A woman instructs a boy on how to pose for pictures in front of a mural depicting Soviet pilot Valery Chkalov – who took a non-stop flight over the Arctic and landed in the US state of Washington in 1937 – at Chkalovskaya metro station in Moscow on August 14, 2019. (Photo by Yuri Kadobnov/AFP Photo)

Communist supporters hold portraits of Soviet leader Josef Stalin as they queue to lay flowers at the grave of Stalin to mark the 139th anniversary of his birth, in Moscow's Red Square, Russia, Friday, December 21, 2018. (Photo by Pavel Golovkin/AP Photo)

A female member of Romania's military adjusts her hat before taking part in the national day military parade in Bucharest, Romania, Friday, December 1, 2017. Thousands of Romanian troops staged a military parade to celebrate Romania's national day, but key politicians didn't attend, signaling tensions between the president and the ruling left-wing coalition over plans to revamp the justice system. (Photo by Vadim Ghirda/AP Photo)

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)

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)

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)

A municipal worker sits on a bench, next to a statue, in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, during the 2018 soccer World Cup, Thursday, June 28, 2018. Nizhny Novgorod was a “closed city” during the Soviet era. It was known as Gorky until 1990 and it was here that dissident scientist Andrei Sakharov was held under house arrest. Now the city hosts six World Cup matches and is teeming with tourists. That was unthinkable in the Soviet era and even rare now in a city that is seldom visited by outsiders. (Photo by Vadim Ghirda/AP Photo)

Workers pull apart a house in Khandyga, Russia, on February 2, 2018. The shifting ground caused by the uneven thawing of permafrost each summer causes buildings like this Soviet-era apartment house to sag and collapse. (Photo by Amos Chapple/Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty)