Battle at Stalingrad Memorial

At the end of Stalin's totalitarian reign in 1961, the city of Stalingrad was renamed Volgograd; a hasty initiative that attempted to wipe Russia clean of Stalin's genocidal fingerprints. Twelve years later, a memorial was placed in the city of Volgograd commemorating those who lost their lives in the bloodiest battle that humanity has ever seen in warfare. This memorial no doubt irritated the tender flesh of a Russian generation that was desperately trying to dissociate from the ominous nomenclature of Stalin. Recently it was reported that the war memorial at Stalingrad has been quickly approaching a noticeable state of erosion and ruin. But is this so surprising in a city that represents the very cesspool of poverty that Russia has waded in since WWII? How anxious is the Russia to restore and maintain a memorial that partly symbolizes their nation's undeniable state of despair, generated by none other than Stalin himself? My thoughts were coincidentally echoed in an art blog that called upon the memorial at Stalingrad as a reminder to the world of the horrors of the Communist and Soviet era. The art itself seemed to compel the author to declare that Russia is surely retracing their oppressive historical steps . It may be that this Russian commemoration has a deeper retrospective meaning  to the world than it does to a country that hardly needs reminding of its past.