‘It’s about making a stand’: a history of boycotts, from the Boston Tea Party to Russia
A couple of weeks into the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Alexei Zimin realised something unfortunate about his London restaurant, Zima: there was a capital Z right above the entrance. Zimin, who comes from a small town two hours north of Moscow, was horrified by the association with the dominant symbol of an imperialist adventure that disgusted him, and he ordered its removal. But it wasn’t enough to exempt his business from the boycotts that have become a central feature of western outrage at Vladimir Putin’s war.
Bookings at Zima, which has recently added chicken kyiv to its menu of Russian staples such as borscht, pirozhki and blinis with sour cream, had already started to drop off. Staff were fielding abusive phone messages from anonymous callers who had concluded that they must be supporters of Putin, and were perhaps unaware that 80% of kitchen staff there are from Ukraine. Zimin didn’t really take it seriously, but he put security on the door just in case.
Seeking a way to express his opposition to the war, he posted a series of videos on Instagram of him smoking at his kitchen table as he sang anti-war songs, a gesture that led swiftly to the cancellation of the cooking show he had hosted for 12 years on the Russian broadcaster NTV. It wasn’t surprising, but, he reflected as he drank a vodka tonic in the Zima dining room last week, he doesn’t think he can go home now. “I never wanted to be an emigrant,” he said. “But I’m not a fool. Every action has a reaction.”
Zima is donating 10% of its revenues to the Red Cross in solidarity with Ukrainian refugees. Zimin cooked Ukrainian dishes – “super-delicious, the fattest food in the world” – for a special fundraising night.All the same, there were those who demanded further
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