Canadian Press MOSCOW (AP) - Russia's Communist party leader urged official praise Saturday for the late Soviet leader Josef Stalin and said the city formerly called Stalingrad should be given its name back. Amid a clamour in some quarters for the rehabilitation of the man characterized in the West as a brutal tyrant, Communist party leader Gennady Zyuganov said Stalin's leadership in the Soviet Union's victory against Nazi Germany deserves recognition as next month's 60th anniversary of the Nazi defeat approaches. "We should once again render honour to Stalin for his role in building socialism and saving human civilization from the Nazi plague," Zyuganov told a congress of communist parties from Russia and other former Soviet republics in Moscow. "We should energetically support calls by veterans of the front to restore Volgograd to its heroic name Stalingrad," he said in televised remarks. Zyuganov also proposed that Communists repudiate the decision made at the 20th Congress of the Communist party in 1956 to condemn Stalin, a turning-point in Soviet history when Nikita Khrushchev officially distanced the country from Stalin, Russia's Itar-Tass news agency reported. Stalin died in 1953. Ahead of next month's celebrations of the 60th anniversary of the Nazi defeat in the Second World War, there has been a growing trend in glorifying Stalin's leadership during the war. Stalin is still revered by many in Russia as a strong leader, reflecting continued nostalgia for the lost Soviet superpower status more than a decade after the fall of Soviet Union. Legislators in the western Russian city Oryol recently called on the authorities to rename streets after Stalin and restore memorials to him in recognition of his wartime achievements. Last month, Volgograd decided to erect a monument to Stalin, the late U.S. president Franklin Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill to honour the 1945 Yalta conference, where the three leaders discussed Europe's post-war reorganization. The Battle of Stalingrad was a turning point in the Second World War, known in Russia as the Great Patriotic War. http://www.canada.com/news/world/story.html?id=6059eac3-110a-4c40-8dc1-484058c1a935
Saturday, April 16, 2005
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