Tokayev Honors Victims While Putin Rewrites Stalin’s Past

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. [caption id="attachment_32500" align="aligncenter" width="1200"] The Museum and Memorial Complex “ALZhIR”; image: TCA [/caption] 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...