Toasting with "Uncle Joe" Stalin? Massandra wine should be repatriated (02/20/05)

Toasting with "Uncle Joe" Stalin? Massandra wine should be repatriated

by Lubomyr Luciuk

I didn't toast with it. That would have left a bad taste in my mouth.

In fact, I wasn't able to buy it at all. No one can anymore. Good.

What is it? It's wine, 1998 vintage sherry and port produced by Ukraine's Massandra winery, established in 1894 by Tsar Nicholas II to supply his summer palace near Yalta.

Insofar as I know, it was being sold only in Manitoba, although it's rumored the importers were from Toronto. For a few days this week it became a Manitoba Liquor Control Commission hangover. It's gone now. They yanked it from their stores once they learned what they had put on their shelves.

What was the problem? The labels, showing Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill at the Yalta Conference. February 11, 2005, marked the 60th anniversary of that conclave.

The setting in 1945 was convivial: the Livadia Palace. "The Big Three" fixed the fate of post-war Europe there. The details were not made public until 1947, for good reason. Poland was betrayed, as was much of Eastern Europe. More immediately murderous was a decision made about "Soviet citizens" displaced by the war, scattered throughout Western Europe. All had to return "home," even if many had no wish to, knowing the brutal realities of Stalinism. Nevertheless, despite their begging, resistance and numerous suicides, millions were forcibly repatriated by Allied troops. So many were herded over, 11,000 to 12,000 a day in October 1945, that the Soviets complained they could not handle the flow, requesting it be slowed, a bit.

Many unfortunates were executed immediately. More became slaves in the gulag. Very few got home. This was known, even then. The president of the Baptist Federation of Canada, Prof. Watson Kirkconnell, wrote to Prime Minister Mackenzie King protesting repatriation as a "crime against humanity," adding, "To hand them over to the Red Army and NKVD is to murder them." Based in Europe, Ukrainian Canadian veterans attempted various interventions, ranging from the charitable to the artful, and saved thousands. What they did was just, but it was far from enough and they knew it.

Ironically, as described by Nikolai Tolstoy in "Victims of Yalta," the talks were held on the very peninsula where a like horror had occurred only eight months before. On Stalin's command, the NKVD had deported Crimean Tatars to Siberia, using trucks supplied by the British and U.S. armies. A few thousand escaped, went west. Misidentified as Jews, for Muslims also are circumcised, most were murdered by the SS. About 250 survived in British Army hands at war's end. They pleaded for resettlement in Turkey but, in June 1945, were repatriated. By September 1, 1946, over 5 million people had suffered the same fate, of whom over 2 million had been "liberated" by the Western Allies, then forced east. Many were survivors of the genocidal Great Famine of 1932-1933 in Soviet Ukraine. They probably thought they were finally safe. Then we helped Stalin silence them.

What did Manitoba do? They followed neighboring Ontario's precedent. A few years ago someone began importing Ukrainian vodka here. Now I hate to subvert stereotypes but, Slavic heritage notwithstanding, vodka is not for me. Sure, the bottles were handsome, each etched with a Kozak leader. One featured Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky, a national hero who in 1648 revolted against the Poles. Today few Poles anguish over a war lost more than 350 years ago. Remarkably, however, some Jews still lament their purported losses in that centuries-old uprising, and curse Khmelnytsky. From the Kozak perspective, Jews were non-Christians and agents of the Polish landowners, fit to be purged. Khmelnytsky's men also slaughtered Uniate Catholics, fellow Ukrainians hated for being apostates from the true Orthodox faith. Since few have cared much about dead Ukrainians, then or since, the latter generally go unmourned.

I count myself among those who feel that, after three and a half centuries, bad memories should be purged. Not everyone agrees. Alerted to alleged 17th century Kozak pogroms over in eastern Europe, the Liquor Control Board of Ontario yanked Hetman Vodka off its shelves. I am reliably informed that no purge is, as yet, planned against Napoleon Cognac, even though the diminutive Corsican undermined the peace of Europe more than any Kozak ever managed.

Now no one would tolerate Adolf's mustache adorning one of those refreshing Rhine Rieslings we quaff in the summertime and, similarly, no one should be staring at Stalin's murderous mug while serving a pre-dinner sherry or pondering a post-dinner port.

What to do? Actually "Uncle Joe" provided a solution, at Yalta: repatriate them all.

Now I shall have a drink. Something Canadian, I think.

Lubomyr Luciuk keeps a modest wine cellar, including a bottle from Massandra - thankfully one whose label is not adorned with war criminals.

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