Desired

The monument to Stalin in Vologda will be preserved, fulfilling the wishes of the governor and despite the court decision

The monument to Joseph Stalin, despite the court decision, will stand on the territory of the branch of the Vologda Museum-Reserve as a “gift to the museum.” The found option suits Governor Filimonov, who initiated the installation of the monument and himself came to unveil it.

Novaya Gazeta has already reported that in July, the Arbitration Court of the Vologda Region, at the request of the prosecutor’s office, declared the installation of the monument illegal, since the state procurement procedure was violated. In October, this decision was “overpowered” by the Court of Appeal, and in December by the Arbitration Court of the North-Western District.

Governor Filimonov assured in the summer that “the monument will stand” no matter what, and it was interesting to see what they would do now.

Well, we found a solution. We quote:

“Ekaterina Lozhenitsyna (the private entrepreneur who made the monument) transferred the money to the museum’s account. The parties signed an act of acceptance and transfer of the monument to a private person. That is, the court decision was legally enforced, but the manufacturer of the work, in accordance with the agreement for the free use of movable property, transferred the monument for use to the museum-reserve. Its location, according to the document, is the territory of the Vologda Link House Museum,” Yulia Evseeva, general director of the Vologda museum-reserve, reports to local media.

Monument in the courtyard of house 33 on the street. Maria Ulyanova, where Stalin served his exile at the beginning of the 20th century, was installed on the initiative of Georgy Filimonov in December 2024. In December 2025, the governor reported in his Telegram channel that the Vologda Link museum received 4.1 thousand visitors in 2024, and in 2025 the number of interested people increased to 5.7 thousand people - 40% more. And that it was the monument to Stalin that increased interest in the museum.

He probably really did raise it. Including because the story of this monument received very wide publicity.

Opinions, however, were different.

The petition, which was signed by more than three thousand residents of the region in 2024, stated that the execution grounds are in the memory of a huge number of families, both throughout Russia and in the Vologda region. Why erect a monument to I.V. To Stalin means to insult the memory, honor and dignity of these families. And that “the installation of such a monument devalues ​​the results of political rehabilitation.”

These opinions were not listened to.

If we talk about those who are happy about the preservation of the monument, and consider its presence correct, and are going to come to it, and consider the Generalissimo to be a great leader, most likely they do not think about a very simple thing.

What is included in the obligatory “set” with Stalin - authorities that do not make mistakes, and night (or morning) calls with searches, and courts that copy indictments, and camps, and exile, and the absolute vulnerability of any person to repression...

Because a great leader who never makes mistakes and political repression against anyone considered an “enemy” do not exist separately. Only together.

...Meanwhile, a round table was held in Nizhny Novgorod dedicated to the 146th anniversary of Stalin’s birth - as the communists reported, “the first joint project of the Nizhny Novgorod branch of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation and the Minsk City Committee of the Communist Party of Belarus.”

As a result of the discussion, “the round table participants came to the conclusion that in Russia and Belarus there is enormous interest in the personality of Stalin, and the overwhelming majority of residents of the union state consider him “a political figure of world-historical proportions.” That “the unique and successful experience of Lenin-Stalin modernization is extremely relevant today for our states in the conditions of total war declared on us.” And that “it is necessary to firmly resist any attempts at de-Stalinization and de-Sovietization and make every effort to return the name of I.V. Stalin into our common history."

After which “the participants of the round table supported the initiative of the communists to install monuments to I.V. Stalin in Minsk and Nizhny Novgorod."

In Minsk, by the way, there was already a 10-meter monument to Stalin. On the Central Square. Opened on September 21, 1952. On November 3, 1961, after the Twenty-Second Congress of the CPSU and the removal of Stalin's body from the Mausoleum, the monument was dismantled.

Andrey Serov, specially for Novaya Gazeta