A music video where Truman, Hitler, and Osama Bin Laden eat it, but not Joseph Stalin

The Russian pop singer Slava (real name: Anastasia Slanevskaya) has released a music video to promote her new album, “Red.” In the video, she's pictured metaphorically “ripping out the darkest pages from history,” tearing up the portraits of various historical world leaders and dictators.

The first portrait to get Slava's treatment belongs to former US President Harry Truman, who ordered the atomic bombing of Imperial Japan in the Second World War. When Truman's picture is sliced up with a knife, the video shows the Statue of Liberty crumbling.

From there, Slava shifts to figures about whose evil there's generally more consensus: individuals like Osama Bin Laden, Adolf Hitler, Saddam Hussein, and Kim Il Sung, before finally ending with Joseph Stalin, whose portrait is left intact.

The video also includes historical footage from various tragedies, including the burning Twin Towers in New York on 9/11, and a mushroom cloud over Japan.

At the end of the music video, portraits of Saddam Hussein and Kim Il Sung are torched with flamethrowers, but Stalin's photo is left hanging. Just as two women raise a hammer and sickle (the symbols of Soviet Communism), a bright light appears over shoulder, and they turn from Stalin and face the horizon, sparing the mustachioed tyrant.

Slava's lyrics are especially provocative. The singer calls the tyrants "wild beasts" and begs for her release from their captivity.

"The Red One! How is it that you do not understand that you ruin me, that you kill me in your embrace, that you wound me. Enough! I do not want pain. I can no longer live like this. Release me from your captivity. I will be able to forget you!" reads the song's chorus.

Members of the Russian Communist Party have been less than thrilled about the music video, saying the use of Stalin's image amounts to a cheap publicity stunt.

"This is not a music video, but tasteless porridge. A half-forgotten star wants to draw attention to herself haphazardly using the image of Stalin! People have little interest in these dancy-shmansy videos. She is a half-dead canary. So let her quietly die there atop the Star!" said Sergei Obukhov, a member Russia's Communist Party.

Watch the whole video below.