Subscribe | UPI Odd Newsletter Subscribe MOSCOW, April 20 (UPI) -- In a bid to lure tourists to a remote Siberian region, officials have embarked on rebuilding a museum dedicated to Soviet dictator Josef Stalin. The Krasnoyarsk region had a "Pantheon of Stalin" and a life-size bronze statue of Stalin, but the museum was shut down in 1961, eight years after Stalin died. In the late 1980s, the statue was toppled into a river when Mikhail Gorbachev's policy of glasnost, or openness, began to take effect, The Independent's Moscow correspondent reported. Advertisement Yevgeny Pashenko, an aide to the regional governor, said the project should be completed in time for next year's tourist season, and said there should be no fear of a resurgence in Stalin-style politics. "It is a purely commercial project to attract tourists and there are no politics behind it," he said.
