Anna Galinkina, the local coordinator of the liberal Parnas political movement in the central Russian city of Vladimir and an editor at Tomiks-TV, was appalled recently to see portraits of Stalin-era secret-police officers festooning celebratory billboards at local bus stops.

Her father, Zinovy Galinkin, was sent to the gulag shortly after World War II on flimsy accusations of “anti-Soviet propaganda,” and she resents the rehabilitation of those who persecuted her family under the government of President Vladimir Putin.