A one-person protest accompanied the unveiling of busts of seven Soviet leaders in Moscow, including dictator Josef Stalin, the opposition-leaning Dozhd television channel reported on Friday.
Stalin’s bust appeared alongside that of Vladimir Lenin and five of the Soviet Union’s successive leaders at the so-called Alley of Rulers earlier in the day.
Dozhd’s broadcast from the opening ceremony depicted a woman standing between Stalin and Nikita Khrushchev’s statue holding a sign.
Written on it, according to Dozhd, was poet Anna Akhmatova’s two-stanza “To the Defenders of Stalin.” The poem describes its subjects as “sweet lovers of torture” and “experts in the manufacture of orphans.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Friday he was unaware of the new additions to the Alley of Rulers.