#6377
[Second Issue of the Day]
#9
New York Daily News
July 18, 2002
Stuff Stalin sausage, immigrants say
BY GREG WILSON
Some Russian immigrants have a sizzling beef with a Brighton Beach, N.Y., company they say named a line of sausage after infamous Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.
Russian immigrants in Los Angeles say Stalinskaya brand smoked sausage obviously is linked to the murderous Stalin, and they are planning boycotts and pickets of Russian delis that carry it.
But officials at M&I International Foods, a grocery wholesaler that markets the product, say it's all a big misunderstanding.
"It is not named after Stalin," said M&I owner Mark Rakhman. "It is named after a street in Russia. There is a Stalinskaya street in Moscow, one in Odessa - it is a very common name there. It is like calling it Main Street sausage."
Maria Zezina, a visiting professor from Moscow University who is teaching at SUNY-Oneonta, said she recently saw the sausage being sold at a Brighton Beach store right next to one named for current Russian President Vladimir Putin.
"The price for Putin sausage was about $6, and the price for Stalin sausage was $3," she said. "I've never seen Putin or Stalin sausage in Moscow.
"But I think it's just a joke. I don't think it is offensive."
While that view is shared here, out in California, Russian immigrants, particularly Russian Jews, aren't buying Rakhman's explanation - and certainly aren't buying Stalinskaya sausage.
"People are very upset by it," said Si Frumkin of the Southern California Council for Soviet Jews.
Many if not most Soviet immigrants view Stalin as one of the greatest mass murderers of the 20th century whose plan to deport all Jews to Siberia was foiled by his death in 1953.
"Stalin killed more people than Hitler," Frumkin said. "I asked one of the merchants, 'Would you sell a Hitler sausage?' You would not sell a Ho Chi Minh salad in Little Saigon. You would not sell a Castro salad in Miami. It is unthinkable, unconscionable."
Cathy Nepomnyashchy, director of the Harriman Institute at Columbia University, the oldest center for the study of Russia in the United States, said naming things in Russia after the universally reviled Stalin has been out of vogue for nearly 50 years.
"I would find it hard to believe that there's a Stalinskaya street," Nepomnyashchy said. "I think that's baloney.
"It sounds a bit peculiar that a food would be named for Stalin, but I'm pretty sure any Russian who would see this would think immediately of Stalin."
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