Stalin hated independence, he hated religion, he hated culture, and he hated 'Girl With An Oar', a statue by Ivan Shadr.
Well, it's a 23 foot tall nude so I imagine plenty of people in the West would hate it too, murderous savage dictators or not. A gigantic naked chick in Gorky Park in 1934 was a tough sell.
Young people like retro, and that includes young people in Russia, who really know little about the USSR and what it stood for so they have recently embraced it - that's okay, we have idiots in America sporting the hammer and sickle as well. And young people like sticking it to convention, so it's no surprise they have been fascinated by a giant naked girl Stalin hated and shipped to Siberia.
How do we know what it looked like at all then? There are some remaining photos and Shadr had created a small plaster version. His widow has that cast in bronze in the 1950s and it was stored in Moscow’s Tretyakov,where the Russian Rowing Association found it and has now recreated it - well, only 6-foot-7-inches tall - which they unveiled today.
From Flickr
The Russians may be embracing their USSR kitsch but not its faux austere methods - they turned on the marketing blitz and hired a Playboy photographer to film various well-known Russian women holding an oar as well.
