Putin Keeps Stalin’s Crimes Hidden in WWII Battle With West
- President defends Stalin-Hitler pact ahead of WWII anniversary
- Putin resisted calls to open archives on Stalin-era victims
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As Russia prepares to mark the 75th anniversary of the victory in World War II, President Vladimir Putin is stepping up his defense of Josef Stalin and digging in against calls to open up secret archives on the Soviet state’s killing of millions of its own citizens.
At Butovo, for instance, more than 20,000 victims lie in a mass grave in a former Czarist-era estate about 20 miles (32km) outside Moscow. Some were gassed to death in the back of trucks that transported them in their underwear to the killing grounds during Stalin’s “Great Terror” of 1937-38.