There will be no monument to Joseph Stalin in Irkutsk, despite demands from World War II veterans to honor the Soviet dictator, the mayor of the East Siberian city said.
Veterans and Communist Party members rallied in the city on Wednesday to call for the erection of a monument to the man who led the Soviet Union to victory in World War Two, but who was also responsible for the deaths of millions in labor camps.
'There has been a lot of talk about a monument to Stalin in the run-up to the 65th anniversary of victory in World War II," Yury Zabolyev announced after the meeting. "In January, Communist Party members held a rally and accused me of spitting on the history of the Soviet Union."
"But I believe that the erection of a Stalin statue would be, at the very least, an insult and a disrespect to the memory of the fallen heroes of the war. There will be no monument in Irkutsk while I am mayor," he added.
He suggested instead the creation of a monument to the mothers of those soldiers who perished during the war.
"This would be a unifying monument for all World War Two veterans, showing respect to the mothers who gave birth to patriots," he said.
The outbreak of the war saw Stalin reportedly taken by surprise and enter a period of depression and shock, and little was initially heard of the dictator as German forces swept across the Soviet Union. However, he soon recovered and was undoubtedly the figurehead of the Soviet war effort, even if many analysts have questioned the wisdom of his military tactics.
"Not a step back," was the Soviet forces' slogan, and it was often literally enforced, with troops in some cases ordered to shoot to kill retreating soldiers. After the war, many Red Army men who had fallen into the hands of the enemy were sent to Gulags, the system of prison camps set up in the harsher areas of the world's first socialist state.
Stalin's role during World War Two has been the subject of intense debate in Russia.
Communist Party members and veteran organizations insist that it was Stalin's leadership that pulled the Soviet Union through its darkest hour and freed Europe from the tyranny of Nazism. However, rights organizations and analysts, among others, say that Stalin's mass purges of the army in the years before the war left the country exposed to an attack by Germany.
"All our countries achievements, including victory in World War Two, were in spite of Stalin, not thanks to him," Leonid Gozman, leader of the Right Cause party, said in February.
In February, Moscow authorities announced that billboards bearing Stalin's image would be put up around the capital to mark May 9 Victory Day celebrations. The move has been condemned by human rights groups, who have pledged to distribute their own information on Stalin's crimes.
Defending the decision, Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov said while he was not a Stalin apologist, the billboards reflected "objective history."
A poll last year by the All-Russian Public Opinion Center to coincide with the 130th anniversary of Stalin's birth found that 37% of Russians were "positive" about Stalin and 24% "negative".
IRKUTSK, March 4 (RIA Novosti)
