The face of one of the worst dictators of the 20th century has been put on display in a busy Russian subway station.
Joseph Stalin, who is estimated to have murdered at least 6,000,000 of his people during his brutal reign, is now portrayed in a white statue in Taganskaya station, Moscow.
Stunned commuters were seen staring as they walked by the newly unveiled statue, a replica of an original which was removed six decades ago.
Others were seen smiling and taking photos with Stalin’s likeness leering over them in the historic subway station.
One Russian pensioner said she was ‘happy our leader got restored’ – even though Stalin had taken her father prisoner in the Second World War.
Liliya Medvedeva told the New York Times that Stalin could have sent her father to the gulag, but didn’t.
Others weren’t fans. A history student called Stalin a ‘bloody tyrant’ when he saw the statue.
Historian and propaganda analyst Ian Garner told Metro: ‘The Russian state has been putting up statues of Stalin as part of a much broader program to rehabilitate Stalin’s image.
‘People who criticize Stalin or draw attention to crimes committed under Stalin are now threatened with jail, with media attacks.
‘The state itself discusses Stalin in school textbooks, books, popular culture, movies as somebody who was a wise leader, who had the brilliant foresight to bring his country into the industrial age and most importantly to win the Second World War.’
But Mr Garner points out, the crimes committed by stalin can’t be covered up. They’re common knowledge, but Russia’s conduct towards Ukraine today shows that there is a true ’embrace’ of the ‘bad guys’ in Russian culture.
‘It’s almost become good to commit violence, good to be aggressive because violence and aggression, especially when wrapped up with the image of a strong and decisive male leader is what supposedly gets things done.
‘That’s what supposedly saved Russia in the 1930s and 40s and it’s what supposedly is going to save Russia today,’ he said.
Beginning in the early 1930s, Stalin executed around a million of his own citizens. He then forced hundreds of thousands of others to work in labour camps and go to prison.
The murders of Kulaks, upper middle class farmers, sparked the famine in Ukraine, also known as the Holodomor.
Between 1932 and 1933, up to five million peasants died of starvation in the Soviet Union thanks to Stalin’s actions.
As Mr Garner said, the Kremlin has been attempting to reintroduce Stalin for a few years now. There are more than 100 statues of Stalin across Russia today.
Putin’s reintroduction of Stalin after the removal of many of his statues in the 1960s could be attributed to the fact that he’s the second longest serving Russian leader, behind Stalin.
Though he hasn’t outrightly praised Stalin, Putin has said that Russia ‘shouldn’t be ashamed of its history’.
Yet, the new statue in central Moscow has divided modern-day Russians just as much as Stalin divided the country during his bloody reign.
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