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09-02-2005 04:17 Maidan-INFORM
'Stalin Wine' Protested

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Representatives of the Ukrainian Canadian community have protested the sale of Crimean wines by the Manitoba Liquor Control Commission. Two wines, a 1998 sherry and port, bear labels portraying the Soviet dictator, Joseph Stalin, at Yalta in February 1945. At Yalta "Uncle Joe" Stalin and his partners, Winston Churchill and Franklin D Roosevelt, fixed the fate of post-war Europe. Some historians have insisted the Yalta Accord betrayed eastern Europe to Soviet domination. Certainly measures were agreed that provided for the forcible repatriation of all "Soviet citizens" who found themselves in western Europe at war's end, a ruling that resulted in millions of men, women and children being returned despite their pleas, resistance and many suicides. Many repatriates were executed immediately, although the majority became inmates of various Soviet GULAG concentration camps.

Commenting, the director of research for the Ukrainian Canadian Civiil Liberties Association (UCCLA), Dr Lubomyr Luciuk, said:

"Joseph Stalin was one of the more loathsome of the dictators who soiled 20th century Europe. The horrors of Stalinism are only now being more completely catalogued but it is increasingly apparent that his regime was responsible for more crimes against humanity and war crimes than that of Adolf Hitler, his one-time ally. At Yalta, the Big Three not only betrayed Poland but likewise ensured that many victims of Communism, for example people who could have provided testimonies about the genocidal Great Famine of 1932-1933 in Soviet Ukraine, the Holodomor, were forever silenced by being sent back to Stalin's domains. We call upon the Manitoba Liquor Control Commission to take these wines off its stores' shelves. The 60th anniversary of the Yalta Agreement will be marked on Friday, 11 February. We would be distressed to think that a mass murderer, a Ukrainophobe, an anti-Semite, and a Communist who dedicated himself to the destruction of liberal democracy would be in any way associated with the pleasure that comes with a responsible use of wine, or with contemporary Ukraine, where the Orange Revolution has demonstrated unmistakably that the majority want to resume their place in Europe, not wallow in some post-Soviet, neo-Stalinist swill."

For More Information on UCCLA please go to www.uccla.ca

UCCLA's director of research, Dr L Luciuk, may be contacted at (613) 546-8364

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