Moscow’s mayor defended controversial plans to decorate the city center with posters of Joseph Stalin during upcoming World War II celebrations, hardly suprising given the schizophrenic place the genocidal Georgian holds in 20th Century Russian history.
The city has unveiled plans to put up the posters and erect information points commemorating Stalin’s role in the war during parades that are planned for the 65th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany on May 9.
If realised, the plans would break a major taboo in Russia of promoting a figure who is blamed for the deaths of millions of Soviet citizens in the Gulag prison camps and forced collectivization, according to news service Agence France-Presse.
The campaign will go ahead despite criticism from officials, including parliamentary speaker Boris Gryzlov and human rights campaigners, confirmed Mayor Yury Luzhkov.
“I’m not an admirer of Stalin, but I am an admirer of objective history,” Luzhkov told the city parliament, adding: “We should not erase this or that figure from history,” the ITAR-TASS news agency reported.
Luzhkov criticised the media reaction to the story, calling it “a bacchanalia,” the RIA Novosti news agency reported.
The poster campaign earlier provoked criticism from Gryzlov, a leader of the ruling United Russia party.
“The ambiguous role that Stalin played in the life of our country will not be corrected by posters,” he told the Interfax news agency.
Stalin took over as the leader of the Soviet Union in the 1920s and ruled until his death in 1953. He had millions of Soviet citizens executed, sent millions more to the gulags and had millions of ethnic minorities deported.
Supporters point out that he led the country to victory against the Nazis despite terrible losses.
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