Message 156499 - Python tracker
Oh, you are right. I even noted that bug in my PyCon talk, but immediately forgot about it :( I do intend to fix it.
You can get it to work by explicitly passing the charset:
>>> x = MIMEText('йцукен', _charset='utf8')
>>> str(x)
'Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf8"\nMIME-Version: 1.0\nContent-Transfer-Encoding: base64\n\n0LnRhtGD0LrQtdC9\n'
When I asked the use case, I meant specifically for calling encode_quopri, etc. Given the above, do you need it anymore?