The new director of the Pushkin Museum compared Joseph Stalin to Mickey Mouse

Joseph Stalin in Russia is an element of pop culture that can be compared to the Disney cartoon character Mickey Mouse. This opinion was expressed in the RTVI program “Chroniques du Nouveau Monde” by the new director of the National Museum of Fine Arts (GMII) named after. AS. Pushkin (Pushkin Museum) Elizaveta Likhacheva. According to her, the topic of Stalin pops up in the news space whenever “people need to be distracted from something serious.”

Edition of March 22 “Agency. News” reported that Twitter deleted a post by Associated Press journalist Alexander Roslyakov of a 2018 video. In it, Likhacheva, who at the time headed the Shchusev Museum of Architecture, sits in her office, and the background on a chest of drawers is a photograph of Joseph Stalin, on which an image of a hare is pasted. Roslyakov himself, in a comment to reporters, said that he did not receive “any messages from Twitter” and did not find out “if anyone could complain about his message.” As the Agency wrote. News”, in the early 2000s, Likhacheva took part in the Kremlin youth movement “Walking Together”, and also worked in the Interior Ministry.

The “tablet” captured in the video, Likhacheva said, was presented to her by her colleagues. According to her, it was not so much a portrait of Stalin as an installation, watching which people who entered the office reacted completely differently.

“It was very clearly visible when people entered the office – it’s true – people enter the office, they see this unfortunate sign, which, by the way, was an installation, because we had Stalin with ears. According to the reaction, everything was clear: we will work or not. Now people have completely lost their sense of humor,” she said, adding that there were three images of Stalin in his office, one of which was applied to a bar of soap, which was eventually “washed away”.

According to Likhacheva, the figure of Stalin is indeed complex and contradictory, but the debate about him today does not make the slightest sense.

“I follow a very simple position: he is dead. All. We drove. We cannot measure our present life by Stalin. It’s just ridiculous. How about Ivan the Terrible? Even Peter I was such a dodgy character too,” she said.

According to the director of the Pushkin Museum, on March 5, the 70th anniversary of Stalin’s death, all social media feeds were filled with polemics about him, despite the global problems that exist today , including the conflict in Ukraine, sanctions and the economic crisis.

“People are seriously discussing Stalin’s death. Citizens, did you really go there like a cuckoo clock? In general, there is nothing more to discuss? For us, Stalin was always, I would say, a marker, or something like that. It’s a pop culture thing for us, like Mickey Mouse. There are many images of Stalin, and he is, after all, the subject of pop culture. That is to say, whenever people need to be distracted from something serious, important, Stalin gets it,” Likhacheva said indignantly.

Watch the full interview on RTVI’s YouTube channel at link .