Stalin notebooks are hot sellers in Moscow

The hot new bestselling product in Moscow's stationers is a notebook emblazoned with a completely non-ironic portrait of Josef Stalin, looming large in his uniform and bristling medals.

In his generalissimo uniform with a chest full of medals, Stalin now proudly stares from notebook covers on a shelf of the Pedagogical Book House store in downtown Moscow less than a mile from the Kremlin. Customers, mostly adults, are snatching up so many copies that the store runs out of stock each day.
"This edition of notebooks comes in the series of great personalities in the history of Russia like Peter the Great, [composer Sergei] Rachmaninoff, space designer [Sergei] Korolyov and many others," said Olga Utesheva, deputy commercial director of the Moscow Book House, a chain of popular bookstores that runs the pedagogical books retailer too. "Stalin is one of the most popular figures among the people who left a trace in the history of our country and there is no propaganda here."

In Russia, Stalin enjoying a revival on school notebooks

(Image: downsized, cropped thumbnail from a photo by Sergei L. Loiko, Los Angeles Times / April 6, 2012)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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phisrow

I’m in for two, as long as the seller can assure me that all Stalin notebooks are produced by authentic gulag labor from the authentic pulpwoods of Siberia.

If not, they might as well have been produced by Georgia-Pacific to fuel the greed of consumer capitalism.
quietstorms

I guess Russians yearn for the good old days when they were so hungry they ate their own children.
- http://twitter.com/missshenna Lithi
  
  And the purges, don’t forget those lovely, cleansing purges.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  You never forget your first love.
  - phisrow
    
    Bitter reactionaries are a nearly inevitable product of any change; but by that guy’s apparent age I’d hazard the guess that he is one of the ones that the post-communist leadership worked hard to earn…
    
    Classic “At least under the communists I had a job and the rapacious oligarchs were slightly less conspicuous about their consumption” look.
  - ill lich
    
    ”From my cell the only contact I had with humanity was a mural of Stalin visible from my window. I masturbated daily to his always smiling visage. I know what you will say, that I was crazy, but you were not there.” (from a Raymond Pettibon comic.)
    - Antinous / Moderator
      
      I’d hit it.
- http://twitter.com/DanHibiki1 Dan Hibiki
  
  So anyone watching the history Channel really like Hitler and Aliens?
http://blacknell.net/dynamic/ MB

A Stalin Trapper Keeper?
niktemadur

Nice companion piece for my Little Red Book Of Quotations From Chairman Mao.
Judas Peckerwood

Exhibit #36415 of Russia’s utter fuckupedness.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  Yeah, nobody in the US would ever cling to a symbol of oppression.
  - Judas Peckerwood
    
    No argument there.
  - phisrow
    
    Please, have patience.
    
    The sophistication of dixie insurgency, and its ability to hinder our nation-building efforts in the southern provinces, turns out to have exceeded the projections of antebellum analysts.
  - Robert
    
    Of course, Robert E. Lee wasn’t as much of a madman as Stalin was. Still, even he deserves a notebook, apparently.
    
    http://www.zazzle.com/robert_e_lee_civil_war_notebook-130216550061822006
    - Ipo
      
      I thought he was a Dodge Charger.
      - https://launchpad.net/~googoleyes koanhead
        
        If he charges, dodge.
LogrusZed

The rumor was, at one time, Stalin was a Wild-Card. Nobody knew for sure if he’d drawn a joker or an ace and the politburo wasn’t saying shit; other folks said it was just Nikita who claimed that so he could get away with killing him.
aalien

Not only notebooks, iPad cases, too: http://www.flickr.com/photos/aalien/7011416601/in/photostream
Shot 2 weeks ago in Moscow.
Other two guys are Russian tzars, Peter I The Great and Nicholas II (“Bloody Nicholas”, also “The Saint”).
RJ

