A deliberately shocking ad campaign for the upcoming
anniversary of Victory Day in World War II sparked anger on Friday
as it urged Russians to survive on wartime rations and sleep on
bare ground.
The public service ads commissioned by Moscow city government
and displayed on billboards ahead of the May 9 celebrations,
describe wartime privations, with the slogan: "Our grandfathers
could. You try!"
The hardships named include sleeping on bare earth for five
years and surviving on wartime rations of one piece of bread, one
lump of sugar and a cup of water per day.
"The capital has been put on bread and water," daily Izvestia
headlined its story, calling the slogans "ambiguous."
"City hall seems to have forgotten that our grandfathers fought
so that we would never have to experience what they did," commented
the Communists of the Capital website.
The slogans prompted black humour from bloggers, who pointed out
that the current economic downturn and low pensions combined with
rising prices made the scenarios sound a little too close to
home.
"Many grandfathers still can (live this way)," blogger rjunimogu
commented wryly on a Livejournal blog.
"Muscovites understood everything correctly. After the
elections, ordinary people will see this for real," a commentator,
named only as Citizen, wrote on the website of the Metro
freesheet.
The spokesman of the city's advertising committee, Vladimir
Yakovlev, went so far as to assure Muscovites that they were not
meant to take the campaign literally.
The ads "do not directly call for people to switch to black
bread and water and sleep on the bare ground," he stressed in an
interview with Echo of Moscow.