“Christ is risen!” Russian Orthodox priest Father Antony intoned as he scattered holy water over the base of a new monument to Soviet dictator Josef Stalin and the crowd of dozens gathered for the event.
“Risen, indeed,” the onlookers responded, in accordance with Orthodox tradition.
But for 56-year-old Andrei Ivanov, whose family was among the millions of Soviet citizens murdered or persecuted under Stalin, the blessing of the 8-meter-tall monument to Stalin in the Pskov region town of Velikiye Luki represented the resurrection of something far more sinister.
“I know this topic -- not from reading some populist articles by [nationalist former Culture Minister Vladimir] Medinsky and not just from secondhand accounts,” he told RFE/RL’s North.Realities. “For me, this subject is close to my heart. I have an extremely negative view of that person.”
The massive bronze monument to Stalin was ceremoniously unveiled in the Pskov region town of Velikiye Luki on August 15. It stands on private property in front of the main gate of the Mikron factory, which produces shelving systems for retailers and warehouses.
The work of sculptor Mikhail Krasilnikov, the statue was originally intended for the southern city of Volgograd, which was previously called Stalingrad and was the scene of the most momentous battle on the Eastern Front in World War II. Officials there, however, declined to accept the controversial monument, and for four years Krasilnikov offered it to almost every region of Russia without success.
Until Velikiye Luki.
The town is sometimes called “the little Stalingrad of the north” because German forces there surrendered to the Red Army on January 16, 1943, after being encircled and besieged for nearly two months.
Former police officer Andrei Ivanov protested the erection of an 8-meter statue of Stalin, saying he considers the dictator “a tyrant, a murderer.”
Under Russian President Vladimir Putin, Stalin’s image has been rehabilitated, with state media and officials like Medinsky touting the dictator’s supposed management skills and his leadership during the fight against Nazi Germany.
“In just 20 or 30 years, we accomplished what the civilized West couldn’t do in more than a century,” actor Yury Nazarov said at the Velikiye Luki unveiling, according to a report in the tabloid Moskovsky Komsomolets. The ceremony was co-hosted by actress Maria Shukshina, whose grandfather was executed under Stalin.
'A Large Number Of New Martyrs'
With devotees of Stalin ignoring the millions of Soviet citizens who were murdered, imprisoned, deported, exiled, and otherwise persecuted under his rule -- as well as the feelings of their living descendants, including Ivanov -- more than 100 monuments and busts of him have been erected, most of them in the years since 2005. A 2021 Levada Center poll found that 39 percent of Russians consider Stalin the “most outstanding personality” in Russian history, while 48 percent support putting up monuments to him.
According to Mikron factory Deputy Director Vladimir Parshikov, “People every day, arriving at work, expressed a desire to see a monument to Josef Stalin.”
At the ceremony, Father Antony acknowledged that the Russian Orthodox Church suffered enormously under Stalin, with thousands of churches destroyed and thousands of priests executed.
Andrei Ivanov stood in a central town square alone, holding an anti-Stalinist sign bearing lyrics by Soviet bard and dissident poet Aleksandr Galich.
“But thanks to this, we have a large number of new martyrs to whom we now pray and who now help us in our lives,” he said.
Regional church authorities quickly issued a statement saying that Father Antony’s participation in the event was “without permission” and that an internal investigation into his remarks had been launched.
“Their actions and statements do not reflect the positions of the holy Russian Orthodox Church and are their personal views and convictions,” the church’s statement said.
'I Had To Do Something'
A resident of the nearby town of Novosokolniki, Ivanov made the trip to Velikiye Luki to register his protest against the glorification of the dictator. He stood in a central town square alone, holding an anti-Stalinist sign bearing lyrics by Soviet bard and dissident poet Aleksandr Galich.
“When I read the announcement of the unveiling on social media, I immediately decided that I had to do something,” Ivanov said.
Wishing to avoid confrontation with the Stalinists at the event or provocations by the authorities, Ivanov held his one-man picket on a central square named for Marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky, who was arrested and tortured under Stalin in the 1930s but, after his release, commanded Soviet forces during the Battle of Velikiye Luki.
Andrei Ivanov says he considers his August 15 protest “not only an act of protest against the monument, but also against the war [in Ukraine].”
It was not Ivanov’s first act of dissent under Putin. After serving in the police for more than 20 years, Ivanov retired in 2015. Later, he became a regional lawmaker from the Yabloko party. In recent years, he has worked as a legal consultant to the OVD-Info project, which monitors police activity and repression in Russia. Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Ivanov has attended several anti-war protests.
He said he considers his August 15 protest “not only an act of protest against the monument, but also against the war.”
Ivanov said he believes the statue was erected primarily because of the factory’s work on “military orders” to support the war.
“It is also a demonstration of reverence for the authorities,” he added, “a sort of guarantee of the prosperity of the enterprise and the receipt of more state orders, including defense contracts.”
Ivanov recalled going to school in the 1970s and hearing very little about Stalin from his teachers and his parents.
“I only learned the story of my own relatives who were repressed much later,” he added, saying he now sees Stalin as “a tyrant, a murderer, an authoritarian.”