BORIS BURDA: How Something Even Scarier Than Chewing Gum Was Found
Photo source: newyorker.com
ATTENTION — QUESTION!
In 1976, American wrestler Michael Farina was repeatedly denied entry to the wrestling mat. What eventually saved him was chewing gum. How?
ATTENTION — CORRECT ANSWER!
He finally spit it out — and made weight. Mike had already taken off his glasses but refused to take off his trunks.
BLIND HATRED
When I was in fifth grade, I had a wonderful literature teacher — I still remember him with gratitude. He once took the trouble to come to my house — I was a straight-A student — and shame me so thoroughly for reading cheap detective novels instead of serious literature that I truly felt embarrassed and changed my reading habits. Looking back, I can say that was a fortunate turn.
But of all his lessons, the one I remember best was this: never chew gum! That, he said, was a cunning trick by the imperialists — only they produced it, and they could easily distribute it inside the USSR or slip it to our morally unstable sailors, lacing it with any kind of filth — some would be poisoned, others would simply lose their minds… I listened and believed him. Many people said the same.
It’s not immediately clear why, but a visceral hatred for chewing gum seems to have taken root in the minds of Bolshevik leaders from early on. Even Trotsky chimed in, claiming that Americans chewing gum looked as if they were silently praying to the god of capitalism. You can almost picture him grinding his teeth in hatred and breaking into a cold sweat.
Propaganda networks circulated secret directives, spreading the belief that gum would ruin digestion and just about everything else. People were told that foreigners were handing out a special sticky substance filled with razor blades carrying terrible diseases… Even relatives abroad couldn’t send gum to loved ones — it would be confiscated from packages.
Chewing gum didn’t fare well in other totalitarian countries either. Italian writer and cultural theorist Umberto Eco recalled that the first piece of gum he ever got was from an American soldier, and he treasured it so much he chewed it for days, storing it overnight in a glass of water. Many Soviet citizens, by the way, first tasted gum during the Elbe Day meeting with U.S. troops.
THE DICTATOR WHO TRADED HIMSELF OUT OF POWER
Perhaps the authorities would have softened their stance had they known that one of the most ruthless enemies the United States had ever faced played a role in the birth of chewing gum. General Antonio López de Santa Anna waged war against the U.S. multiple times, resorting to brutal tactics, killing prisoners of war, and — the ultimate unforgivable offense — still ending up defeated.
It was Santa Anna who nearly wiped out the entire Texan garrison at the Alamo, including young American folk hero Davy Crockett, a figure as legendary in the U.S. as Ilya Muromets is in Russian epics. Yet when he lost another war to the United States and was overthrown by the Mexicans, he fled to the U.S., where no one laid a finger on him — why would they?
Trying to make money in his new homeland, Santa Anna imported a ton of chicle — the sap of the sapodilla tree — from Mexico, hoping to use it as a rubber substitute. Along with American businessman Thomas Adams, he tried to launch this idea, but to no avail. However, Adams noticed that Santa Anna enjoyed chewing chicle, and that sparked an idea…
Adams added a licorice flavoring to the gum, invented a machine to produce it, and later another one to sell it — and soon, all of America was chewing. Gum was advertised as beneficial for cleaning teeth, and during Prohibition, it became a clever way to mask the scent of illegal alcohol.
New innovations boosted the popularity of the beloved product. In 1906, Frank Fleer invented bubble gum — the kind you could blow into bubbles. Twenty-two years later, his accountant (!) Walter Diemer perfected the idea, and the new product became a bestseller. And nobody raised ideological concerns — despite the fact that Santa Anna remains widely disliked in the United States… But why?
ILLEGAL CURRENCY
No censorship could save the USSR from chewing gum — it was pushed out the door, only to climb right back in through the window. As soon as the country slightly lowered its barriers to the outside world, the slogan of the 1957 World Festival of Youth and Students — «Peace, Friendship, Festival!» — quickly morphed into «Peace, Friendship, Chewing Gum!» and that’s exactly how people remembered it. Everyone immediately recognized the product’s value as prime black-market currency — light, compact, and profitable.
Some people got rich off the gum ban — like sailors in the international fleet. Cheap stuff that foreign shopkeepers would toss in as small change suddenly turned into social leverage back home. A stick of gum could make a traffic cop smile sweetly or prompt a low-level official to drop the stone-faced act and — though with disgust — actually do their job. It was a golden ticket to anywhere!
Adults could always buy chewing gum from doormen at fancy restaurants, while kids typically begged tourists for it (in Leningrad, children who mobbed Finnish tourists were nicknamed purukumshchiki — purukumi is Finnish for gum). Even wrappers and collectible inserts didn’t go to waste — they were traded, sold, and collected. Is this what the authorities wanted? Well, here you go!
A simple idea emerged — since everyone was chewing the cursed stuff anyway, why not make it ourselves? That way we’d outdo the bourgeoisie and earn money! But even thinking about this was scary. So the first to break the taboo weren’t in Moscow, but on the periphery. Yerevan dared first, followed by a pasta factory in Rostov-on-Don, and later the Tallinn-based confectionery company Kalev.
But these early efforts in the late ’60s went largely unnoticed — production was minimal, advertising unthinkable, and the promising initiative was quietly shut down… just in case someone got angry. After all, we lived without gum before, and we could surely live without that ideologically compromised treat now. Or so it seemed — until things changed very soon, and very dramatically.
TRAGEDY AT THE HOCKEY GAME
The early 1970s were marked by historic hockey duels between Canadian and Soviet teams. The Super Series games captivated global attention, and when the Canadian youth team Barry Co-op came to the USSR in March 1975, the Sokolniki Sports Palace was filled to the brim — not a single empty seat. The team’s sponsor? Wrigley — yes, the chewing gum manufacturer.
The first two games had already caused a stir — the Canadians were tossing out chewing gum by the kilo, flinging it directly into the stands and filming the crowds as they fought over the coveted treasure. For the third game on March 10, not only hockey fans showed up — a huge number of schoolchildren rushed in on discounted kids’ tickets, aiming solely to get some gum. They knew there wouldn’t be enough for everyone and came prepared to fight for it.
After the match, someone shouted that gum was being handed out at the exit, where the Canadian team’s buses were parked. A crowd of sweet-toothed seekers stormed the area, trampling everything in their path — like the deadly stampede at Khodynka Field during the coronation of Nicholas II, and with eerily similar consequences. Fewer people died this time, but 21 lives were lost, including 13 children…
Soviet media didn’t report a single word about the tragedy. The officials held responsible were released on amnesty just six months later. But apparently, someone did take notice. Whether a decision was made at the highest level remains unclear, but within a year, fully automated chewing gum production lines began operating in several cities.
Most surprisingly — nothing terrible happened because of it. And if something did go wrong later, it was more likely due to bans like these than their absence. Don’t point to Singapore, either, where gum was also banned — it’s now permitted again, though only with a doctor’s prescription. They at least understand that arbitrary bans are harmful in and of themselves.
Not to mention, recent research has shown that people who chew gum perform better on memory and attention tests than those who don’t, it’s no coincidence that Australian geneticists are no longer content with making gum that tastes like strawberries — now they’re breeding strawberries that taste like gum. Presumably so that strawberries feel more natural and familiar to us…
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