Moscow region man detained for sledgehammer attack on Stalin and Lenin statues

A man who decapitated busts of Soviet leaders Joseph Stalin and Vladimir Lenin with a sledgehammer on Saturday was detained in the city of Zvenigorod near Moscow, police announced on Sunday.

Police detained a man in his 40s on Sunday following the attack the previou day and charged him with vandalism before releasing him on an order that committed him to “behaving properly” and banned him from leaving Russia until his court hearing, the police service said.

Video footage that circulated on Telegram appeared to show the man laughing and shouting as he knocked the head off a bust of Stalin in one of the city’s parks with one blow, before hitting a nearby statue of Lenin several times.

The motive for the man’s attack was unclear, but one law enforcement officer told Russian state news agency TASS that he had been in a “deranged” state and may have been drunk when he carried it out.

The bust of Stalin was unveiled in summer 2023 by a patriotic group named We Remember Our Heroes, despite not having obtained the permission of the local authorities, Telegram channel Ostorozhno, Novosti said. 

Despite having initially ordered the group to remove the statue following protests from local residents, the municipal authorities ultimately reversed their decision and allowed it to remain. The statue was then vandalised in March, on the 71st anniversary of Stalin’s death. 

In October, Russian opposition media outlet Mozhem Obyasnit reported that there were a total of 110 monuments to Stalin across the country, the vast majority of which were unveiled in the past 25 years of Vladimir Putin’s rule.