New statue of Stalin to be unveiled in Russian city of Vologda

A full-size statue of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin is to be installed in the city of Vologda in northwestern Russia, Vologda region Governor Georgy Filimonov announced on Friday. 

Filimonov said that the decision to commission the monument, which he said was nearly complete, had come about following multiple “requests from the public”, adding that it would be installed at a local museum housed in a building where Stalin lived briefly while in exile in 1911–1912. 

Acknowledging the “ambiguous interpretation” of Stalin’s legacy, Filimonov said that Russians should nevertheless “recognise the great achievements and know the history” of their country and “be proud” of it. “Our history is a single and indivisible chain of interconnected, interlocking links in the historical process, each of which moulded the strength, spirit and will of our great nation,” Filimonov wrote.

Plans for a monument honouring Ivan the Terrible, the 16th-century Russian tsar known for his paranoid and violent nature and for executing thousands of noblemen, were also afoot, Filimonov added.

The totalitarian rule of Joseph Stalin, who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953, was a time of mass political repression, ethnic cleansing, and famines that killed millions of Soviet citizens, and which was condemned by his successor Nikita Khrushchev three years after Stalin’s death. 

Nevertheless, since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Stalin has been glorified by some for his role in consolidating Soviet Russia as a global superpower, as the Russian government appears to be erasing the memory of the victims of Stalin’s Terror, removing monuments commemorating its victims from occupied Ukrainian territories and quashing the rehabilitation of thousands of Soviet citizens.

Vladimir Putin said in a 2017 Showtime interview that the “excessive demonisation” of Stalin was being used to “attack Russia”, adding that contemporary Russia bore “some birthmarks of Stalinism. We all do. So what?”