Putin is resurrecting Russia’s ‘iron rogues’

A year before Russia launched its brutal campaign to subjugate Ukraine, I visited a wintry Moscow. It was striking to see how far the capital had moved away from celebrating the cult of the old communist leadership that had dominated the then Soviet Union with an iron fist. The tomb of Lenin by the Kremlin was, of course, still doing good business with tourists. But the bust of Joseph Stalin, standing on guard outside his old boss’s gaudy vault, resembled a forgotten relic.

The sorry state of these statues was no accident. After the failed coup by Kremlin hardliners in August 1991, First Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev’s power drained away. As a result, the USSR quickly disintegrated and Yeltsin’s rule as leader of the Russian Federation was established. One consequence of the defeat of the old order, mirrored across Eastern Europe, was the spontaneous act of demolishing cultural aspects of communist rule.