Moscow has been promoting the personality cult of Joseph Stalin for years, and against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin wants to put Stalin on an even higher pedestal, since the USSR won the Second World War under the leadership of the bloodthirsty dictator.
Putin wants to increase the country’s support for Russia’s military activities in Ukraine. He is now building “Stalin Centers” in major Russian cities and wants to demonstrate that Stalin is a great man of history.
In mid-December, authorities opened the Stalin Center in Barnaul, Altai Krai. The local leader of the Communist Party, Sergei Matasov, was also present at the inauguration. The communist then began to praise Stalin’s actions and argue that under the dictator’s leadership Russia had made a great leap forward in development.
Matasov now considers those Russians he considers pro-Western to be traitors. The communist believes that traitors must be eradicated and that in the process the example of Stalin’s actions must be followed.
The first Stalin Center was founded near Nizhny Novgorod, it is full of photos and statues of the dictator. Putin was already glorifying Stalin. After the outbreak of war in Ukraine, Stalin’s importance to the Kremlin grew even more, The Telegraph reports.
“They say that right now in Ukraine they are fighting the Nazis, it’s like a remake of the Great Patriotic War,” said Stephen Hall, a Russia expert at the University of Bath.
The Kremlin also promotes Stalin-related propaganda among young people. Putin is now bringing back Stalin-era sports parades, which include Russian teenagers.
Historians estimate that about a million people were killed in the Soviet Union during the Great Terror in the 1930s. In total, approximately 20 million people died during Stalin’s more than 25 years of rule.
In Russia, however, statues of Stalin are being erected at an increasingly rapid rate. One of them was consecrated by a priest. In Stalin’s time, Christians were persecuted in the country because the communists had their prophets and saints.
2024-01-02 07:24:00
putin-further-increases-stalins-personality-cult-foreign-country