Thursday, January 20, 2005
NEW MONUMENT TO STALIN
A reader sent in this link from ABC News:
Jan 19, 2005 — MOSCOW (Reuters) - Moscow plans to erect a new statue of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, returning his once-ubiquitous image to its streets after an absence of four decades, a top city official said Wednesday.
Since President Vladimir Putin was elected in 2000, a number of Soviet symbols — including the national anthem and an army flag — have been restored to use, reflecting widespread nostalgia for Russia's communist years.
But rehabilitation of Stalin, who was denounced after his death in 1953 by the Soviet leadership for encouraging a cult of personality and killing millions of real and imagined opponents, has previously been out of bounds. Statues of Stalin were removed from Moscow's public spaces in the 1960s.
