This was taken to a new level in June when Yuri Dmitriev, who dedicated his life to finding and identifying the burial sites of Stalin’s victims in his native Karelia, was arrested for child abuse.
History is a political battlefield in modern Russia, where the historical and civil rights society Memorial, which investigates the extent of Stalinist crimes in the Gulags, has been repeatedly disrupted and attacked by the FSB (Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation). In June Putin claimed that “excessive demonization” of Stalin had been used to “attack” and slander post-Soviet Russia. Whereas 34% of Russians in 1997–the year Putin came to power–believed that the fact that “Stalin acted regardless of casualties” and that was the main reason that 27 million Russians died in World War Two, today only 12% believe that, a tribute to the two decades of Putin’s ceaseless propaganda sanitizing Stalin’s role. “The Red Army could have defeated Nazi Germany without Allied help,” records The Times of London, “according to two thirds of Russians, who are adopting an increasingly positive view of Joseph Stalin’s wartime leadership despite the enormous casualties suffered under his command.” This worrying sign of increased ultra-nationalism under Vladimir Putin was based on findings from a poll conducted by the respected Levada Center in Moscow.
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