Posters of Josef Stalin may be put up in Moscow for the first time in decades as part of the May 9 observance of Victory Day, the annual celebration of the defeat of Nazi Germany.
This year, the 65th anniversary of Germany's defeat, a contingent of U.S. troops is expected to march on Red Square, a striking sign of the vaunted "reset" of U.S.-Russian relations.
But Moscow city authorities may be preparing a less-welcome kind of reset with the posters, an honor denied since the Soviet dictator's crimes were publicly exposed more than 50 years ago.
The poster proposal for Victory Day has raised a storm of controversy and again opened the never-healed wound of Russia's Soviet past.
Mayor Yury Luzhkov believes that Stalin should get his due as the Soviet commander in chief. "How did people go into the war? … They went to war with the cry 'For the homeland! For Stalin!"' Luzhkov said on Vesti state television Sunday.
A major veterans' organization agrees. "The veterans of Moscow condemn repression, but at the same time value the results achieved under the command of Stalin," Vladimir Dolgikh, head of the Moscow Public Veterans Organization, told RIA-Novosti.
Moscow authorities have said there will be only a few posters of Stalin and that they will be at information booths where veterans gather for the commemorations. That appears to make it unlikely that U.S. troops would march under the steely gaze of the dictator, but even proximity to Stalin may unsettle diplomats.
The U.S. Embassy declined to comment on the issue. Britain has announced that it will send a military contingent, but the Foreign Office declined to discuss the posters.
Opposition comes from a range of groups, from human rights organizations to the highest levels of national power.
The Kremlin committee organizing the national observances said it would not issue any Stalin posters, a committee official told Russian media. The media reports said that decision should be considered as a recommendation to city authorities not to put up the posters.
Luzhkov's office declined to comment to The Associated Press.
President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin have not weighed in on the issue, but the head of Putin's United Russia faction in the State Duma strongly denounced the plans.
"There's nothing to argue about here. Stalin was guilty in the deaths of millions of people," Duma Speaker Boris Gryzlov said this month.
Human rights group Memorial has appealed to Medvedev to prevent the posters.
Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov, meanwhile, thinks that Luzhkov will cave in to pressure from above. "I'm not convinced that the Moscow authorities have the courage to realize this idea," Zyuganov told RIA-Novosti.