Stalinist Era

de David L. Hoffmann

"In 2010, Communist Party members in Zaporizhia, a city in southeastern Ukraine, erected a statue of Joseph Stalin. Attending the monument's unveiling were nearly one thousand people, including many World War II veterans bedecked with medals. After the playing of the Soviet national anthem, one speaker called out, 'Long live Stalin!' and the audience responded 'Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah!' Not all of the city's residents welcomed the Stalin monument with such enthusiasm. Several months later, unidentified protesters used a hacksaw to cut off the statue's head. A few days after that, the decapitated statue was blown up completely by a homemade bomb. Where the Stalin statue once stood, only an empty pedestal remains"--