"They closed everything, and now they'll close our bakery too."
The story of a Vologda enterprise that existed for more than 60 years but lost the battle with chain stores.
In mid-May, employees of the Sazonovsky Bakery in the Vologda Region were notified of the plant's closure. It would cease operations on July 18th. The news came as a bolt from the blue—according to the workers, they had no idea the operation was unprofitable. They are outraged not only by the closure of the plant itself, where many locals have worked their entire lives, but also by the manner in which the decision was made: problems were not discussed until the last minute, shareholders were not notified of a meeting, and workers were offered jobs at a glass factory, where working conditions are disproportionately harsh. The Sazonovsky workers regret the plant's closure, but accept it as inevitable. The employees, however, are convinced the owners haven't done enough to preserve production and are trying to fight back, albeit with little confidence—salaries are already meager, and what if they are fired for rebellion without severance pay? NeMoskva traveled to Sazonovo to see how and why a company that couldn't win the battle with the ubiquitous "networkers" is dying.
An 11-hour train ride from Moscow to Cherepovets, then another three and a half hours on BlaBlaCar, and I'm in the Vologda village of Sazonovo, where they're planning to close the bakery. There's not a soul on the street, only mosquitoes and gnats attacking from all sides. To the right and left are rows of small wooden houses with sagging fences. I'm met and accompanied by two bakery employees—37-year-old Olga Demidova and 50-year-old Lyudmila Vasilyeva.
I'm staying the night at Lyudmila's. It's a typical wooden house, with a vegetable garden in the yard and, across the street, a woodpile with a pile of firewood for the stove. A cold toilet is next to the hallway. A large dog greets me at the door—a Thai Ridgeback. The choice of this somewhat exotic breed has its own story: the family once had another dog, which was very ill and couldn't be saved. Doctors suggested other pets—Lyudmila believes, out of guilt—and among them was a Ridgeback.
The interior of the house is unusual for a village dwelling: a modernly renovated kitchen and a plasma TV in the living room. The apartment was furnished while Lyudmila's husband earned money as a truck driver. Six years ago, he suffered a stroke, which left him completely paralyzed on the left side of his body and left him with speech problems. Now he can't work, only receiving a disability pension.
We sit down at the table. Lyudmila treats us to some shchi and Sazonov black bread. For the first time, we begin talking about the bakery.
"Definitely GMO-free"
Both Olga Dementyeva and Lyudmila Vasilyeva began working at the bakery almost immediately after graduating from high school. They had no formal education beyond high school. Their entire lives, like those of several other residents of Sazonovo, were spent at the bakery; they never considered other work.
Lyudmila joined the company in 1996. Before that, she had worked briefly at a local glass factory, from which she went on maternity leave. She says there was no work available at the time, but there was at the bakery, where the wages were good and paid on time. So, getting a job at the plant was impossible. But Lyudmila, one might say, was lucky:
"The only way to get in was through connections. All the [employees'] relatives worked there—wives, grandmothers, children. And almost all of my family worked there. And somehow it happened that I went to work there too."
Olga Demidova started working at the bakery as a cleaner, then was called to the gingerbread shop. She says the gingerbread was delicious back then. It's still delicious now, but not quite the same—the dough composition has changed. She feels sorry for the factory, but she admits it's "not what it used to be."
"It used to be much easier to work. We divided the day into four six-hour shifts. Now we're down to two 12-hour shifts. Each had four people, but mine only had three," Olga explains of the difficulties.
I tried my first Sazonov bread at Lyudmila's table. She treated me to the pryaniki after dinner. She bought fresh white bread the next morning. It's airy, slightly crumbly, and dissolves easily in the mouth. The black bread has a crisp crust. The pryaniki are soft, easy to chew, and leave a pleasant aftertaste. Nothing extraordinary, but for the locals, their baked goods are unique.
Lyudmila says she can't eat any other bread because she knows their buns and loaves are "definitely GMO-free," while others are "made of God knows what." The employees claim their products are "as delicious as in the Soviet Union" and are unmatched anywhere else. On the village's website saysthat Sazonov bread “evokes the warmest emotions and pleasant memories in consumers: ‘Just like when I was a child, at my grandmother’s!’ or ‘Just like homemade!’”
