Russian communists lay flowers at Soviet leader Joseph Stalin's tomb on Red Square next to the Kremlin wall in Moscow, Russia, December 21, 2015. Russian communists are marking the 136th anniversary of Josef Stalin's birthday. (Photo by Sergei Ilnitsky/EPA)

Boys dressed in historical uniforms stand before a military parade in Red Square in Moscow November 7, 2014. The parade marked the anniversary of the 1941 parade when Soviet soldiers marched through the Red Square towards the front lines of World War Two. (Photo by Maxim Shemetov/Reuters)

Pedestrians walk past a truck with a giant Soviet Red Army hat seen on it, an installation created by Russian artist Vasily Slonov, during the annual “Winter Virage” motor sports festival dedicated to the Defender of the Fatherland Day on the embankment of the Yenisei River in Russia's Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk, February 23, 2015. (Photo by Ilya Naymushin/Reuters)

People have fun on an alley through Christmas lights in downtown Chisinau, Moldova, 23 December 2021. Traditionally, people from former countries of the Soviet Union, still celebrate Christmas on two occasions, on 25 December and 07 January. (Photo by Dumitru Doru/EPA/EFE)

Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and his daughter Irina Virganskaya attend the Free Your Mind Award Presentation at the Cinema For Peace charity dinner at the China Club on November 8, 2009 in Berlin, Germany. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images). BERLIN – NOVEMBER 08 2009

In this photo taken Thursday, May 7, 2015 photo, remains of Soviet soldiers killed during World War II lay in a coffin prior to a reburial ceremony at the Sinyavino Heights memorial near the village of Sinyavino, 50 km (31 miles) east of St. Petersburg, Russia. Hundreds of people came to a World War II battleground outside St. Petersburg this week to bury the remains of 964 Soviet soldiers recovered by volunteer search teams. Fifty crimson coffins containing skulls and bones were solemnly buried at the Sinyavino Heights memorial as Russian war songs played and an honor guard fired a salute. (Photo by Dmitry Lovetsky/AP Photo)

Scaffolding holding a remnant of the Soviet Union, the hammer and sickle, is seen on a rooftop of an abandoned building in the town of Pripyat on January 25, 2006 near Chernobyl, Ukraine. The town of Pripyat, deserted since the 1986 catastrophe, once housed 30,000 people, the majority of being workers from the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. Days after the catastrophe the inhabitants were relocated to other locations in the Soviet Union. The town of Pripyat has remained uninhabited since. Prypyat and the surrounding area will not be safe for human habitation for several centuries. Scientists estimate that the most dangerous radioactive elements will take up to 900 years to decay sufficiently to render the area safe.

In this file photo taken on Saturday May 1, 1993, an elderly communist woman clutches her head as police on horseback patrol the streets in Moscow. When Alexander Zemlianichenko started working as an AP photographer in Moscow, the Soviet Union was nearing its demise. (Photo by Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP Photo)