Recent worldwide trend in critical revision of history that culminates in toppling of statues of racist and colonialist political figures of the past only strengthens Kremlin’s resolve to lead its citizens in completely opposite direction – to keep promoting the image of Stalin as a leader with a “strong hand”.
In 2013 Stalin’s approval rating in Russia was 35%, then grew to 52% in 2015 and has now reached astounding 70% – all due to the total erasure of mentions of victims of his repressions (historians estimate this number to be around 60 million people with peaks on Holodomor and Great Purge).
There is also a fairly recent trend in Russia to erect statues of Stalin (as opposed to decommunization movements in Eastern Europe) and the most notable one is one erected in 2017 in center of Moscow as part of the Alley of rulers.
Altogether there are 93 statues of Stalin is Russia and a significant number of them was erected during Putin presidency.