I tend to interpret this Stalin popularity as a product simply of the passage of time. Now that the Soviet system has been gone over 20 years, people are better able to approach Russian communism with a clear mind. When a man is whipping you, he’s a painfully real ☺. When you only read about how he whipped your forefathers, he’s more of a totem to be studied. Vlad the Impaler is probably a more popular consumerist figure, but that doesn’t mean anyone in Romania wants to see another Tepes era.
- ffabian
  
  Yeah right. Want to see your reaction if Hitler-notebooks were the new fashion trend in Germany.
  - OgilvyTheAstronomer
    
    Or the utter scandal and outrage if Hirohito had remained as Emperor after WWII. Just imagine…
    - http://www.facebook.com/people/Artyom-Belan/100001915011090 Artyom Belan
      
      And he did, actually, if someone misses the point.
- http://twitter.com/dacelea princess lea
  
  “I tend to interpret this Stalin popularity as a product simply of the passage of time. Now that the Soviet system has been gone over 20 years, people are better able to approach Russian communism with a clear mind.”
  
  ——————————
  Trust me, they’re not. I live in post-soviet country that struggled to break free, and yet even here there are lots of people who remember those times with nostalgia. Russia, unlike many European countries, don’t really have the mentality for taking all responsibility themselves, it needs a father (‘batyushka’) to take care of it. If you compare Stalin to Russia’s former royal leaders, there’s small difference. That’s why elderly people support Putin, he is the exact political figure they know, remember and long for.
  
  As for the Stalin and Soviet nostalgia, they simply have forgotten the bad part. Tired from struggling with financial downs of wild, wild capitalism, they mostly remember Soviets as a place where everyone had a job, place to live, free medicine and education and there was a clear system of rights and wrongs to follow. So no, I wouldn’t say they can approach their past with a clear mind, and yes, we probably should be worried.
MostlyDifferent

Non-ironic? You underestimate the subtlety of Russian irony. Lenin statues still stand largely because the tourists dig em.
kroeghe

Well, actually in Romania Vlad Tepes is a kind of hero figure – he’s portrayed as harsh yet just ruler, and remembered for his successful fights against the Otoman Empire. No matter what you do as long as you slay infidels, I guess.
- kairos
  
  Infidels, or rapacious imperial invaders, or something like that.
VicqRuiz

An Uncle Joe notebook would be just the thing to accessorize a Che T-shirt.
Mister44

I guess their school system has utterly failed to educate them on the one guy worse than Hitler.
- VicqRuiz
  
  Naah, I think Mao has them both beat by a nose.
  - Gerrit Vogel
    
    You measure by what? individual lifes taken? how very human of you. guess its easier to imagine the dead as numbers not actual people…
    not saying any of the three mentioned above was better than the other two, but also none of them was worse. the three mass slaughterings and dyings don#t stnad in comparison, unless you promote some wingy agenda (and this is about the only time I like to equate left and right wingers. When they are doing something completely inhuman and stupid to further their cause)
Zhiva

Stalin-Shmalin. All “Great Names of Russia” notebooks have “copybook 48 shits” on their covers. Yes, “shits”, not “sheets”. http://pics.livejournal.com/eyra_0501/pic/003ft7r6
- Robert
  
  48 shits! Write that down in your copybook.
Charlie B

I’d buy one. Of course I’d buy one with Albert Fish on the cover, too. And I have one with Vlad Tepes already, that I made myself while living in a backwater West Virginia town.

Geez, people, didn’t any of your friends carry around “Mein Kampf” or “The Communist Manifesto” when you were all young and rebellious, just to piss people off? I thought all teenagers had that phase.
BombBlastLightingWaltz

One medal per million rural unarmed citizen destroyed.
ill lich

Ahhhh. . . but do we know if they are buying the notebooks “ironically?” Never underestimate the overpowering sarcasm of the hipster.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Artyom-Belan/100001915011090 Artyom Belan

Too bad to see such a low level of knowledge of my country history. Please, people, stop reading propaganda – read history books. In Russia, the tune “they lynch negroes in America” was dropped long ago – please do the same to my country. Study history and forget propaganda. Any questions – please call. Thank you.