“….MOSCOW – Posters of Josef Stalin may be put up in Moscow for the first time in decades as part of the May 9 observance of Victory Day — the annual celebration of the defeat of Nazi Germany.
This year, the 65th anniversary of Germany’s defeat, a contingent of U.S. troops is expected to march on Red Square, a striking sign of vaunted “reset” of American-Russian relations.
But Moscow city authorities may be preparing a less-welcome kind of reset with the posters, an honor denied since the Soviet dictator’s crimes were publicly exposed more than half-a-century ago.
The poster proposal for Victory Day, Russia’s most emotionally charged secular holiday, has raised a storm of controversy in state-controlled media and once again opened the never-healed wound of Russia’s Soviet past.
The debate comes amid rising concern that Stalin is being quietly rehabilitated as memories of his reign of terror fade. Last year, old Soviet national anthem lyrics praising Stalin were restored to a rotunda in a Moscow subway station” -> More…