A Czech anti-communist initiative known as Dekomunizace has put up a huge poster of Russian President Vladimir Putin dressed like Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin as part of its campaign against Czech communists on the first day of local parliamentary elections.
“We want to remind people about the dark past and present of the Czech Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia,” said Ludek Valchar, member of the initiative, while overseeing the installation of the 5-by-12-meter banner near a site previously occupied by a Stalin-era monument during the totalitarian past before 1989.
“We are facing a threat of an autocratic regime run from the Kremlin,” Mr. Valchar said.
Pre-election polls have shown that the Czech communists, known locally under their acronym KSCM, could get a say in the national government for the first times since the 1989 Velvet Revolution.
KSCM is the successor of the totalitarian-era Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, known under its cipher KSC. The current communist party still opposes the Czech Republic’s membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the European Union, and advocates state ownership of assets.
On Friday, the Putin-Stalin mash-up banner fluttered in light wind on a hill, called Letna, overlooking Prague’s historical center. Until the early 1960s, an oversized statue stood there of the Soviet dictator, who was portrayed with his right arm bent, fingers tucked in his shirt and medals pinned on his chest. The medals on the banner of Mr. Putin were replaced by logos of three main left-leaning parties, including KSCM, which are seen as forming a post-election pact.
Officials of KSCM and the other two parties declined to comment since election rules prohibit them from any campaign-related statements during voting days.
The Dekomunizace initiative is seeking to limit the role of KSCM on the Czech political scene and remind the public that the party has never fully distanced from its totalitarian past, the movement says on its website.
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