The closure of the bakery is not the first liquidation of local enterprises. Ten years earlier, in 2013, stopped working the oldest enterprise in the village is the Pokrovsky glass factory, once former property Counts Tolstoy. It had been in operation since 1860. Lyudmila points towards the pine alley – there stands monument to a glassblowerA forged sculpture of a man blowing glass from a pipe. An inscription nearby reads: "Our people have brought glory to the land of great glassmakers. Let the glory of glassblowers ring throughout the land! And may the state be renowned for their invaluable labor!"
When asked why the glass factory was closed, Olga answers simply:
"Everything's closing down here. Nobody needs anything. All the young people are leaving, there's not much to do here. Almost everything's closed down—and now our bakery is going to close, too."
In the 1970s and 1980s, more than four thousand people lived in Sazonov, but after the 1990s, the population began to decline. In the 2000s, there were three and a half thousand, by the early 2010s, three thousand, and now just over two and a half thousand remain. Closures are a constant social backdrop to Sazonov's life: closed And shops, and a kindergarten, and a boarding school sanatorium. For now, the school, hospital, community center, and a few shops remain.
The bread factory's products in Sazonov are available only at one small store, "Pishchetorg." Pyaterochka, Magnit, and Raduga also operate in the village, but, says Lyudmila, the chain stores aren't interested in their products—they have their own suppliers. She notes that Sazonov bread is sold at several stores in neighboring Chagoda, and can also be found in Vologda and neighboring regions. Smaller stores are the main buyers.
The history of the Sazonovsky Bakery in archival photos. Source: About Sazonovo и personal page Sergey Tataev on VKontakte
For the first two years, all buns, loaves, and pies were made by hand, then delivered by horse to nearby districts. In 1962, the Sazonovsky Bakery received its first dough-dividing machines. Until 1972, all ovens burned wood exclusively, then they were converted to liquid fuel. At the same time, mechanical lubrication of the bread pans was introduced; previously, lubrication was done manually. In 1973, a continuous production line for cutting bakery products was acquired for the bakery, and the loading and unloading of raw materials was mechanized. The enterprise produced up to nine tons of various baked goods per day. Production, warehouse, and utility spaces expanded. In the 80s, a confectionery workshop was opened, and in the 90s, a pasta workshop. The subsidiary farm developed, and the staff increased. In 2000, the bakery began operating on gas (previously, diesel fuel). From 2005 to 2012, the equipment was modernized, and the bakery began producing dietary products.
"Why maintain a loss-making enterprise?"
The village's website doesn't mention what's been happening at the factory for the past 12 years. Lyudmila and Olga explain it as we walk to the factory to meet with the director and liquidator, Alexander Kustov. The staff is constantly being cut, salaries are being slashed, production has significantly decreased, people are quitting and leaving. Currently, the bakery has 37 employees, and they're mostly "paperworkers." There are also a lot of stokers—they're needed to keep the factory running. "keep the gas".
The current director, Alexander Kustov, is a former driver at the company. He was appointed in January after the previous director, Veniamin Smirnov, left. According to Lyudmila, he led the company for a year and a half and initially wanted to develop the bakery, but then realized that the chairmen VOPO [Vologda Regional Consumer Society, owner of the enterprise] "They'll squeeze him." Before him, since 2012, there was Anna Belekina, who had previously worked as production manager.
"She quietly went with the flow, saying everything was fine. Then she retired," Lyudmila says of her.
According to her, Kustov has no management training (she was unable to ask the director himself about this). His agreement to become a liquidator angers her, claiming that his mother worked at the bakery her entire life, and he himself had been an employee for a long time.
The bakery owner describes the director's change as a measure taken to try to "bring the bakery to profitability." In May 2024, the head of the Chagodoshchensky District, Alexander Kosenkov, wrote On his VKontakte page: "Through negotiations with the chairperson of VOPO, N.S. Tolokonnikova, an agreement was reached that VOPO would attempt to bring the bakery to profitability in order to avoid closure. The bakery's management was replaced. However, according to the owner, the measures taken have not produced the expected results: product quality remains unstable, and demand for the products has not increased. The enterprise is operating at 30% of capacity, baking 18 tons of baked goods per month. <…> The enterprise will be put up for sale."
"The authorities were used to the manager sitting around and transferring profits to them. When the first manager died, they [the VOPO chairmen] started getting involved. They're people who don't have much sense, as they say," Lyudmila reasons. "Nothing worked out for them. Vologda wasn't getting enough money. So they decided to get rid of our bakery. They sold our last stores here and in neighboring Chagoda, where most of our sales were. We realized the Vologda people didn't need it [the bakery]."
