Cruella de Ville, Batman and Maybe Darth Vader? Costumes Some in Russian Elite Should Wear New Year’s Eve

Paul Goble

            Staunton, December 29 – As Russians prepare to celebrate the arrival of another year, Valeriya Chupina of the URA news agency has proposed the costumes that some members of the Russian elite should wear to New Year’s Eve parties given things they have said and done in the past 12 months (ura.news/news/1052365098).

            Among her suggestions for which she provides pictures are:

·         Olga Glatskikh, the Sverdlovsk official who scandalized Russia by saying that the authorities didn’t ask Russians to be born, could only come as Cruella de Ville.

·         Opposition figure Aleksey Navalny, Chupina suggests, should dress as Batman.

·         Duma deputy Vera Ganzya who complained of hardships because she is forced to live on only 380,000 rubles (5600 US dollars) a month could come as Scrooge McDuck.

·         Former KPRF presidential candidate Pavel Grudilin would be best as one of the pirates of the Caribbean, where he has some of his money stashed.

·         Irina Yarovaya, the Duma deputy who wants to ban everything, should be dressed as the Red Queen from Alice in Wonderland.

·         Dmitry Rogozin, head of Russia’s space program, could be dressed as a spaceman given his plans to send those who design rockets into the void.

·         And Saratov minister Natalya Sokolova who said Russians could easily survive on 3500 rubles (50 US dollars) a month could only appear as Alice in Wonderland herself.

Chuprina did not suggest a costume for Vladimir Putin: that could have landed her in jail. But those of us beyond the Russian borders can easily imagine that he should dress as Darth Vader, Ivan the Terrible, or Stalin – or perhaps in the best “hybrid” tradition of combining disparate elements from the past, in a costume no one would recognize with elements of all three.