Day: December 16, 2025

Stalin and the Ossetians

The figure of Joseph Stalin enjoys noticeable popularity in Ossetian society, despite local residents’ awareness of the repressions, analysts interviewed by Caucasian Knot have said.

At the same time, residents point out that young people tend to view Stalin negatively.

In June 2025, a monument to Joseph Stalin was erected near a bakery in Tskhinval at the initiative of the plant’s director. A month after its unveiling, the monument’s face was damaged by unknown individuals.

It later emerged that three schoolchildren had caused the damage. Their parents paid for the monument’s restoration, after which the plant director withdrew a police report on the vandalism.

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Local blogger Anatoly says residents did not express public outrage over the installation of the monument, which was done without consulting the population.

“The monument was damaged by young guys, schoolchildren until recently. Attitudes toward Stalin are mixed. Among the older generation, many are sympathetic, as elsewhere in the post-Soviet space. But among young people, there is a strong negative view of the Stalin cult,” the blogger says.

Aslan, an unemployed resident of Tskhinval, reflected on local attitudes toward Stalin, noting that “these days, everyone is afraid to speak openly on such topics, unlike before.” He shared a personal story:

“During the Soviet era, right after technical school, I worked as a driver at a factory. At the time, it was customary to hang a portrait of Stalin on the truck’s windshield. I did the same. When my grandmother saw it, she grabbed me by the ear and sternly told me to take it down, tear it up, and scatter the pieces to the wind. I asked why, and she simply said I was a big fool. According to her, this man had caused a lot of suffering to the people of the Caucasus. It was only in the 1990s that I learned the full scale of the tragedy.”

He learned about the new Stalin monument in Tskhinval from media reports—not the unveiling, but the act of vandalism.

“The kids expressed their protest this way. Good for them, I support it. Only unreasonable people support Stalin now, yet, strangely, there are many in Ossetia. So much has been openly documented about his crimes against the peoples of the Caucasus. How can there be any justification for him?” Aslan said.

He also mentions occasionally seeing old Stalin busts in friends’ apartments, as well as portraits on truck windshields.

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Canadian Iranist Richard Foltz, a professor at Concordia University in Montreal, who spent many years working in Ossetia and is married to an Ossetian with three children, told Caucasian Knot that he was struck by Stalin’s popularity in the region “given his negative reputation in history and around the world.”

“I don’t know who is behind this historical revisionism—state institutions or private individuals. Perhaps both,” Foltz said.

“It’s clear that Tskhinval’s main avenue is named after Stalin. His images are everywhere—on cars, on walls, and even in calendars. It’s very strange. I was told that many locals are despairing at the appalling level of daily corruption they face, and they imagine Stalin as a figure of justice who would not let anyone evade responsibility, no matter their position,” he explained.

The professor suggested that Stalin’s supporters in Ossetia “may be dreaming of someone who could hold today’s powerful criminals accountable.”

“I’m not Ossetian, and this issue does not directly affect me. But my wife’s grandfather was among those who disappeared during the repressions,” he added.

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Attitudes toward Stalin vary significantly across different regions of the Caucasus.

“It is impossible, for example, to compare Georgia with Armenia and Azerbaijan: for Georgia, attitudes toward Stalin are far more significant than for its neighbors. In Georgia, some people see Stalin as part of their own national history, not just Soviet history,” Alexander Iskandaryan, director of the Caucasus Institute in Yerevan, told Caucasian Knot.

In the North Caucasus and Russia more broadly, views of Stalin are sharply negative among the peoples who were deported under his regime—Chechens, Ingush, Karachays, and Balkars.

In contrast, in North Ossetia–Alania, Stalin is seen as “one of their own” in an ethnic sense, with many believing he was Ossetian.

“In North Ossetia, a bust of Stalin was officially installed at the Glory Memorial in Vladikavkaz, which opened in 2005,” Iskandaryan noted.

Regarding the region’s “affection for Stalin,” he, like Richard Foltz, sees it less as sentiment tied to history or adherence to Stalinism and more as a response to contemporary problems.

“This reflects a desire for greater social justice and a protest against corruption and nepotism. The myth of Stalin’s asceticism or the absence of corruption during his rule likely tells us more about how his supporters view today’s issues than about history itself,” said the director of the Caucasus Institute.

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The exact number of Stalin monuments in the North Caucasus is not known, according to Iskandaryan.

“People place them in their private yards and sometimes even inside their homes. None of this is reflected in any official statistics. From my observations, there are at least dozens,” he said.

In 2024, a bust of Stalin was erected on the street bearing his name in the village of Nart, Ardonsky District, North Ossetia, at the initiative of a local resident. Local officials and schoolchildren attended the unveiling. Authorities said the bust was installed to help villagers preserve the memory of an important historical figure.

In May 2024, Oleg Kelemetov, a resident of Nalchik in the Russian republic of Kabardino-Balkaria, appealed to the parliaments of the North Caucasus republics, calling for a legal ban on the glorification of Stalin and others involved in mass deportations during World War II, as well as on the erection of monuments in their honor.

According to Kelemetov, Stalin monuments have been installed in 40 regions, including 15 regional capitals, with North Ossetia and Dagestan among the top three regions in terms of the number of settlements hosting such sculptures.

On 1 December 2025, Ingush historian Ibrahim Kostoev reported that the republic’s parliament had secretly removed from consideration a bill banning the commemoration of Stalin in the region—a bill that had passed its first reading back in 2017.

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Stalin and the Ossetians