I was able to speak with three plant employees. In addition to Olga Demidova and Lyudmila Vasilyeva, there was also 38-year-old Olga Mikheeva, who had worked at the plant for 18 years. They could be called local activists—they are the most vocal in their opposition to the closure. All three are outraged not only by the plant's closure itself, but also by the manner in which the decision was made.
On May 14, all employees received notices from the VOPO lawyer about the liquidation of the bakery. (This document and those mentioned below are at the disposal of the editorial board - editor's note). It stated that the decision to close the enterprise had been made at a shareholders' meeting. Olga Mikheeva wrote a request for a copy of this decision and sent it to Kustov. He refused, citing that her relationship with the bakery was purely an employment relationship and that he was under no obligation to provide her with corporate documents. In response to their outrage (claiming that she and other employees were also shareholders), the women received a reply: their share books were no longer valid. The reason for this is unclear, and no one had previously informed them of this.
…Meanwhile, we reach the bakery. The gates are open, and it's easy to get in. Alexander Kustov's office is a room filled with cabinets and desks, all piled high with papers. The director sits at one desk, and the accountant, Elena, at the other. I introduce myself, and right from the doorway, I'm directed to Natalya Tolokonnikova, the "owner of the bakery"—she's the one to ask any questions.
We finally managed to get the director of the bakery to talk a little.
— You're the company's liquidator. Why did you agree to liquidate the plant?
— It’s not me who’s going to liquidate, but the property is closing.
- But you will be signing the liquidation documents...
"I'm just an ordinary employee, I was just appointed managing director... I'd be happy for the bakery to continue operating, but that's the owners' decision. Judge for yourself: you have a business, and it's losing money. Will you maintain it?"
According to accountant Elena, the problems began during the coronavirus pandemic, and they haven't been able to rectify the situation since then. She claims the bakery's losses for the first three months of 2024 amounted to four million rubles. Kustov says he has nothing to add, asks me to leave, and walks me outside. Olga Dementyeva and Lyudmila Vasilyeva are waiting there, talking with the stoker. The director asks me not to say or discuss anything in my presence.
On According to According to the Rusprofile counterparty verification service, the company's revenue more than doubled in 2023, from 39,5 million rubles to 94 million. However, losses also increased dramatically: from 400,000 rubles in 2022 to almost five million in 2023. And the problems, apparently, began even before COVID-19: profits, which stood at six to seven million rubles before 2017, began to decline significantly in 2018, and since 2021, the plant has been operating in the red.
NeMoskva attempted to clarify the reasons for the growing losses despite growing revenue with the owners. We wrote to both the aforementioned Tolokonnikova and Natalia Vlasova (she, not Tolokonnikova, is listed as the chairperson of the VOPO board in the Rusprofile database). They read our messages but ignored them. We also sent an email request to the consumer society; no response had been received at the time of publication.
Back in January, in an interview with the Chagodoshchensky district newspaper Iskra, Alexander Kustov recognizedThe bakery, which was "experiencing difficulties," explained the store closures by saying it was "difficult to compete with the large retail chains constantly opening in the district" and promised to try to rectify the situation: "Our finished product sales are limited: these are mainly stores in our district, neighboring Ustyuzhensky District, and the Novgorod Region. Therefore, we will initially focus on restoring the sales market and increasing the quantity and quality of our products. Here, of course, everything will depend not only on us but also on our valued customers, who can support us in our efforts to revive the enterprise."
It was not possible to revive it. It is already known. exact date closing date: July 18, 2024.
"Well, girls, you must forgive me."
That evening, Lyudmila and I hop on our bikes and head back to the bakery—she wants to take us inside and show us how the bakers work. But this time, the gates are locked. Olga Mikheeva, dressed in work clothes—a white shirt, white pants, and a white cap—meets us on the inside of the fence.
While Olga and Lyudmila are discussing how to get into the bakery, the stoker approaches and says Kustov has strictly forbidden him from allowing outsiders onto the premises. Lyudmila tries to reason with him:
— We're just showing how we work. What's so special about that?
"No, I'm forbidden to. I don't want any problems before retirement. Get out of here," the stoker replies indifferently.
"Well, if you don't want to open it, then we'll squeeze under the fence," Lyudmila declares decisively, turning to me. The gap between the ground and the fence is about half a meter, enough to squeeze through. I bend down, trying to get a feel for the opening, but the fireman shouts that there are cameras everywhere and I have no right to trespass on private property. I have to admit he's right and retreat.
