lack of consumption and entertainment venues.
In the open space of the residential area, there are some simple children's play equipment, such as slides, but they are rusty and lack of maintenance. Due to the lack of supporting commercial facilities, there are many temporary stalls near the community.
The purely planned economy of the Soviet Union has been implemented for 70 years, a full three generations, and in today's Kazakhstan, although the traces of the Soviet Union have almost been erased, there is still a strong inertia in people's minds, and traces of the Soviet Union can be seen in many details, for example, Soviet-style shops, which still exist.
Once, I was strolling in the center of Almaty and came across a small shop, the owner was a woman about 60 years old, with a big cake face, I thought she was a North Korean from Central Asia, but after learning about it, I learned that she was a Kazakh, and she had no Korean blood for three generations.
The owner also said that the store opened at the end of the Soviet Union and has maintained a Soviet style for decades. At that time, it was also rebuilt from a residential house, there was no open floor-to-ceiling glass, no roller shutter doors, there were iron rods everywhere, and the shelves were iron cages, this isTypical Soviet styleThe pile is solid, the shape is rough, and once it is finalized, it will remain unchanged for decades。That kind of cold atmosphere, people have no desire to shop, even worse than our supply and marketing cooperatives in the 80s, it looks like a prison.
I bought a bottle of Kazakhstan's Coke Zero in a small shop, and Khrushchev would never have imagined that the residential area built by the Soviets would eventually be occupied by American Coke.
One night, I went out from the hotel to forage for food.
Inadvertently, I walked into an old apartment building, which was at least 40 years old, and from the outside, it was a typical Khrushchev building, boxy, like an urn, with mottled walls, and dilapidated doors and windows. The green coverage is high, but it lacks maintenance and is overgrown with weeds. In autumn in Central Asia, the air is filled with the smell of rotting leaves after the rain, and the cold wind carries the dampness, like a loach, constantly burrowing into clothes. Under the dim street lamp, a few old people occasionally walked by, looking lifeless.
In such an environment, I saw a pizzeria on the map of my phone, only thirty meters away from me, but I didn't find it for a long time, and then a local showed me the way, the pizzeria was actually in the basement, there was originally a street light, but it was broken recently, so outsiders couldn't find it at all.
Looking at the black entrance, which seemed to lead to a bottomless abyss, I hesitated, curiosity overcame fear, and walked inside. Pushing open the door, it suddenly opened, as if one foot had crossed thirty years, from the depressed Soviet Union into a prosperous modern age.
The pizzeria has two sets of doors, each door is thick, equipped with double glazing, and the outside temperature is only 3, and when you enter the first door, the temperature is increased by 10, and the second door is increased by 10. The area of the store is not large, but there is plenty of heating, the lights are bright, and some of the customers in the store are wearing short sleeves, so I feel a lot more relaxed.
I ordered a **, a drink, plus a seven-inch sausage pizza, 2100 tenge, 32 yuan. Such a ** is quite cheap for Chinese, but it is still a bit expensive for ordinary people in Kazakhstan.
I thought that this kind of small shop could not use credit cards, so I gave the clerk 3,000 tenge notes, and the other party was confused, and he couldn't say what he wanted to say, so I went into the kitchen and found a colleague who could speak English.
He asked me, is there any kaspi (Kazakh Alipay)? I said, no.
Then he asked if he had a credit card. I said, yes.
He took out a pos machine with a sigh of relief, and the Chinese character UnionPay was actually printed on it, and he really didn't expect that in this depressed old Soviet-style community, he could actually accept UnionPay cards. This world is wonderful, so far away, so close, strange and familiar at the same time.
After paying with UnionPay, I went to the bathroom, and to my surprise, it was a standard American restroom, which was very large enough for a set of tai chi, and even a baby care table. There was hand sanitizer, hot water, a dryer, and a lavender scented spray. Such a toilet configuration, even if it is placed in a large city in China, is the top level. The quality of the customers is also very good, and after eating, they all take the initiative to clean up the plates and put them on the storage table.
An even more magical scene appeared. I noticed a restaurant employee, sorting out crayons and white paper with pale gray lines. Through the translator, she explained to me. It turns out that these are **tracing paper. In order to attract customers, the restaurant has added a free child custody service, where parents put their children here, and the restaurant has opened an area dedicated to painting for children. When you finish your drawing, you can get a prize.
On the surface, the merchant provides free materials and venues, which is a loss-making business, but in fact, it kills two birds with one stone.
On the one hand, there are many restaurant logos in these paintings, and children bring their paintings back to show off, which is equivalent to giving free advertising to the restaurant.
On the other hand, the small pizzeria is located in the basement of the old neighborhood, and from the traditional business logic, the location is poor. But they have a different way of thinking, focusing on takeaway and high-sticky customers, especially those who need to take care of children. In fashionable Internet terms, it can be explained that the hosting service is actually a "drainage tool" for pizzerias, which can save high rents and prosper at the same time.
Sinking the chain of pizza stores to the old community and attracting special groups with high stickiness - such a business model is rare in China, which is refreshing to me. I never expected that in this isolated Central Asian country, we can also see a new economic ecology.
