Members of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) suggested installing a monument to Stalin in Victory Park in Oryol, while the Public Support Headquarters for Oryol Oblast proposed placing a monument to Solzhenitsyn in the same location. The CPRF announced its plans on October 5, while the Headquarters did so on October 22.
The Public Support Headquarters for Oryol Oblast, operating under the supervision of the United Russia party, revealed its plans to install a monument to Alexander Solzhenitsyn in Victory Park. In early October, the CPRF held public consultations about the installation of a bust of Stalin in the same location, and most participants supported the idea.
The Public Support Headquarters stated that they had already gathered signatures for the monument to Solzhenitsyn and had submitted an appeal to regional and city authorities.
Mikhail Vdovin, Deputy Speaker of the Oryol Oblast Council, told journalists that "politicizing the issue would harm Victory Park." He did not support honoring Solzhenitsyn, explaining that "many in the country view him as a slanderer of the Soviet Union." No decision on the installation has been made yet.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn was a Gulag prisoner from 1945 to 1953. He opposed communist ideology and was one of the first authors to document the lives of those repressed in Stalin’s camps. In 1970, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature "for the moral force with which he upheld the enduring traditions of Russian literature." In 1974, Solzhenitsyn was exiled abroad, living first in Zurich and later moving to the United States. He returned home in 1994 after the collapse of the USSR.
