Olga Vasilyeva
The Minister of education of Russia Olga Vasilieva in an interview to “Interfax” called the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin politician “with a great big minus sign”.
“How can I treat Stalin the man, the tyranny which is self-evident? Man, the conscience (and the conscience) of the victims of political repression? But we must agree that this man is a statesman,” she said.
The Minister said that the doctoral thesis was devoted to the history of the Russian Orthodox Church and Patriotic movement in the years of the great Patriotic war. “In 1943-1953 years of this tyrant and pragmatic use of the potential of the Russian Orthodox Church for organization of the postwar world order. The uniqueness of this decade is that the interests of the ruler and the Church coincided”, — said Vasilyev.
In August the Federation of Jewish communities of Russia demanded Vasilyeva clarify its attitude to the figure of Stalin, to “not leave room for ambiguity”.
After the appointment of the defense Minister, in August 2016, the media recalled a number of remarks about Stalin. In particular, in 2013, she said that the Soviet leader, for all his faults — public good, because before the war he was engaged in the unity of the nation, revived the heroes of pre-revolutionary Russia and promoted in Russian language and literature.