Wedged in between the tall cranes of a busy port and the flashy city center of western Siberia’s oil capital Surgut, lies a riverside boulevard. The walkway is freshly paved and lined with faux old-fashioned street lanterns, the frivolities of a city flushed with oil money.

Pedestrians come here for a view of the dark-grey Ob River and the expanse of typical Siberian birch forest landscape across the water. If they can look past Josef Stalin, that is.

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