The Kremlin tries to recover the name of Stalingrad

Vladimir Putin once confessed to the American filmmaker Oliver Stone that "Stalin was a product of his time."

The Soviet dictator was, in the eyes of the Russian president, a historical figure victim of "excessive demonization."

In the present, at the time marked by the Russian invasion of the Ukraine, the authorities press to rename the city of Volgograd as Stalingrad.

The president visits the city this Thursday on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the victory that led to the war against Nazism.

The glories of the past, even those attributed to Stalin, are a very valuable political asset for his present justifications.

The Parliament of Volgograd imposed in 2013 the tradition of changing the name of the city for 24 hours every February 2, the day of the defeat of the Sixth German Army in Stalingrad, although the initiative did not crystallize into a tradition, since it was not He turned every year, as in 2017. It was one of the initiatives undertaken at that time by the authorities to promote patriotism, like the very popular Saint George ribbon.

This year, however, the campaign has gone much further and the signs in the city were already replaced on Monday, January 30.

The exaltation of the figure of Stalin in the present has materialized even in the approval in June of last year of a law that prohibits drawing parallels between the Third Reich and the Soviet Union, and between the actions of their armies during World War II. .

This includes up to 15 days in prison for "crimes" such as denouncing the territorial conquests that Moscow obtained in Poland through the secret clauses of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, the existence of which was revealed by the Government of Mikhail Gorbachev.

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Putin, to which the director of Russia Today

has come to refer to himself by the same title that Stalin held

, warlord), called the Stalin-Hitler pact “immoral” in an open letter to Poland.

Decade and a half later, those statements are a crime, because his new official version is that the agreement with the Third Reich was just a way to buy time.

Despite this nostalgic fervor, polls in the Kremlin itself show that the population is against renaming their city after Stalin.

According to polls by the VtsIOM state center, 67% of Volgograd residents reject the measure as a waste of money and nonsense.

Most of those consulted criticize the initiative on the grounds that one should not live in the past.

The Kremlin, for its part, tries to link its war against Ukraine with World War II by repeating that kyiv is a supposed “regime to be denazified”.

The memory in every home of what is known in Russia as the Great Patriotic War and the millions of lives lost in the fight against the Third Reich are its assets.

For this reason, the Volgograd authorities have considered changing its name through various citizen initiatives, including several formed by veterans of both 80-year-old battles and current ones in Ukraine.

Referendum on name change

The regional government plans to hold a referendum on the name change.

And Putin's party, United Russia, has instructed its politicians to draw comparisons this week between the offensive on Ukraine and the battle for Stalingrad, "that line from which it is impossible to retreat."

Asked if Volgograd, the city on the Volga, could once again honor Stalin's name for good, Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov evaded a clear answer: "I can't confirm anything."

Putin will visit Volgograd today.

His agenda includes laying a wreath before the Eternal Flame of the Hall of Military Glory, located on the Mamayev Kurgan hill, and strolling through the museum-panorama dedicated to the Battle of Stalingrad.

At its entrance, three busts with effigies of Stalin, as Supreme Commander of the USSR Armed Forces, and of Marshals Gueorgi Zhúkov and Aleksandr Vasilevski, responsible for the first great Soviet victory, were inaugurated this Wednesday.

07:52

From Barbarossa to Uranus: this was the battle of Stalingrad

Photo: TASS / AFP |

Video: DANIEL CASTRESANA / PAULA CASADO

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