At Moscow’s central Taganskaya metro station, commuters stream past a newly restored monument to a former ruler whose reputation is undergoing a dramatic revision in Russia: Joseph Stalin.
With President Vladimir Putin tightening the screws of repression as his invasion of Ukraine drags on, the Soviet dictator is making a comeback as a victorious World War II leader rather than the man responsible for the deaths of millions of his citizens. Russia’s Communist Party, still the second-largest in the parliament, voted this month to press for full political rehabilitation of Stalin, who’s shown flanked by children offering flowers and gratitude in the metro station sculpture unveiled in May.
The Kremlin, meanwhile, is reviving Soviet-era practices of censorship and prison sentences to suppress dissent and present Russian society as united behind Putin and the war. Polls suggest it’s working, too.
