Under Putin, ‘All Russia is Now a Stalin Center,’ Sergey Medvedev Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 13 – In the course of an interview with Denis Volkov of the Levada Center, Radio Liberty commentator Sergey Medvedev says that even without the statues and museums about Stalin, “the re-Stalinization of every day life and not just memory is taking place.” That means that no special Stalin Center is needed: All Russia is our Stalin Center.”

            His comment comes in response to a new survey which finds that 60 percent of Russians want to see a Stalin Center analogous to the Yeltsin Center and the Sakharov Center erected in their country (svoboda.org/a/vozvraschenie-generalissimusa/31456588.html reposted at levada.ru/2021/09/13/vozvrashhenie-generalissimusa/).

            Support for the idea comes primarily from people in the regions, with less education and lower incomes, while opposition is centered on middle-aged residents of the major cities who have higher education. And the growing support for a Stalin Center reflects not just the popular Stalinism of the past but the government’s “memory policies,” Volkov says.

            It is important to note, the Levada Center director says, that promoting support for Stalin isn’t the goal of that policy. This is “a side effect of the rehabilitation of the figure of the leader” and the promotion of an exclusively positive view about the Russian past. That latter push has won Stalin supporters from young people in particular.