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Russian town dredges up Stalin statue, old divisions
KUSA, Russia, July 5, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – The discovery of a Joseph Stalin
statue at the bottom of a pond has divided a remote Russian town and dredged
up a debate about the Soviet dictator’s legacy.
Locals in Kusa, in the Ural mountains, noticed the larger-than-life statue
last year when repair works brought down the water level.
Some want the statue to be returned to the spot where it stood decades ago.
Others in the town of 18,000 people believe the relic of a regime that killed
millions of its own citizens belongs in a museum.
The concrete statue is being restored after being badly damaged from lying
in water.
It was after a social media user posted a photograph of the statue lying on
the edge of the pond last summer that Communist activist Stanislav Stafeyev
found it and took it home.
Together with other activists from the left-wing patriotic movement
“Essence of Time”, he is collecting funding to restore the work.
He told AFP that reinstating the statue would “advance understanding and
awareness of that period of history.”
Stafeyev said he has faced “tremendous pressure” from local authorities who
have other plans for the statue.
The head of the Kusa municipal district, Yury Lysyakov, said authorities
want people to see the statue in a museum “rather than in the street”.
The museum will “describe the history of the man and the story of (the
statue’s) discovery and restoration”, he said.
Because of the town’s extreme climate, where temperatures vary between -40
and +40 degrees centigrade (-40 to 104 degrees Fahrenheit), the concrete
structure would be further degraded if left outside, Lysyakov added.
Some residents cited nostalgia as a reason for wanting to see the statue
re-erected.
“Perhaps it’s related to my youth, when both Lenin and Stalin were the two
leaders. I am for it being restored,” Maria Tarynina, 69, told AFP.
But others said Stalin’s repressions that killed millions should stop him
from having a monument in the town.
“I am against it,” said Irina Aksyonova, 39.
“He did a lot for the country, for the Soviet Union. But there’s plenty of
evidence that he acted badly towards his fellow citizens,” she said.
Kusa already has a centrally located Lenin statue, like most Russian towns.
Statues of Stalin were dismantled throughout the USSR in 1956 after Soviet
leader Nikita Khrushchev publicly denounced the dictator in a special address
to the Communist Party.
A survey last year showed almost half of Russians aged 18 to 24 had never
heard of Stalin’s repressions.
In a separate poll this year, 70 percent of Russians said they approved of
the dictator’s role in history.
BSS/AFP/RY/1425 hrs