Russians Seeking to Memorialize Stalin but Blocked by Officials Now Putting Statues on Private Land

Paul Goble

    Staunton, May 13 – Russian citizens who want to put up statues of Stalin but are blocked by local officials who fear that such a step is inappropriate or may spark unwanted controversy are doing what some activists in the United States have done regarding the erection of memorials to unpopular causes.

    Prevented from putting up memorials to Stalin on public squares, the Russians are erecting them on private land where at least in principle the authorities can’t block them from doing so (idelreal.org/a/narodnaya-restalinizatsiya-byusty-stalina-vozvraschayutsya-v-bashkortostan/33412512.html).

    The IdelReal portal describes such actions in a village in Bashkortostan where officials and local residents blocked a statue on public land and then Stalinists put one up on private land as a form of “popular re-Stalinization,” a trend likely to be picked up elsewhere and to spark more conflicts between supporters and opponents of the Soviet dictator.