NTBA (Not that band again) + Aeroflot advertising

[John Dunn]

I return with some trepidation to the Pussy Riot issue, but there has been a development that I find rather curious.  Yesterday's edition of the Italian newspaper La Repubblica published a letter from the Press Attaché of the Russian Embassy in Rome, in which he claimed that the group had become notorious for slogans calling for Moscow to be liberated from Jews, foreign workers and homosexuals.  The newspaper responded rather sharply that it had no evidence of their ever using any such slogans, but what intrigues me is whether this argument has become part of the standard repertoire of the Russian government or whether it is merely a piece of private enterprise by an over-enthusiastic diplomat with a well-developed sense of what might go down badly with a bien pensant centre-left readership.   

To change the subject, the same edition of the same newspaper published an advertisement for Aeroflot, which depicted a smug young couple in evening clothes in a setting that combined elements of an aircraft cabin and a theatre in a rather surreal manner.  The slogan was (in English): The Sky.  Our Masterpiece.  
I dare say that there are some who would take issue with that claim, but it strikes me that as a slogan it is a distinct improvement on the disturbingly ambiguous 'Aeroflot flies you direct to the sea' (1979), while falling some way short of the unbeatable stroke of creative genius that was Летайте самолётом [Letajte samoletom] (Rostov, 1970).

John Dunn.

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