SOVIET news programmes were often filled with cheerful reports of ever-greater harvests, even as store shelves remained stubbornly empty. Modern Russia’s shops are full, but its news broadcasts recently have been dominated by ugly images of the destruction of food smuggled into Russia from behind the lines of “the enemy”—Europe, America and their allies.

Stone-faced presenters report victories on many fronts: hundreds of tonnes of peaches and tomatoes pulped by bulldozers, meat burned at supermarket doors, cheeses incinerated in a “Russian fondue”. A young reporter cheerfully chucks a head of cheese under the chains of a tractor. On August 6th, a Russian news agency reported, the country burned 300 tonnes of food.

All of this is being done with the blessing of Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin. Last year the government banned imports of food from countries which had imposed sanctions on Russia. Now food that slips through the embargo is being destroyed in the name of Russian sovereignty.

In a country which suffered famine in the 1930s, where hundreds of thousands starved to death in the siege of Leningrad and 22m people live below the poverty line, the destruction of food is taboo. All the more shocking, then, that it has been turned into a public spectacle. To add context, Russian TV displays images of sad European farmers suffering from the Russian ban. But in reality Mr Putin’s counter-sanctions harm ordinary Russians most: the upwardly mobile types who used to enjoy foreign fruit and cheese no longer can, and the poor have to watch good food being wasted before their eyes.

Mr Putin’s aim is to deepen the nation’s siege mentality and to show that Russians can defy foreign sanctions, suggests one columnist. Articles by senior Russian officials portray their country as a fortress surrounded by enemies. In a government newspaper last week, Sergei Naryshkin, the speaker of the Duma (Russia’s parliament), accused America of planning a provocation in the near future. “You may ask, what is [America’s] ultimate goal? The answer is the same as ever: its foreign debt is enormous and pillaging other countries is its favourite method,” he wrote.

The Kremlin’s great grocery graveyard reinforces the ideology of political mobilisation fostered by Mr Putin for the past several years. After the collapse of the Soviet regime, precipitated by food shortages and the state’s inability to provide Western-style goods, Russians embraced consumerism in the 1990s and 2000s. Soaring disposable income and better shopping were considered the main achievements of Mr Putin’s first decade in power. European supermarkets and street cafés excited the new Russian middle class more than political parties. Much of what Russians consumed was imported.

The social contract of the 2000s is now smouldering like a heap of freshly impounded Dutch tulips. Instead of new supermarkets Russia is installing incinerators on its borders to protect itself from Western food. The conflict with the West explains the deepening crisis in the Russian economy, officials insist. (Russia has suffered double-digit inflation and a contraction of 4.6% in GDP over the past year.) Unable or unwilling to reform the economy, the Kremlin is offering nationalism as a substitute for foreign luxuries.

And it is not just food that is affected by Mr Putin’s counter-sanctions. A lot of Western medical equipment is blocked, too, including MRI scanners and defibrillators. If Russia is at war, as its rulers proclaim, sacrifices must be made. For the first time since the collapse of the communist regime, the state is intruding into people’s private lives, limiting their choices and forcing changes to their daily habits.

In a recent article Vladimir Yakunin, the head of Russia’s railway company, a former KGB officer and an ally of Mr Putin, cited Ivan the Terrible: “If you want to defeat a country easily—feed it your food.” Consumerism destroys “the slightest shoots of spirituality, historic traditions and national culture”, Mr Yakunin wrote. (According to Alexei Navalny, an anti-corruption blogger and opposition politician, Mr Yakunin’s grandson has been attending a private school in London.)

It is hard to see how bulldozing peaches and tomatoes will make Russia a more spiritual place. But it seems like another step towards making it hungrier, angrier and less stable.