Later, when I researched this pizzeria, I realized that it had a lot of origins. The company is called Dodo Pizza) was founded in 2011 by Russian Fyodor Ovchinnikov in just over a decade. But Dodo Pizza is the largest pizza chain in Russia and Kazakhstan, with the size of three competitors (Domino's, Papa John's, and Pizza Hut combined). Dodo Pizza is also the fastest-growing restaurant chain in Europe.
What's even more interesting is that, according to Dodo Pizza, the company does not define itself as a chain of restaurants, but as a digital solution provider, and they use their own cloud-based technology platform, Dodo IS, to digitize every aspect of the pizza business.
In fact, we can understand DODO PIZZA as the best Luckin, a new digital business model, and a new force that has grown rapidly after angel rounds, A rounds, B rounds, and rounds of financing, driven by capital forces. The biggest difference between the two is that Luckin sells coffee, benchmarks Starbucks, dodo sells pizza, and benchmarks Pizza.
Later, I asked the clerk how the company was treated. The clerk looked embarrassed, wanted to speak and stopped, seemed to be treated very ordinarily, wanted to complain, but held back. However, I found the monthly salary of the Almaty store on the ** of this company:
The person in charge of the store, from 180,000 to 300,000, is equivalent to 2,800 4,700 yuan.
Ordinary clerks, from 130,000 to 200,000, equivalent to 2,100,3,100 yuan.
According to the latest data for 2023, Kazakhstan's GDP per capita is about 1$330,000, slightly higher than in China. The GDP per capita of Almaty is 250,000 US dollars, equivalent to the level of Ningbo. But in fact, the income of the common people is not as good as ours, I once wrote an article on this issue, interested readers can move: Central Asia investigation has a feeling: poor countries to turn over, there is only one way left!
Kazakhstan has almost no light industry, is a landlocked country, and has high logistics costs, and the result of the combination of the two is that prices in Kazakhstan are much higher than ours. Here's an example.
The day I arrived in Kazakhstan, I lost the plug converter, and there was a certain cow socket in the nearby home appliance chain, which actually cost 70 yuan! And in China, as long as 15 yuan free shipping, I should not be this kind of wronged person! So, I went to a street shop and bought a miscellaneous brand with the words made in China, 30 yuan, and in China, 59 yuan free shipping to home.
The advantages of the market economy are that there is vitality, high efficiency, fast adaptation, and endless innovation, but it is also the stronger the stronger, and the weaker the weaker. In any case, compared to the ossified Soviet Union of the past, this is a happy annoyance, at least there is room for continuous improvement. At present, the situation in Kazakhstan is that the society is advancing with the times, the economy is constantly developing, there is no material scarcity, and distribution needs to be improved.
Kitchen debates. At the opening ceremony of the U.S. National Exhibition in Moscow, the Soviet Union, in July 1959, there was a famous "kitchen debate" between 46-year-old U.S. Vice President Nixon and 65-year-old Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union, Nikita Khrushchev.
The exhibition hall is furnished with things that Americans yearn for, a variety of entertainment equipment, and a dazzling array of household appliances, the purpose of which is to show the economic prosperity of the United States. Nixon boasted that people were free to choose what to buy and that businessmen could choose what to produce.
Khrushchev retorted that the Soviets were only interested in the practicality of objects and were not interested in extravagant and luxurious things. Khrushchev also said that in the Soviet Union, everyone could get a house provided by the state for free, while the poor in the United States could only sleep on the streets.
Apparently, Khrushchev misjudged human nature.
The Soviet Union, unlike Africa, was not lacking in quantity, but it was rather sluggish in terms of quality, and what was more fatal was that it did not keep pace with the times. There is no impermeable wall in the world, although the iron curtain fell, and ordinary people in the Soviet Union could not travel to the West, they can always know from various sources that not far from Western Europe, the common people not far away not only live more spacious and luxurious than them, but also have a variety of business and entertainment. People are greedy and fickle, they do not suffer from poverty but from inequality, and where there is comparison, there is harm.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the first people concluded that the state-owned enterprises were the root of the problem, so they resorted to fierce shock**, selling assets cheaply, and as a result, the wealth was monopolized by a very small number of oligopolies.
In fact, state-owned enterprises are not necessarily rigid, I have said several times in the article before, many of our state-owned enterprises, the efficiency is very high, the service is also very good, the most typical example is the three major telecommunications companies, involution to the extreme, in contrast, the three giants of the United States: T-Mobile, Verizon, AT&T, is simply scum, expensive, poor service, inefficient ......Another example is the State Grid, as the world's largest power grid company, the service can be so good, I am very surprised.
A friend who works in a state-owned enterprise told me that now they are also operating in a market-oriented manner, and the KPI is always with them, and the pressure is very high, so they dare not slack off for a moment. In the final analysis, the market economy is the key to the vitality of enterprises and countries.
Now when I think back to the children who painted at Dodo Pizza, I can't help but feel that the land of the former Soviet Union was not without economic talents, but that back then, these talents did not have a stage to play. Who would have thought that Dodo Pizza could do this with such a level of service?
The biggest weakness of the Soviet Union was, in fact, the economic model. First of all, the planned economy is too long, a full 70 years, three generations. Second, the planned economy is too thorough, even if there is a gap left in the market economy, it will not be so rigid, and the northern giant will not fall so early. Maybe this is the fate of the Soviet Union, it does not have a precedent to learn from, one road to the end, looking back, there is no way back.