stalin is still very popular in russia.
YouTube - Stalin still a hero in Russia - 13 Dec 08
Yea, he's the hero of conservatives in Russia...
Soviet Conservatives Try to Turn Back the Clock on Gorbachev's Policies
By ESTHER B. FEIN, Special to the New York Times
Published: February 27, 1989
Russian conservatives, uneasy with the liberalization of Soviet society under Mikhail S. Gorbachev, have seized on the country's experiment in more democratic elections as a chance to fight for a return to more authoritarian ways.
The conservatives are a disparate alliance, including xenophobic fringe groups, like Pamyat, as well as large numbers of less extreme nationalists who yearn for what they see as the simple values of Old Russia and the Orthodox church.
At election rallies where speakers call out against the influence of ''Zionist forces,'' and in campaign leaflets decrying ''liberal yellow journalists,'' representatives of politically conservative organizations are trying to draft voters and candidates to establish a foothold within the Government.
Conservatives already claim credit for helping defeat certain candidates, most notably Mr. Korotich, editor of the liberal and popular magazine ''Ogonyok,'' and Andrei D. Sakharov, the physicist and Nobel Peace Prize winning dissident.
Nikita F. Zherbin, head of the Leningrad chapter of Pamyat, delighted in the fact that Mr. Korotich had been forced off the ballot in Moscow's Sverdlovsk region, and described this as the first successful step in the conservative campaign to use the elections as a vehicle for its political ideas.
'I Am a Stalinist'
''We brought our case to the people, and the outcome speaks for us,'' said Mr. Zherbin, whose group regards the liberalization of Soviet society as a conspiracy by Jews, Masons and Westernizers.