In Russia the cult of Stalin has not outlived its usefulness completely. On the contrary, it has become a profitable business. Walking through the Old Arbat, one of the main Central streets of Moscow, just go to any gift shop to buy a t-shirt or mug with the image of the mustachioed face of the bloody Soviet dictator. However, items glorifying Stalin, can also be purchased in kiosks located in the numerous underpasses of the Russian capital, the Internet and even in some stores and airports, where they compete with the products of with the image of Putin.
Coasters, chocolate, watches, cases for mobile phones, boxes of matches, cigarettes — one can see the portrait of the “father of all peoples”. The reason is simple — it are well taken. Not only tourists, but also nostalgic for the Soviet Union.
Business
Painstakingly fashioned face Georgian, responsible for the death of several million people, literally, watching from the hilt, which can be purchased online for 5 thousand rubles. But for admirers of Stalin in selling a variety of products at much more affordable prices. Mug with image of a dictator in the form of Generalissimo costs 500 rubles: “Not the cult of personality and high popularity,” we read under the picture. For a painting “oil on canvas” Chinese production will have to spend 3 or 4 thousand rubles. And the souvenir shops seem great demand for dolls, whose first doll, which immediately catches the eyes of the buyers, is just Stalin. And now to discover all Putin, Yeltsin, Gorbachev, the doll will have to disassemble. Here you can meet and in a thousand rubles.
But the top spot of popularity in the ranking of sales is still t-shirt: not such a rarity to encounter on the streets of Moscow with a man who proudly wears it. On a portrait of Stalin printed a variety of crazy slogans: “go Back, today we need you as never before” or again: “we Need to work, not to hold a meeting”. Another t-shirt depicts a map of North America without the United States: in their place flaunts the phrase “the Strait named after Stalin”.
A popular brand
The historical memory of someone the poet Mandelstam called the “Kremlin mountaineer” did not prevent, however, most wealthy people to buy a luxury apartment in residential complex “Blizhnyaya dacha”, located to the West of the Russian capital: not far from here Stalin belonged to the house, all known under the name “blizhnyaya dacha”, that is located close to Moscow. “For sales, it is important that the brand was a powerful image, whether positive or negative,” — explained the newspaper “Kommersant” the Director of a Moscow advertising company.
The Hand Of Vladimir
60 years after Khrushchev’s de-Stalinization, despite severe repression and violent crimes in Russia “Koba” still has supporters. First and foremost, it’s an old Communist, still putting in his honor monuments. As follows from the survey conducted by the research organization Levada center, published in February 2017, 46% of Russians treat him “with respect, sympathy and admiration”.
A huge responsibility for this lies directly on Vladimir Putin, who often displayed an ambiguous attitude towards Stalin: if, on the one hand, he distanciruemsa from the man who had organized the red terror in Russia, on the other, exalts him, because he turned the USSR into a great power. All this fits into an idealized picture of Russian history as reflected in school textbooks.
