[...]
About 10 statues of Stalin have gone up around the country since 2012, said Pavel Gnilorybov, a historian who works with a group that tracks human rights abuses.
Some of the renewed admiration comes from President Vladimir Putin, who often laments the breakup of what had been the world's only other superpower besides the United States.
Putin condemned the “excessive demonization” of Stalin during an interview that aired this summer with Oscar-winning filmmaker Oliver Stone. Putin said attacks on Stalin amounted to "attacking the Soviet Union and Russia."
[...]
The former Soviet leader's creeping rehabilitation is evidenced by the assortment of Stalin magnets, mugs, T-shirts, statues and other paraphernalia sold by street vendors, and the red carnations often seen placed at his grave on Red Square.
Bookstores around the country sell volumes glorifying Stalin as a bulwark against fascism. Last month, prominent lawyer Henri Reznik resigned from the Moscow State Judicial Academy after it hung a plaque commemorating Stalin in its central hall. In May, a portrait of Stalin went up on the entrance to a Moscow subway station.
Public approval of Stalin reached a 16-year high this year, according to a poll by the Levada Center, a research group. It found that 46% of Russians felt “admiration,” “respect” or “sympathy” for the Soviet leader in February, up from 37% in March 2016. Another poll by Levada this year showed that 39% of Russians believed Stalin's mass repression was a crime, down from 51% in 2012.
[...]
“I’ve always had a positive view about Stalin, but it’s improved in recent years since I learned more about him,” said Alexei Filippov, 42, a retail sales manager. "There’s been a lot of books explaining the real reasons of the so-called repressions.”
“Repression is a made-up word. It was really a fight against crime," said Filippov, adding that Stalin "was our commander in chief. We owe the victory against Nazism to him.”
Ilya Rogotnev, 33, a university teacher and member of the pro-Stalin nationalist group Essence of Time, said the Russian government is finally "coming into sync with a collective opinion" about the former leader.
“For a long time, Stalin was not defended by anyone," Rogotnev said. "A lot of trash, lies and libel was dumped on him.”
[...]
Teacher Rogotnev said he doesn’t justify Stalin's crackdown but thinks it should be examined in the context of his positive achievements: victory against Nazi Germany in World War II and the rapid industrialization of the Soviet Union.
“The repressions really were huge and terrible, but they were also natural and inevitable within the context of the terrible 20th century,” he said.
“If you take Stalinist repressions separately, then sure, he could come out as a tyrant or a vampire," Rogotnev added. "But if you look at this figure in a bigger context, then you see that he is a function of the historical process and the political system in the Soviet Union.”
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