Cultural Amnesia and Stalin’s Shadow in Post-Soviet Russia
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Alice Jackson | Lancaster University
In May 2025, the Moscow Metro unveiled a larger than life-sized monument of Joseph Stalin at Taganskaya station, reminiscent of a 1950s statue. This monument was a reproduction of a bas-relief originally installed at the same station in the late 1940s. Removed during Khrushchev’s ‘de-Stalinisation’ campaign, the monument’s recreation signals more than just architectural nostalgia, it also marks the restoration of a symbol long suppressed. The relief is striking in its composition: Stalin stands directly beneath Lenin, visually cast as his natural successor, surrounded by idealised figures of workers, farmers, and soldiers. Their gazes are fixed forward, unified in purpose, evoking the heroic realism that once defined the Stalinist cult of personality. The tableau is not merely commemorative. Instead, it is didactic, projecting a vision of Soviet unity and strength with Stalin at its centre.
The Taganskaya relief is not just a symbolic gesture but is part of a wider pattern of selective monument revival across the Russian Federation. It was commissioned by Moscow’s Transport Department to mark the Metro’s ninetieth anniversary and its public reception revealed deep divisions. While some passers-by laid flowers and praised Stalin’s wartime leadership, others condemned the installation as a dangerous glorification of a repressive regime. Activists from the liberal Yabloko party launched a petition against it, and critics, including prominent cultural figures, dismissed the work as amateurish and ideologically provocative. Unlike smaller regional tributes or museum displays, Taganskaya’s installation reanimates a once-suppressed image in a space designed for routine and visibility. Its reappearance invites comparison with other sites where Stalinist iconography has quietly returned, often under the banner of cultural preservation. Yet few are as prominent or state-sanctioned as this one, making the Taganskaya relief a focal point for understanding how public memory is being reshaped through its strategic reintroduction.
The installation was framed as a celebration to mark the ninetieth anniversary of the Metro. However, the relief itself is not a restored original but a newly commissioned recreation, evoking the post-war socialist realism of the original. It mimics the visual tropes of Stalin-era propaganda, such as heroic workers, idealised peasants, and Stalin positioned beneath Lenin, but lacks the craftsmanship and historical authenticity of the original sculptures removed during de-Stalinisation. This suggests the gesture was less about architectural preservation and more about ideological revival, using the aesthetics of the past to legitimise present narratives. Unsurprisingly, public reaction was split. Some hailed Stalin as an industrial and wartime hero, deserving of idolatry. Others condemned the erection of the statue as glorifying a tyrant who orchestrated mass murders, including the Great Terror of 1937–38. This begs the question: how can a society both mourn its dead and celebrate the man responsible for their deaths?
Between the 1930s and early 1950s, the Soviet Union, under Stalin, orchestrated one of the largest systematic campaigns of state violence in the twentieth century. The Great Terror (1937–38) involved mass arrests, show trials, and executions of perceived ‘enemies of the people’, including party officials, intellectuals, and ordinary citizens, often on fabricated charges. Forced collectivisation, launched in the late 1920s, aimed to consolidate individual farms into state-run collectives, leading to widespread famine, particularly in Ukraine, where millions died in what is now known as the Holodomor. The human cost was staggering, with approximately twenty million people directly affected by arrests, executions, exile, or starvation.
The Second World War presents a case in point for cultural amnesia surrounding the Stalinist period. While the ‘Great Patriotic War’ (1941–1945) has become a cornerstone of Russian national pride, the terror and repression orchestrated by Stalin resists such a neat narrative. Each year, Victory Day parades in Red Square showcase tanks, missiles, and uniformed troops in a grand spectacle of military might, reinforcing a narrative of heroism and sacrifice. These celebrations elevate the war as a moment of national triumph, while sidestepping the brutal domestic policies that accompanied it. It is harder to build patriotism from mass graves and prison camps. As a result, in the Russian Federation, the story of the terror has been carefully blurred, retold, or silenced altogether
The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 briefly opened a space for reckoning. Archives were unsealed, memoirs of gulag survivors were published, and new monuments appeared. The human rights organization Memorial, founded in the late 1980s, catalogued thousands of victims’ names and worked tirelessly to keep their memory alive. Schoolchildren visited sites of mass graves; films and literature probed the moral wounds of the twentieth century.
For a moment, it seemed possible that Russia might confront its violent past. Yet, as the 2000s unfolded under Vladimir Putin, the mood shifted. Public discussion of Stalin’s crimes dwindled. The state began to present a more sanitised version of Soviet history, which emphasised stability, modernisation, and global prestige over terror and fear. Memorial was branded a ‘foreign agent’ and, by 2021, forcibly liquidated by court order. The organisation’s closure sent a clear message: the era of open memory was over. This cultural amnesia has not happened by accident. It is the product of deliberate policy and subtle manipulation, carried out through several means.
Textbooks, which were once filled with details of purges and gulags, now stress Stalin’s role as a hero who industrialised the country and led it to victory in war. A 2007 history manual for schools described him as ‘one of the most successful leaders of the USSR’, minimising references to mass arrests.
The cult of Stalin is deeply linked to the Putinist cult of war, which has become so fervent with its catechesis, parades, holidays, and temples that it functions like an official state religion. Nowhere is this more obvious than the new museum that surrounds the vast, state-funded Cathedral of the Armed Forces in Moscow, a complex that celebrates Russian militarism past and present. Inside the museum, an interactive multimedia display invites visitors to immerse themselves in the state’s trauma and glory-filled narrative of the war and to hear words of wisdom from Stalin, the great leader, speaking on Red Square. The mixed signals are clear: yes, repression is acknowledged, but only in abstract terms, and never in a way that tarnishes the broader legacy of state power.
