Galina Sergeevna's eyes widen when told about the appetite in the West for eggs, bunnies, and any other kind of chocolate at Easter time, and how chocolate firms cash in. The chief guide in the Chocolate Museum of Moscow's Red October Chocolate Factory sees it as a chance missed.
"In Russia, there is no special extra demand for Easter," she says. "We could make Easter eggs for you, but there is no point. There is no point exporting because our chocolate is purer than yours. There are no preservatives, so the sell-by date is too short."
The factory, a handsome redbrick building on the banks of the Moscow River, not far from the Kremlin, may have kept its Communist name - commemorating the 1917 revolution - but it has picked up its share of marketing skills.
"Chocolate is above politics," says Sergeevna, an employee for 26 years. "We made chocolate for the Tsar. We made chocolate for Stalin." And now they make it for the republic, with a range of bright wrappers depicting high art, folk tales, onion domes and patriotic symbols to attract the public.
The factory is one of the most famous in Russia, and a tour around it is all the more magical for the chocolate aroma that wafts around the 1920s-era machinery that churns out 27,000 tonnes of candy a year. Red October's museum, celebrating its 10th anniversary, shows what an institution the factory has been. It was founded by a German in 1867, and its finest hour came in the second World War when, despite the Nazi forces being at the gates of Moscow, it missed not one day's production, churning out porridge for the troops.
It is not known if Stalin had a sweet tooth, but his hard-bitten foreign minister Molotov certainly did - he used to hang around the factory while his wife was attending Communist Party meetings inside.
The museum shows off the fabulous chocolate boxes and tins that were given to the Tsar to commemorate 300 years of the Romanovs - and the factory still produces chocolates in a range of original boxes, circa 1903, for the nostalgia market. One box from the Communist era depicts skipping children with the slogan: "Thank you Stalin for our happy childhood".
But though privatised and expanding with the help of German machinery, Red October still faces stiff competition. There was consternation two years ago when a Gallup survey found that Snickers, made by Mars, is Russia's most popular chocolate bar - leading to the word Snikerizatsiya or "Snickerisation" being coined by nationalists to deride the flow of foreign products into the country.
