Creeping Stalinization of Russia Now Right on the Champagne Bottles, Mirovich Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, November 3 – Something horrifying took place this week: the producers of Soviet champagne have put the date 1937 on the labels of their still popular drink, the year in which they began to sell it but also the one in which Stalin’s Great Terror is most commonly associated, Maksim Mirovich says.

            The Moscow blogger says that this action is “nothing other than creeping Stalinization o the principle of replacing the memory of the victims with memory of their executioners.”  Just imagine, he says, how Russia’s “hurrah patriots” would react if someone put on wine bottles the date June 22, 1941 (maxim-nm.livejournal.com/544127.html#cutid1).

            When someone drinks this champagne with 1937 written on it, he is likely to begin to think that “not all was so bad” as some imagine and that fact there was “something good” in that year. Such a refocusing, Mirovich says, is exactly what Vladimir Putin wants Russians to do. And this “creeping Stalinization” is not limited to the champagne bottles.

            According to the blogger, “creeping Stalinization in Russia began already quite a long time ago … in 2008, after ‘the small victorious war in Georgia;” and it has only picked up steam with the police protecting Stalin from his critics, the Kremlin celebrating the force structures, and Moscow taking over the economy and the media.