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Communists put Stalin portrait on bus in Russia's Urals

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A group of "neo-communists" in Russia's Urals city of Ufa have decked out a private bus with the portrait of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, the Novaya Gazeta paper said on Friday.

A group of "neo-communists" in Russia's Urals city of Ufa have decked out a private bus with the portrait of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, the Novaya Gazeta paper said on Friday.

The group said they "wanted to highlight Stalin's role in the victory over Hitler's Nazism and Germany's juggernaut," adding that their move was a protest against the "unfounded tarnishing of Stalin's role."

The bus drives by the World War Two headquarters of the local Gulag committee before going past ditches where peasants who died from starvation due to Stalin's collectivization policies were buried, historian Andrei Yegorov told the paper.

Despite the horrors of the gulag and the cult of personality that grew up around Stalin, many people in Russia believe it was the dictator's leadership that pulled the Soviet Union through its darkest hour and freed Europe from the tyranny of Nazism.

The appearance of the bus was hailed by the city's elder generation of communists. "We are glad that youngsters know that there is no victory without truth," Madril Gafurov, secretary of the local branch of the Russian Communist Party (KPRF) said.

Former Moscow's mayor Yury Luzhkov intended to decorate the capital with Stalin's portraits during the 2010 Victory Day celebrations. The move provoked strong controversy in Russia. Human rights activists protested against Luzhkov's decision, threatening to stage demonstrations if the posters were put up. Luzhkov eventually backed down.

MOSCOW, May 20 (RIA Novosti)

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