Three portraits of the former Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin are on display in the centre of Donetsk, the rebel capital of eastern Ukraine, as the separatist authorities fuel a mood of Soviet nostalgia.
The Stalin portraits have been placed in the main square and feature a quote from the wartime leader: “Our cause is just. The enemy will be routed. We will claim victory.”
The previously taboo display comes as the rebels revive Soviet customs to cement their Moscow-backed rule – while glossing over Stalin’s atrocities.
The portraits went down well with one young woman walking past. “I think the portraits of Stalin are a good thing. It’s our history and a lot of people have forgotten he even existed,” said Yekaterina, a 22-year-old student.
The horrors of Stalin’s repressions and the deaths of up to five million Ukrainians in the 1930s due to famine caused by forced collectivisation go unmentioned.
The Donetsk rebel leader, Alexander Zakharchenko, said how he regretted the break-up of the Soviet Union.
“The Soviet Union was a great country and it was a huge mistake that it was destroyed by the CIA and other secret services,” said the 39-year-old former field commander who prefers to dress in camouflage gear. “Europe and other countries were scared stiff of us.”
Stalin portraits have become de rigueur in the offices of rebel officials in easternUkraine, where the separatist conflict has killed more than 8,000 people.
The Donetsk rebels’ deputy defence minister, Eduard Basurin, wears a badge with Stalin’s profile on his uniform.
This new cult of Stalin revives the memories in Donetsk, a coal-mining city that was formerly known as Stalino.
It was renamed in the early 1960s after Nikita Khrushchev, who emerged as Soviet leader in the power struggle that followed Stalin’s death, condemned his predecessor’s cult of personality.
Such reverence for Stalin contrasts with the attitude of Kiev’s pro-western government, which in May passed laws making it illegal to display Soviet symbols, as it does Nazi swastikas. The law calls for the pulling down of monuments as well as renaming of streets, towns and enterprises that carry Soviet names.
Across Ukraine, the authorities have already pulled down numerous statues of Lenin, much to the rebel leaders’ disgust.
The Donetsk rebels’ culture minister, Alexander Paretsky, condemned “vandalism and barbarism” while the leader of the Luhansk rebel region, Igor Plotnitsky, warned of a “moral genocide
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