Moscow plans posters honoring Stalin, as US troops come to march on Red Square

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Moscow plans posters honoring Stalin

MOSCOW — Posters of Josef Stalin may be put up in Moscow for the first time in decades as part of the May 9 observance of Victory Day — the annual celebration of the defeat of Nazi Germany.

This year, the 65th anniversary of Germany’s defeat, a contingent of U.S. troops is expected to march on Red Square, a striking sign of vaunted “reset” of American-Russian relations.

But Moscow city authorities may be preparing a less-welcome kind of reset with the posters, an honor denied since the Soviet dictator’s crimes were publicly exposed more than half-a-century ago.

The poster proposal for Victory Day, Russia’s most emotionally charged secular holiday, has raised a storm of controversy in state-controlled media and once again opened the never-healed wound of Russia’s Soviet past.

The debate comes amid rising concern that Stalin is being quietly rehabilitated as memories of his reign of terror fade. Last year, old Soviet national anthem lyrics praising Stalin were restored to a rotunda in a Moscow subway station.

The World War II victory came at appalling cost to the Soviet Union — at least 27 million of its citizens are estimated to have died. The toll feeds Russia’s self-image as a nation of exceptional valor and any criticism of its wartime role sets off resentment.

Stalin’s case is especially touchy: should Russians honor him for leading the country’s glorious sacrifice, or denounce him for his decades of brutal rule included sending tens of millions into labor camps?

Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov believes Stalin should get his due as the Soviet commander-in-chief.

“How did people go into the war? … They went to war with the cry ‘For the homeland! For Stalin!’” Luzhkov said on state TV news channel Vesti on Sunday.

A major veterans’ organization agrees.

“The veterans of Moscow condemn repression, but at the same time value the results achieved under the command of Stalin,” the state news agency RIA Novosti quoted Vladimir Dolgikh, head of the Moscow Public Veterans Organization, as saying.

Moscow authorities have said there will only be a few posters of Stalin and that they will be at information booths where veterans gather for the commemorations. That appears to make it unlikely that American troops would march under the steely gaze of the dictator, but even proximity to Stalin may unsettle diplomats.

The U.S. Embassy declined to comment on the issue. Britain has announced it will send a military contingent but the Foreign Office declined to discuss the posters.

However, opposition ranges from human-rights organizations to the highest levels of national power.

The Kremlin committee organizing the national observances says it won’t issue any Stalin posters, according to Russian news reports citing a committee source. The reports said that decision should be considered as a recommendation to the city authorities not to put up posters.

The Moscow mayor’s office declined to comment to The Associated Press on Wednesday, and the head of the national organizing committee could not be reached.

President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin haven’t weighed in on the issue, but the head of Putin’s dominant United Russia faction in parliament strongly denounced the plans.

“There’s nothing to argue about here. Stalin was guilty in the deaths of millions of people,” Boris Gryzlov said this month.

The respected human rights group Memorial has appealed to Medvedev to prevent the posters.

The head of Russia’s Communist Party meanwhile thinks Luzhkov will cave in to pressure from above.

“I’m not convinced that the Moscow authorities have the courage to realize this idea,” Gennady Zyuganov told RIA Novosti.

(This version CORRECTS LINKS photos; SUBS graf 6 to correct ‘of’ to ‘off’)