Photo Gallery The Old Man's Back Again
Moscow plans to celebrate the Soviet Union's victory over Hitler's Germany with a spectacular parade on Sunday. But this year a shadow has been cast over the festivities by a row over whether posters of Stalin can be hung in the city. Here, a vandalized image is seen on the side of a bus in St. Petersburg, where a private initiative has leased advertising space on city buses to show images of Stalin.
May Day celebrations in Moscow (2005 photo): Many Russians yearn for the return of a strong leader like Stalin.
Russian soldiers train for the May 9 event. Some 90,000 soldiers will march across Red Square in a parade, the likes of which Moscow hasn't seen in a long time.
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin joined Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk in Katyn in early April to commemorate the 1940 murders of members of the Polish elite by the Soviet NKVD secret police organization. At that event, Putin admitted that Stalin had had a "personal responsibility" for the mass murders.
Communists and supporters march across Red Square to visit Lenin's mausoleum in Moscow on April 22, to mark the 140th anniversary of Lenin's birth.
A bus in St. Petersburg: A growing number of young people worship Stalin as a "man of action" -- even though they never experienced his rule personally.
