Author Topic: Stalin wine not accepted  (Read 104 times)

white Boy

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Stalin wine not accepted
« on: February 11, 2005, 08:15:35 AM »
Why Not Just Put Hannibal Lecter on the Label?

2 hours, 35 minutes ago

WINNIPEG, Manitoba (Reuters) - Wine labeled with a photo of brutal Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin was pulled from shelves in the Canadian province of Manitoba this week after complaints from the local Ukrainian community, a spokeswoman for government-owned liquor stores said.

The sherry and port from the Massandra winery in Ukraine featured a photo on the bottles' labels of Stalin seated with former U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

The wine commemorated the Yalta Conference, held at a castle near the winery 60 years ago this week, where the leaders decided on the shape of Eastern Europe after World War II.

"I don't want Stalin to be forgotten. I want him to be remembered for exactly what he was: a genocidal mass murderer," said Lubomyr Luciuk of the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association.

The Yalta agreement forced hundreds of thousands of Eastern Europeans living in Western Europe to return to countries controlled by the former Soviet Union, where many were killed, Luciuk said.

"I don't think anyone in Canada would welcome a Hitler Riesling or a Stalin sherry or a Pol Pot port or a Mao Tse-tung merlot," Luciuk said.

About 3 percent of Canadians, or more than 1 million people, identify themselves as ethnic Ukrainians in census surveys. About 40,000 Ukrainian political refugees moved to Canada after World War II, Luciuk said.

The Manitoba Liquor Control Commission had ordered 14 cases of the wines, priced at C$38 ($30.60) a bottle, but only six bottles had been sold before the wines were pulled, said Diana Soroka, a spokeswoman.