57 years after he died, Stalin still splits Russia

Published on Friday 5 March 2010 21:28

RUSSIAN communists yesterday paid homage to Soviet leader Josef Stalin, as liberals accused the Kremlin of conniving to whitewash the dictator.

Communist party chiefs led a procession of largely elderly people across Red Square on the 57th anniversary of Stalin's death, laying flowers at his grave by the Kremlin wall.

The solemn visit is an annual tradition, steeped in nostalgia for the Soviet era. But this year, it comes as Russia's bitter debate over Stalin's legacy sharpens ahead of May's celebrations marking 65 years since the Nazi defeat.

For the first time in decades, Stalin's image may appear among the banners and posters that Moscow authorities put up for Victory Day, which will draw foreign leaders to the Russian capital as guests of the government.

City plans to set up ten information stands describing Stalin's role in the war have deepened animus between Russians who loathe him and those who love him.

After laying flowers at his grave yesterday, Russian Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov said: "Today the greatness of Stalin's era is self-evident even to his most furious haters."

Critics, however, call Stalin a murderer, after the millions of deaths in his forced collectivisation and Gulag prison camps. They say victory in the war came despite mistakes that contributed to the devastating death toll of some 27 million Soviet citizens.

After his death in 1953, the Kremlin launched a campaign to discredit Stalin, and evidence of his abuses came pouring out in the Gorbachev era before the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.

But Stalin's backers have become bolder in recent years, and Russia's beleaguered liberals have accused the Kremlin of helping to burnish Stalin's image to justify its own increasingly tight political control.