As we drive home, Lyudmila continues to complain about the bakery management:
"They even cheated us on New Year's. We thought we'd have holidays. But they just made us work on all the holidays."
- And who are they?
"The management is from Vologda. They calculate our salaries. It's not even our own [meaning not the factory's] accountants who calculate our salaries. Until Vologda approves the salaries, we don't get paid."
— How much do you earn approximately?
— Our salary is basically minimal. Usually 20-22 thousand…
Lyudmila refers to the leadership of the Vologda Regional Consumer Society as "Vologda bosses," primarily Natalya Tolokonnikova. The employees have more than just complaints against her; they're resentful. Allegedly, meeting with the head of the Chadoshchensky district, Alexander Kosenkov, regarding the closure of the plant, she insulted them.
"She called us names in front of the employer. She said we didn't know how to work, that we didn't have any credentials," Olga Dementyeva recounts. "And then, after everyone had left, she came up to us and said, 'Well, girls, you'll have to forgive me.' Humiliating someone in front of everyone is perfectly normal... Yeah, I'm a baker and pastry chef, I don't have credentials, but you can't insult me now, can you?"
Source: Administration of the Chagodoshchensky District
The Chagodoshchensky District Administration's VKontakte page posted about this meeting. it is said"District Head Alexander Kosenkov and Deputy Head Tatyana Simanova expressed words of support for the bakers. After hearing from the workers, they announced that each employee will be provided with employment assistance."
At that meeting, the employment center did indeed present its available job openings—at that time, there were over 120 open positions in the district. Employers willing to hire employees of the closing bakery were also present: the Baker confectionery company, the Belokrestsky Butter Factory, the glass factories of ChSZ i K LLC and the Rusjam Steklotara Holding branch (which produces bottles), and SMPS LLC, a logging company.
Our interviewees described the conditions they would face if they accepted their offers. First, not all jobs would hire women—for example, the creamery only hired men, electricians. Second, at the glass factory, they'd have to carry "unbearable loads" and work 14-hour days. Finally, none of the factories are within walking distance; they have to get there by car or bus, and public transportation in Sazonov is difficult—there's a schedule posted at the bus stop only in the evening, letting locals know where and how to get there the next day.
The bakery is up for sale. We found it among ads On Avito, the production complex is valued at ten million rubles (negotiable). The plant's employees are hoping that the enterprise will be purchased by someone who can help restore it.
"We want someone interested to buy the factory. But we have very little time. The owners want to sell the equipment in July, and no one will want the empty bakery," complains Lyudmila.
Neither Olga Mikheeva, nor Olga Dementieva, nor Lyudmila Vasilyeva want to go to work for other enterprises.
"We've worked at the bakery our whole lives and we're not planning on going anywhere else. We want our factory to keep running. If things don't work out, well... We'll have to survive somehow," says Olga Mikheeva.
***
Locals we spoke with on the streets of the village praised Sazonov bread. 65-year-old Nadezhda, who worked as a cleaner at the factory for several years, said she tries to buy only local bread. 67-year-old Mikhail has loved it since his youth: "I've been eating it almost my whole life. It's a shame, of course, that the factory is closing." "I've always liked our bread. It's soft, it has a crispy crust, and it's definitely free of any chemicals or harmful substances," shared another local resident, a young woman. When asked about their attitudes toward the factory's closure, people generally responded in the same way: it's sad, but there's nothing they can do.
Some people don't care at all about the bakery's closure. Three twenty-something guys I managed to talk to on the way to the local store practically unanimously declared that they didn't care—they didn't see their future in the village.
"Well, they're closing this plant. What does it matter to us? We'll be leaving soon anyway," one of them shared.
The bakery workers are still trying to fight back. Specifically, they asked Margarita Kutepova, Secretary of the Chagodoshchensky District Committee of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, to create petition against the closure of the bakery. It garnered over 600 signatures within a month. Our interviewees also tried to complain to the local prosecutor about not being invited to a shareholders' meeting. He advised challenging the decision to liquidate the bakery in court. The workers decided against it, fearing they would be fired for violating work discipline without severance pay.
After a day in Sazonovo, I'm getting ready to return to Moscow. Lyudmila sees me off and invites me to come again—"just for fun, to the river." As I'm about to get in the car to Cherepovets, she hugs me and asks hopefully:
— Is there a chance that someone will find out about us, buy out the bakery, and it will continue to operate?
I'll answer honestly:
- I do not know.
Text and photos: Alena Zimina
Thank you GLUSH service for assistance in preparing the material.
