In the powerful, perestroika-era film Repentance, the corpse of a Stalin-like local official mysteriously appears again and again, despite efforts by locals to bury him and turn their backs on the consequences of his crimes.

Now the town of Kusa in Chelyabinsk Oblast is experiencing something eerily similar, with the specter of the late Soviet dictator appearing unexpectedly from the past and tearing open old wounds.

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