Russian memorials to victims of Stalin vanish (BBC News)

[bronxiteforever]

By Sandro Gvindadze
BBC Monitoring
11/14/23
Memorials to victims of Stalinist repression in Russia are disappearing or being vandalised amid increasing attempts to rehabilitate the Soviet dictator… Since May, however, dozens have disappeared in several Russian cities, according to Oksana Matievskaya, who is part of the plaque project Posledniy Adres (last address)….Police are not investigating the issue and Ms Matievskaya believes this is no coincidence.

… Millions of people described as "enemies of the people" were sent to Soviet labour camps, known as the Gulag, and 750,000 were summarily murdered during Stalin's Great Terror in the 1930s….At least 18 monuments to victims of repression as well as foreign soldiers who fought in World War Two have been reported stolen or vandalised since February 2022. Most are dedicated to Polish nationals… Soviet authorities executed hundreds of thousands of Poles after 1939. In 1940, 1.7 million were deported to Gulag camps in Siberia and Kazakhstan.

… this is taking place alongside a resurgence in Stalin's popularity. In July, a survey by independent pollster the Levada Centre suggested that 63% of Russians had a favourable attitude towards the Soviet leader - his highest approval rating in 13 years.

The explanation behind his rising popularity is not certain but Russian propaganda justifying the war with Ukraine has also glorified its Soviet past.
And unlike memorials to his victims, those to Stalin have increased in number.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-67408650

I imagine Stalin’s popularity has also increased in the House GOP.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

1. Pooty;s boys are busy

[John1956PA]

2. Re-Stalinization. Horrifying. n/t

[Igel]

3. Yes and no.

The best excerpts from any book or essays or reviews in the last 4-5 years hang on Leon Aron's Riding the Tiger: Vladimir Putin’s Russia and the Uses of War. It may be published by the AEI, but it agrees with what I concluded a while back but extends and deepens the thinking, maybe because I've been depressed and distracted with things like divorce, empty nest, and being a teacher and didn't have time or maybe because I don't have access to various sources since mine are now restricted not to OCLC, library loan, and a network of university research libraries but the Internet, the Harris County Public Library (TX) system, and my high school's library.

What I've seen--and I only vouch for that--rings seriously true. It matches what I've heard from Russians that were *not* refugees of a sort in the last 30 years, what I've read in the crap Russian lit that I prefer to read because it means I don't speak like I'm a Turgenev character and keep up with fairly current street-Russian (and not Pushkin, Lermontov, Gumilyov, Tiutchev, and other writers that I really like, without lapsing into Leskovian skaz). And when it disagrees, I do something I seldom do--I think, "Yeah, I was wrong" or, "I hadn't thought about that."

It's on my reading list. After some Isabel Allende, more Russian crap lit, and few other things. But first I'm way behind in my grading, have a NHS induction tomorrow, jury duty next week ... Then there's the stray cat that's washed up on my back porch I can't stop worrying out. It's in rough shape, eats like a pig, I don't know how I can bring it inside for safety and don't know how I can't bring it inside for safety ...