Moscow news
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10-Sep-2009
Stalin metro inscription provokes debate
Passengers at the newly refurbished Kurskaya metro station were surprised recently to see it decorated with a line praising Josef Stalin from an old version of the Soviet national anthem.
The line reads: "Stalin raised us to be loyal to the nation, inspired us to labour and great deeds."
The unveiling of the inscription coincided with the death of Sergei Mikhalkov, the author of the Soviet and Russian national anthems. In 1977, Mikhalkov had to renew the anthem, removing Stalin's name.
The reappearance of the original inscription is "the restoration of historic truth," said metro spokesman Pavel Sukharnikov.
Somewhat predictably, Communists have welcomed the move, and liberals have condemned it.
"It is positive that the authorities and the metro have returned what was there from the beginning," Vladimir Lakeyev, Communist leader in the Moscow City Duma, told Gazeta newspaper.
Another leading Communist, Nikolai Kharitonov, said that people should remember that Stalin "did a lot for building this very metro,"
Regions.ru reported. Kharitonov urged people not to "break anything" and to "popularise real history" now that many want to "rewrite it."
The restoration has prompted protests from some of Moscow's intelligentsia. Poet Yury Kublanovsky told Rossiyskaya Gazeta that metro stations did not need "such scrupulous restoring." While agreeing that they are architectural monuments, Kublanovsky said: "They are simultaneously monuments of the bloody Stalin epoch," adding that in this case it is "rather a historical and cultural coquetry than a serious restoration".
Sergei Mitrokhin, leader of the Yabloko party, urged the metro to remove the inscription, as it "violates the memory of millions of victims of political repressions". Mitrokhin also urged President Dmitry Medvedev to introduce legislation "condemning the crimes of Stalinism and treating Stalin's repressions as genocide of a multinational Soviet people."
Restoring the inscription has been supported by preservationists, however. Marina Khrustaleva, chair of the Moscow Architecture Preservation Society and coordinator of the Arkhnadzor preservation society, believes that "decor could not be considered from ideological points of view".
Metro stations are part of the country's cultural heritage, she told Gazeta newspaper. "No changes to their exteriors are permissible," Khrustaleva said.
Vechernaya Moskva noted that a Stalin quotation had been also engraved in the marble above an escalator at Baumanskaya metro station.
It had been rubbed off, but an attentive look reveals Stalin's name, the paper said.
Stalin is a common character in Russian films, and nobody protests against this, the paper said. "Nine out of 10 of passengers ... will hardly raise their heads to read this ‘controversial' inscription," the paper said.
"Many [people] do not even know the difference between Stalin, Lenin and Tutankhamen," sculptor Aleksandr Rukavishnikov told Rossiiskaya Gazeta, adding that there were similar monuments to fascist dictators Mussolini in Italy and Franco in Spain.
"I think it would be most appropriate to preserve everything and not touch and break anything, because that's vandalism," Rukavishnikov said. Works of art are "one thing, and Stalin's personality is another", he said.
The Moscow News