Last week saw the unveiling of a monument to Josef Stalin in the Moscow Metro’s Taganskaya station, a replica of a piece that was installed in 1950 and removed during the de-Stalinization of the early 1960s. 

When Vladimir Putin became president at the turn of the millennium, there were a mere handful of such Stalin monuments and statues across Russia. Today, there are well over 100, spread across the country’s major cities and more remote regions. With more being unveiled each year, especially to mark the annual Victory Day commemorations, it seems that the Stalin monument is increasingly a feature of everyday life in Putin’s Russia.

The growing return of the Stalinist cult of personality goes even deeper. Positive portrayals of the leader were once all but totally excised from public view, first under Nikita Khrushchev, and then again in the 1990s as the opening of archives and the start of public discussions about the past put Stalin’s personal role in the crimes of the Soviet era on full display. Now, he seems to be everywhere. 

The state seems to have led the way, potentially in an attempt to shape social attitudes. For well over a decade, school textbooks and lessons have portrayed Stalin in an increasingly positive way, turning him from a repressive monster into a beloved public figure who won the so-called Great Patriotic War on behalf of the Russian people. Stalin is therefore portrayed as a vital — if not the most important —  element of the cult of war that shapes........

© The Moscow Times