Back to the future: Russia to unveil new Stalin statue
There was a public demand to commemorate the dictator responsible for millions of deaths, local politician says.
Joseph Stalin, the Soviet dictator responsible for millions of deaths in Central and Eastern Europe, will be commemorated with a new life-size statue to be unveiled in Russia.
“The decision was prompted by requests from the public. There was a demand,” the governor of the northwestern Vologda region, Georgy Filimonov, wrote in his announcement on Friday.
The statue will be installed near a museum in Vologda, where Stalin lived in exile from December 1911 to February 1912.
Stalin’s totalitarian rule from 1924 until his death in 1953 was a time of mass political repression, ethnic cleansing, and famine in the Soviet Union that killed millions of Soviet citizens.
However, the governor says that “with all understanding of the ambiguous interpretation of the role” of Stalin, Russians must recognize his “great achievements” and not only know their country’s history, but “honor and be proud of it.”
Russian history is “a single and indivisible chain of interconnected, interlocking links of the historical process, each of which has shaped the strength, spirit and will of our great nation,” he said.
The governor also announced his plan to commemorate another iconic Russian leader with a new monument: Ivan the Terrible.
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