Stalin Ads Allowed In St. Petersburg, Anti-Stalin Ads Not

ST. PETERSBURG -- A public bus in St. Petersburg drove its route today adorned with an advertisement that includes a portrait of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, RFE/RL's Russian Service reports.

Bus No. 187 will be sporting the ad featuring Stalin on its sides for the next two weeks. Officials said the advertisement was paid for by an activist group that they refused to name.

Posters of Stalin also appeared in some yards in St. Petersburg's Moscow district this week.

But local authorities have refused to allow the display of anti-Stalin posters that say "For a motherland without Stalin."

Yevgeny Vyshenkov, the deputy director of the Journalistic Investigations Agency that helped prepare the anti-Stalin poster, told RFE/RL that the company responsible for placing posters in St. Petersburg said the issue should be discussed by the city's Media Committee.

Committee officials have said that the anti-Stalin poster cannot be placed in public places due to some "discrepancies" in the poster's colors.