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Authorities in North Russia to Unveil Monument of Stalin to Attract Tourists A memorial featuring a statue of Joseph Stalin is to be rebuilt in a village in the Krasnoyarsk region, North Russia. The memorial was first built in the village of Kureika in the 1950s by prisoners from the Soviet Gulag. The original memorial was closed down in 1961, at the time of the Khrushchev “thaw”, and in 1995 a fire virtually destroyed the dilapidated building, the BBC reminded. Officials in the region insist the new project is not politically motivated, but is aimed at developing tourism. Critics say it is another sign that Stalin’s crimes are being glossed over. Local officials quoted by the Kommersant newspaper said a businessman was to give money for the restoration of Stalin’s memorial. Alexei Babiy, a member of the Russian human rights campaign group Memorial, said the project was part of a large-scale state campaign to rehabilitate Stalin. He added that all such campaigns were “a scheme to prepare the Krasnoyarsk territory for dictatorship,” the paper wrote. Babiy said it was necessary to introduce a 50-year moratorium on construction of Stalin monuments in Russia, because only after that period could Russia “painlessly remember the events of those days.” The director of a local tourist agency, Yulia Petrova, quoted by the paper, said a new monument to Stalin “could hardly be called a point of tourist interest.” An opinion poll carried out by Russia’s VTsIOM research centre in March 2005 showed that 42% of Russians feel the country “needs another Stalin”, compared with 52% who disagreed, ITAR-TASS news agency reported. ---------------------------------------------------
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