The Communist Party of Russia on Thursday unveiled a bust of brutal dictator Josef Stalin in the occupied Ukrainian city of Melitopol.
It was reportedly the first monument to Stalin erected in the territory Russia has captured since invading Ukraine in 2022.
Communist Party enthusiasts and local officials appointed by the Russian occupation turned out waving Soviet flags and chanting, “For the fatherland! For Stalin! Hoorah!” as the unveiling of the bust was folded into celebrations of Victory Day — the day Russia commemorates the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II and gives itself the lion’s share of the credit for bringing the Nazis down:
Taras Genov, head of the Russian Communist Party in the Zaporizhzhia region of Ukraine, said at the unveiling that the bust of Stalin was financed by donations from “residents” of Melitopol, which is the largest city in the region.
The plaque on the bust reads: “To the organizer and inspirer of the victory of the Soviet people over the Nazi invaders, Generalissimo of the Soviet Union Joseph Stalin, from grateful descendants.”
Most Ukrainians were considerably less enthusiastic about the tribute to Stalin, who killed millions of Ukrainians through enforced starvation between 1932 and 1933 in the horrifying man-made famine known as the Holodomor. Governments around the world have condemned the Holodomor as an act of genocide.
Russia’s current authoritarian leader, Vladimir Putin, has been pushing to revive the cult of Stalin and reframe the Soviet era as a time of lost Russian glory that he wishes to revive. Among other acts of devotion to Soviet mythology, Putin has constructed over a hundred busts of Stalin similar to the one in Melitopol, and in April he signed a decree renaming the Volgograd International Airport to “Stalingrad,” its name from World War II until 1961.
Putin’s decree said renaming the airport was intended to “perpetuate the victory of the Soviet People in the Great Patriotic War,” Russia’s name for the conflict with Nazi Germany.
It is not lost on Ukrainians that reviving the Soviet Union would involve dragging its old members back under Moscow’s control by force.
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