Yekaterinburg Activists Want Day of Stalin’s Death to Become Memorial Day for His Victims

Paul Goble

            Staunton, March 5 – Sixty-seven years ago today, Stalin died.  Activists in Yekaterinburg marked this anniversary as a memorial for his millions of victims and expressed the hope that in the future, other Russian cities will join them in honoring them and not him (znak.com/2020-03-05/v_ekaterinburge_godovchinu_smerti_stalina_ustroivshego_massovye_repressii_otmetyat_salyutom).

            Speaking on conditions of anonymity, itself a reflection of the changed attitude toward Stalin in the Putin era, members of the initiative group say that “the most horrific period of bloody repressions which occurred under Stalin must not be forgotten. No tyrant destroyed so many people and the day of his death must become a national holiday of liberation.”

            If Stalin had not died when he did, the organizers continue, ‘the number of [his] victims would have been much greater.” To mark this they organized a fireworks display to remind people of why they should celebrate his passing and at the same time remember his all-too-numerous victims. 

            “Usually,” the Znak news agency says, “on the anniversary of the death of Stalin, members of the KPRF and other organizations which support the activity of the Soviet party leader conduct memorial meetings of various kinds. For example, in Moscow, they lay flowers at Stalin’s grave at the Kremlin wall and also at the Mausoleum of Vladimir Lenin.”

            Yesterday, the culture ministry authorized the showing of the film, “Farewell to Stalin,” which will be shown in theaters across the country. Its image of the late dictator and his entourage is fundamentally different from that offered by Armando Iannuchi’s “The Death of Stalin,” which Moscow refused to allow shown in Russia.

            That tragi-comedy was banned in Russia by former Culture Minister Vladimir Medinsky who said it was “an offensive mockery of the entire Soviet past.”