On May 31, 2025, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev of Kazakhstan stood at the Museum and Memorial Complex “ALZhIR,” which Stalin had established in 1937 as a camp in the Soviet Gulag. Akmola was the name of Astana at the time, and “ALZhIR” is a Russian acronym for “Akmola Camp of Wives of Traitors to the Motherland.” The former Gulag camp, as its name indicates, was for women (a total of roughly 8,000, not to mention over 1,500 children born in the camp) who were detained solely for their familial associations with accused intellectuals or political dissidents.

The full name of the Complex, which opened in 2007, is the Museum and Memorial Complex in Memory of Victims of Political Repression and Totalitarianism. In a solemn wreath-laying ceremony, declaring the imperative to preserve memory and confront the Soviet past directly, Tokayev provided a stark contrast to simultaneous developments in Russia, where orchestrated celebrations and symbolic gestures have contributed to the resurrection and sanitization of Stalin’s legacy.

The Museum and Memorial Complex “ALZhIR”; image: TCA

This year, Russia’s state apparatus has initiated a broad and deliberate campaign to reinsert Stalin into the country’s national consciousness. Major new monuments have been erected, existing public spaces have been renamed, and state-controlled media have popularized new narratives of Stalin’s leadership.

The unveiling of a statue of Stalin in mid-May at the Taganskaya metro, one of Moscow’s busiest stations, received a significant degree of international attention. It was a meticulous restoration of the bas-relief sculpture, “The People’s Gratitude to the Commander-in-Chief,” a work that had been destroyed during the Khrushchev-era de-Stalinization.

Cities like Vologda, where Stalin was exiled from 1911 to 1914, have joined this revival, with local leaders organizing public lectures praising his wartime “strategic genius.” Volgograd’s airport was renamed as Stalingrad International Airport by presidential decree. The 80th anniversary of the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany provided a ready pretext for these efforts.

The resurrection of Stalin’s image in Russia serves more than a commemorative function. It represents a strategic deployment of a historical narrative to justify present-day authoritarian practices. President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly drawn explicit parallels between the sacrifices of the Battle of Stalingrad and contemporary military operations in Ukraine, framing the use of force as a historical imperative.

State-controlled media in Russia reinforce this framing, while educational curricula have been revised to highlight Stalin’s leadership while marginalizing the atrocities of his regime. This selective memory is an active construction of ideological hegemony, consolidating state power through the manipulation of historical truth.

Yet while Russia is reconstructing a mythic narrative that merges nostalgia with political expediency, Kazakhstan is confronting the traumas of its past. Over the past five years, the State Commission on the Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Repression has reviewed thousands of cases, exonerating over 300,000 individuals.

Public debates, academic conferences, and community initiatives have reinforced this commitment, along with the publication of survivor testimonies and the release of new archival materials. These materials cover not just political repressions but also the manmade famine in Kazakhstan during the Stalinist collectivizations in the 1930s, during which 1.5 million are estimated to have died. This historical transparency is linked to Tokayev’s domestic program of democratic reforms and political modernization.

Such reforms and modernization include initiatives to expand parliamentary authority, introduce direct local elections, and enhance civic participation. The integration of historical memory with democratic reform is a necessary exercise in political community-building, signaling a philosophy of governance that acknowledges the burdens of the past as preconditions for an accountable future. By contrast, Russia’s reanimation of Stalin’s legacy demonstrates the instrumentalization of history as a means of reinforcing autocratic rule and suppressing dissent.

This contrast reveals a profound difference over whether historical memory should serve as a mechanism for truth and accountability or as a tool for repression and ideological control. Throughout Tsarist, Soviet, and contemporary Russian history, the phrase “Who is to blame?” has recurred many times in discussions about corruption, social inequality, and political criminality. The title of a novel published by Herzen in the 1840s, it has echoed throughout the works of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and to this day.

The Ukrainian-American political scientist and historian Roman Szporluk, whom I knew at The University of Michigan, once lamented in conversation that this question is often twinned in Russian discourse with another historical theme, “What is to be done?”, which is perhaps best known as the title of a pamphlet by Lenin but which he took from the title of an early-1860s novel by Chernyshevsky. “And then,” Szporluk continued in his inimitably ironic manner, “there is the inevitable question, ‘What is to be done with those who are to blame?’” Sadly, this question seems to remain just as inescapable in the Russian Federation today as it has been in past Russian political history.

But it is fair to say that Kazakhstan is taking a different path. Its model seeks to demonstrate that remembrance need not be confined to mourning, blame, and revenge. Rather, it can inform and energize contemporary political reform. Russia’s trajectory, conversely, illustrates how selective amnesia and glorification of past authoritarianism can entrench present coercion and justify expansionist ambitions.

President Tokayev put it in these words: “Stalin’s repressions targeted the national intelligentsia — the most educated and progressive segment of our society. Thousands were labeled ‘enemies of the people,’ subjected to brutal torture, and executed without trial or investigation.” The implicit contrast here is with Tokayev’s program for a “Just Kazakhstan,” which in the State of the Nation address last fall he characterized as being composed of “law and order, economic growth, and social optimism.”

In his speech, he emphasized unity and pride in the “unique cultural code of the Great Steppe civilization,” urging citizens not to “politicize history subjectively or prejudicially” nor to use it “as a tool to advance destructive agendas.” At the same time — as Stalin used Kazakhstan as a dumping ground for deported nationalities such as the Chechens, the Volga Germans, and many others — Tokayev noted that Kazakhs were but one of over 60 ethnic groups represented among ALZhIR’s prisoners.

The competing narratives of Russia and Kazakhstan offer a cautionary tale about the uses and misuses of memory. Russia’s selective commemoration seeks to harness the past to buttress a present of repression and war, contrasting with Kazakhstan’s deliberate confrontation with its own history, insisting that accountability and transparency are essential to the health of a nation.

The resurgence of Stalin’s image in Russia is a calculated maneuver to suppress dissent and justify military aggression, and the selective elevation of his wartime leadership while passing over his crimes in silence normalizes state coercion and violence. Kazakhstan’s approach, by contrast, affirms that historical memory can serve as a foundation for democratic renewal and societal resilience. Confronting the painful truths of its Soviet past, Tokayev asserted at ALZhIR that no political expediency can excuse the horrors of repression.