print Print Article

“It was the nearest we could get to intimidating people without sending around the heavy mob, and it has worked.”
An official from the state-run Donetsk Heating Co. in Ukraine, which has collected on thousands of unpaid bills by using the image of Stalin to threaten deadbeats.  Posters of the feared Soviet dictator were plastered around the city of Donetsk warning, “Comrades! This is not the cinema, this is real life. Anyone who does not pay their heating bill will be punished.”