Moscow – After almost six decades of absence, Josef Stalin’s face, the Soviet dictator known for not sparing lives to achieve his goals, is again greeting passengers in one of the Moscow Metro ornate stations.
A new statue was inaugurated by the authorities this month, showing Stalin looking at the horizon, flanked by workers and children who offer him flowers. Replica of one that was removed in 1966 during a “destallization” campaign, the new relief quickly became an attraction, with people leaving flowers, stopping to take pictures, including their children, or just observing thoughtfully.
The sculpture is part of the gradual rehabilitation of a brutal leader who still has the power to divide the Russians 72 years after his death. Kremlin revived parts of his legacy in his effort to retell the history of Russia as a series of glorious triumphs that is determined to continue in Ukraine.
Among those who admired the work on a recent visit was Liliya A. Medvedeva, who said he was “very happy that our leader was restored.”
“We won the war thanks to him,” said Medvedeva, a retired woman born in 1950, adding that she was grateful for Stalin not sent her father to Gulag, although he was made a prisoner during World War II – something that was at the time the betrayal. “Yes, there were a lot of mistakes, but everyone makes mistakes.”
In a country where criticizing government actions can be dangerous, it is unclear how many people disagree with Medvedeva’s positive view, but some are unusual, even angry, with what they see as a historical revision that tries to rewrite the past.
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Vladimir, a 25 -year -old student who refused to give his last name for fear of retaliation, said he came to observe the crowd attracted by Stalin, whom he called “a bloodthirsty tyrant.”
“It’s hard for me to express my own opinion,” he said. “But no other monument would attract so much attention.”
Stalin was responsible for mass purges, including the great terror from 1936 to 1938, when more than 700,000 people were executed, including military leaders, intellectuals, member of ethnic minorities, land proprietary peasants and others. Under his leadership, integer ethnic groups, such as the Crimea Tartars, were expelled from their natal lands. Their policies contributed to mass hunger throughout the Soviet Union, including in Ukraine.
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But nostalgia for the Soviet era is strong, especially among the oldest generations traumatized by the painful transition to capitalism, reinforcing Stalin’s memories as a strong man who imposed order on a vast country and led him to victory against Nazi Germany. His admirers see the purges, fames and mass deportations as “excess” by which local zealous officers were largely responsible.
Since Vladimir Putin took power over 25 years ago, at least 108 monuments Stalin have been erected throughout Russia, and the pace has accelerated since the Ukraine invasion of 2022, Ivan Zheyanov, a historian and journalist accompanying the statues, said. One of them was installed this year in the Ukrainian city of Melitopol, currently occupied by the Russian forces.
But none of them have the visibility of the new sculpture in the subway, whereby legions of Moscovites go by the main circular line and the purple line daily.
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For years, Kremlin tried to maintain a certain balance, recognizing Stalin’s repressions as he opposed liberal intellectuality whose main ideological principles included antistalinism.
Putin has repeatedly condemned Stalin over the years and acknowledged that terrible crimes were committed under his government. He visited places of ordinary ditches and called on human rights and historians activists to discuss Stalinism.
In 2001, the Moscow City Hall founded the Gulag History Museum, which clearly showed as a mass work field system led to up to 2 million deaths.
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But for several years, something completely different has been happening in parallel.
The memorial, the most prominent Russian civil rights organization founded by dissidents at the end of the Soviet era, was declared a foreign agent in 2014. By the end of 2021, the Moscow Court of City ordered its closure.
In 2017, Putin told filmmaker Oliver Stone that “Stalin’s excessive demonization was one of the ways to attack the Soviet Union and Russia.”
After a series of long trials, Yuri A. Dmitiev, an amateur historian who discovered Stalin victims in a remote forest in northern Russia, was sentenced in 2021 to 15 years in prison. Dmitiev was considered guilty of sexually abusing his adopted daughter, accusations that his family and friends consider manufactured.
The Gulag History Museum was closed in 2024 for the alleged violation of fire safety standards and no longer reopened. Roman Romanov, his longtime director, was removed from office and the museum’s exhibitions are being redone under new direction.
In April this year, the government renamed Volgograd Airport to Stalingrad, as the city was called from 1925 to 1961, honoring both the colossal battle ran there in World War II and the ruler who named him.
“The country’s gradual ‘reestalization’ is dangerous not only for society, as it justifies the largest government atrocities in the country’s history, but also to the state,” said Lev Shlosberg, Russian opposition politician and member of the Liberal Party Yabloko, who began a petition to dismantle the monument on the Moscow subway. “Sooner or later, repression consumes the government itself.”
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