Access to sensitive archives has been steadily restricted since the early 2000s, coinciding with Vladimir Putin’s rise to power. The process accelerated after the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and intensified further following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Laws against ‘falsifying history’ or ‘discrediting Russia’s past’ have made honest scholarship increasingly risky, with historians and journalists facing legal and physical threats for challenging official narratives. Journalists and researchers, such as Anna Politkovskaya, have been attacked. Politkovskaya was a vocal critic of Putin, providing commentary on the terror and corruption that dominated Russia in the 1990s and 2000s, as well as human rights violations in conflicts like the Chechen War. She is believed to have been assassinated in 2006. In practice, this means that the paper trail of terror is being slowly buried again.
In Moscow today, Stalinist merchandise in the form of calendars, busts, and images is becoming increasingly available. In some souvenir shops, they are displayed side by side with busts of Putin. The trivialisation of Stalin into a marketable brand reflects a deeper cultural amnesia. By commodifying his image, the brutality of his rule becomes consumable, stripped of its moral weight. It is a process not unique to Russia. Hitler’s image appears in markets in Europe; Mao’s face adorns tote bags in China. But in Russia, Stalin merchandise is sold openly, in central shopping streets and museum gift shops, often side by side with images of Lenin or Putin.
Forgetting is not just imposed from above- it also fulfils a psychological function for wider society, making Russia’s history easier to digest for the masses. Stalin’s terror was intimate; neighbours denounced each other, family members were forced into silence, survivors rarely spoke. This generational trauma reinforces the knowledge that silence was safer than truth. In such an environment, confronting the past means reopening wounds that were never allowed to heal.
Nationalism also depends on heroes, not perpetrators. Russia cannot rest comfortably on memories of firing squads and labour camps. Instead, it requires a narrative of triumph and resilience. By recasting Stalin as the leader who modernised the country and saved it from Nazi Germany, the terror becomes a ‘necessary price’, rather than an unpardonable crime.
The costs of this selective forgetting are profound. In Russia, generations of students are growing up with a distorted understanding of how the Soviet system functioned. Victims’ families are left without closure, their grief marginalised. Perhaps most dangerously, cultural amnesia normalises the idea that state violence is acceptable if it serves a higher purpose. When the past is rewritten as a story of strength rather than suffering, the cycle of repression becomes easier to repeat.
Distortion of historical narratives further complicates relations with neighbouring countries. States such as Poland and Ukraine have their own memories of Soviet occupation and terror, which often clash with Moscow’s distorted narrative. When Russia downplays Stalinist crimes, it also denies the lived experience of those countries, reinforcing mistrust and fuelling geopolitical tensions.
On Lubyanka Square, the names of the dead are recited each October in a simple and haunting ceremony. This act of remembrance feels fragile, almost defiant: a quiet resistance against the state’s efforts to control historical memory.
Just a few streets away, the Taganskaya metro relief stands. The monument has undergone several material transformations over time. Initially crafted in plaster, it was later reimagined in glazed ceramic, lending it a more polished and durable finish. The most recent iteration, however, is 3D printed in plastic—a choice that has sparked notable criticism. While the use of plastic allows for rapid production and accessibility, some argue it diminishes the monument’s perceived gravitas and historical resonance compared to its earlier, more traditional forms. It casts Stalin in the familiar pose of a protective, fatherly figure — framed beneath Lenin and surrounded by idealised workers and farmers. For passers-by, it offers not tragedy but pride: a visual narrative of strength, unity, and national purpose. The relief does not merely commemorate; it instructs, reinforcing the idea of Stalin as the architect of Soviet resilience rather than the orchestrator of terror.
The significance of this tension lies in how it shapes political legitimacy. By selectively remembering Stalin — celebrating his wartime leadership while downplaying his crimes — the Russian state constructs a usable past that justifies present authority. The rehabilitation of Stalin is not merely symbolic; it signals a broader acceptance of authoritarianism, where state violence is reframed as patriotic necessity. In this context, remembrance becomes a contested act, and forgetting becomes a tool of power.
This is the paradox of post-Soviet Russia: memory and forgetting standing side by side, silence and stone in uneasy coexistence. The danger is not only that the terror is forgotten, but that it is remembered selectively and reshaped into a narrative that justifies power rather than restrains it. In a country where archives close and monuments rise, the past is always being rewritten.
Further Reading:
Masha Gessen, The Future is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia (London, 2017).
Anne Applebaum, Gulag Voices: An Anthology (Yale University Press, 2011).
Peter Pomerantsev, Nothing is True and Everything is Possible: Adventures in Modern Russia (Faber and Faber, 2017).
Anna Politkovskaya, Putin’s Russia (Harvill Press, 2004).
Todd Nelson, Bringing Stalin Back In: Memory Politics and the Creation of a Useable Past in Putin’s Russia (Lexington Books, 2019).
Alice Jackson is a BA History graduate from Lancaster University. Her undergraduate dissertation, titled ‘The Wyatt Rebellion: A Study of Xenophobia, Religious Tensions, and Political Divisions in Mid-Tudor England’, developed her interest in the role of dissent in politics. She is committed to examining how past traditions of resistance inform contemporary movements for social and political change. Her primary interest now lies in the development of dissident movements from the late Soviet period to the present day, with a particular focus on how intersectionality, especially feminist perspectives, shapes opposition in the post-Soviet sphere.
