++ [ originally posted by Kaiser Franco ] ++
That is correct. Stalin initially asked Standard to change the electric red of their shirts into a more conservative and fitting Marxist red. But the then President of Standard, Jean-Robert de Padoue, refused to oblige, claiming that he had chosen that colour as a reference to the red latex stilettos his first girlfriend wore when they met. He was promptly sent to a gulag in Russia's Far East Republic of Kamtchaka, where he earned a reputation for knitting authentic sheep ponchos for German POW's and Soviet dissidents. Taking advantage from his captors' trust, de Padoue managed to escape the gulag by progressively digging a hole into his cell's wall with the heel of his girlfriend's red stilettos, which, as a reward for his good behaviour, he had been allowed to keep as a reminder of days gone by. On February 22nd 1953, de Padoue arrived on the Eastern coast of Asia, where the Korean War was raging. He was spotted by a US patrol boat that decided to take him aboard and then back to America. Upon his arrival in the land of the free, he pronounced these words : "America, I have walked a long way to reach your shores, and now the time has come for me to take off my shoes"