Moscow - Former Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin is back in fashion in Russia as the Kremlin condones history textbooks that honour the Soviet leader (1878-1953) as renovator of the country. "Children, learn to value Stalin," the Gazeta newspaper recently summed up the message by the textbook's authors. Stalin, the synonym for state-ordered terror and torture, still has his followers, especially among the communists.
However, even non-communists seem to long for someone like Stalin, public opinion polls suggest. Historians and human rights activists complain about an unprecedented misrepresentation of history and accuse President Vladimir Putin of ignoring it.
"Many now present Stalin as an efficient manager, who did a good thing with his collectivization, industrialization and the Second World War victory," the head of the Moscow Helsinki Group for Human Rights, 80-year-old Lyudmila Alekseyeva, said.
This "dangerously flattering picture" ridiculed millions of innocent victims of the regime, she said.
Russian human rights official Vladimir Lukin is deeply concerned that one of the "country's most terrible and ruthless criminals is put on a pedestal."
The Academic Education Society for the Arts recently approved two books which were intended to turn pupils into "real patriots," Russian media reported.
The historian Aleksandr Filippov in his book A Modern History of Russia: 1945-2006, has called Stalin "one of the USSR's most successful leaders," whose repression helped to get the country out of a crisis.
"The modernization of the country needed a responsible power system," the book says.
"This is a scandal," individual scholars and teachers said.
The authors' collective around Filippov is trying to justify the mass terror with hindsight and rehabilitate its perpetrators, they claim.
During a meeting with representatives of the Kremlin, the Education Ministry and authors, historian Andrei Sakharov criticized the book as a "serious methodical mistake."
"History follows the state's motto: everything that secures power must also be good for the people," the director of the Institute for Russian History said.
Stalin, who also determined the history of Germany before, during and after Hitler's period in power, continues to be well regarded by many Russians, according to a survey by polling firm WZIOM, which is close to the government.
Almost half the Communists - second-largest power in the Russian parliament - dream of a "new Stalin."
In the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party of populist Vladimir Zhirinovsky 23 per cent feel the same way, and 14 per cent of the Kremlin's United Russia do so too. Only 40 per cent of those questioned categorically rejected a return of Stalinism.
With the 90th anniversary of the October Revolution coming up on November 7, which will be celebrated by thousands of communists, leading members of the opposition have compared the situation in Russia with that of 1917.
"Our present-day parliament has no rights, just like back then under the tsar," Kremlin critic and former chess world champion Garry Kasparov said.
In addition, there was corruption, bureaucracy, a lack of internal mechanisms for a modernization of the country, and political solitude, Jablonko opposition party leader Grigori Yavlinski said.
Human rights organizations such as Memorial will this year hold a number of commemorative events for the millions of victims of the so- called Great Terror under Stalin 70 years ago.
Putin has also distanced himself from the cruelties. However, critics have accused the former civil service head of not fighting hard enough for a public condemnation of the crimes.
The Russian president has so far not reacted to calls for a state- run commemorative and research centre for the victims of Stalin's terror regime.
