No not Superman.
My take on the 'Cold' Bonus Round is Cold War, and for me that means Josif Vissarionovich Stalin. Here he is resplendent in uniform, ready for his holiday on the Black Sea and his summer job.
And you don't get 'Colder' than Stalin selling ice-cream in Yalta.
However, for my domestic (Pulpish) purposes he's not Uncle Joe, but Boris Mikhailovich Panin the well-known Stalin look-alike.
Panin was big in the '80s, making popular appearances at Party parties, but that dropped off under Gorbachev and he was reduced to comparing at Jack Rabbit Slimski's, a theme-bar aimed at the flood of foreign businessmen visiting Moscow. After the 1991 coup d'état attempt he went underground. He re-emerged in Tashkent in 1995, declaring himself Generalissimus of the New Soviet Union. He has attracted a large following looking for a return to the old Soviet certainties (and helped a little by the rumour that he is in fact Stalin's illegitimate son).
The real mystery however, is just who is funding his well-supplied private army. The FSB, MI6, the CIA and other (more secret) organisations need to find the answer...
I realise that when sending details to Curt, I forgot to talk about the figure itself. It's 28mm and from Black Tree Design.
Brilliantly imaginative! One vanila with flake please ...
ReplyDeleteYes, apologies, I am guilty of forgetting to make statement on the miniature. Whoops!
DeleteCleanly, very cleanly with the white! and smoothly painted, sir.
Lovely work Edwin, a great idea.
ReplyDeleteNice work on an original subject.
ReplyDeleteThis was a very original take on the Challenge (and kudos to you for making the deadline, I totally fumbled it). I can't imagine what kind of an ice cream stand Chairman Stalin would have run, but I am sure the consequences for choosing bourgeois and counter-revolutionary flavours (anything white, for example) would have been brutal.
ReplyDeleteIncidentally, looking at the backdrop reminds me, one of the best books I read in 2014 was Catherine Merridale's Red Fortress; A History of the Kremlin. You'd like it, I think.
Cheers, and I'll take whatever flavour is coloured red.
M
"Ow! Comrade Stalin, this ice cream is far too cold, it's like an icepick to the brain!"
ReplyDelete"Yes, about that, Comrade Trotsky..."
Nice post, great mini and unusual subject!
ReplyDelete