The return of the despot
The philosopher Karl Jaspers, writing in the aftermath of the Second World War in Germany, maintained that only a nation prepared to recognize its own guilt can recover from the moral and spiritual catastrophe of totalitarianism. The Germans slowly came to understand this after 1945. In Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the new authorities never acted on this realization.
April 20, 2026 -
Jens Malling
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History and MemoryIssue 3 2026Magazine
Illustration by Andrzej Zaręba
As Russia’s aggression against Ukraine continues, so too does the rise in popularity of Joseph Stalin across the Russian Federation. Monuments honouring the Soviet dictator have been erected in different cities across the country. Sochi has one. So does Novosibirsk. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Moscow has a few as well. According to the media platform Re:Russia, in September 2025 there were 176 memorials bearing the features of Stalin in Russia. Two years earlier, a study cited by Radio Svoboda had recorded 110 of them. All but 15 have been inaugurated in the quarter century that Vladimir Putin has been in power, as Radio Svoboda also writes.
The trend first intensified after Russia started its war activities in Ukraine in 2014 and even more since it started its full-scale invasion of the country on February 24th 2022. Thus, Re:Russia also reported that in the first seven months of 2025 as many as 18 new monuments honouring Stalin were raised. The most recent one was unveiled on December 18th 2025 in the city of Smolensk.
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history, Joseph Stalin, Russia
