“Five Unknown Facts about…”: How Stalin Is Represented on Russian-Language TikTok

Stalin’s era in the history of the USSR remains one of the region’s darkest periods. Long and broad persecution campaigns, the strengthening of imperialist sentiments and aspirations, and terror against various domestic and neighboring populations characterized it. However, in Russian public opinion, Stalin’s name is still associated with the country’s most glorious achievement in recent history: World War II victory. Furthermore, he is frequently regarded as a strong leader under whose rule the country thrived. Several studies have addressed this paradox, focusing on Russian top-down memory politics and the pervasive victory myth (Hoffmann 2022; Khapaeva 2016; Malinova 2015; Nelson 2019). This article contributes to a growing body of research on bottom-up attitudes toward Stalin (Arhipova 2017; Durdiyeva 2021; Khlevniuk 2018; Molotov, Maksimova, and Khlevniuk 2021). While we are aware of the impact of state politics on public opinion, we are interested in how the Russophone population interprets Stalin and the narratives and images they created. Undoubtedly, social media is the most productive environment for this work.

It is widely acknowledged that social media platforms enable unprecedented levels of independence and creativity. Anyone with a device and an Internet connection can narrate their stories, show off their art, and talk about their lives—in other words, create content in any way they want, limited only by the platform’s rules. TikTok, a social media platform that originated in China and is now extremely popular worldwide, amplified the content freedom effect. TikTok is a social media platform dedicated to short videos (no longer than three minutes) known as tiktoks. Previous social media platforms had a built-in principle of capital distribution. “Rich get richer” online meant that those accounts with a large following would typically receive many viewers and, as a result, an even larger following. Offline capitals, such as money, fame, and connections, could be exchanged for views and followers.

As a result, if a user wanted to reach an audience rather than shout their thoughts into the void, they had to limit their creative freedom by tailoring messages to broader audiences and gaining more views. TikTok’s algorithm is fundamentally different, meaning the logic behind selecting content users see while scrolling through their feed is different. The default feed a user receives is composed of various posts chosen by the algorithm based on their previous behavior in the application. The number of views on a particular post is not the most critical or sole criterion for its selection. In other words, a video with few views posted by a user with a small following may appear in a user’s feed. Any user with content genuinely interesting to the platform’s users can potentially receive many views. The innovation poses new questions for memory scholars, including whether or not users change their repertoire of memory work, given the new advantages and opportunities the platform opens up.

Previous research on Russophone pro-Stalin social media groups revealed they preferred to create a niche agenda, addressing specific audiences (Khlevniuk 2018). Some groups, for example, focused on commemorating the Great Patriotic War, whereas others concentrated on current issues. This “narrowcasting” strategy thus focused on specific aspects of Stalin’s legacy and attracting particular groups. The preceding study ignored the role of algorithms in online memory production because it did not consider the technological infrastructure of the social media platform under investigation. In contrast to VKontakte (VK), a Russian-based social media platform similar to Facebook that Khlevniuk reviewed, TikTok provides a lucrative opportunity to “broadcast” one’s message: to reach not just specific groups and audiences but also a broad population that might not otherwise have an interest or motivation to seek content about Stalin.

This article is based on examining tiktoks with the hashtag “Stalin” (in Russian). We concentrate on the 259 most popular pro-Stalin tiktoks discovered using the #stalin hashtag in August 2021. Using content analysis, we identified five major themes users discuss in their pro-Stalin tiktoks. Four are consistent with previous research, while the fifth appears more prevalent on TikTok than on other social media platforms. The first is dedicated to Stalin as the leader of the victory in the Great Patriotic War. It is consistent with current Russian state memory politics. The second theme is devoted to critiquing the contemporary culture of commemorating victims of Stalinist repression or, more broadly, of the cosmopolitan memory culture (Levy and Sznaider 2006). The third is devoted to a critique of the present, both “in general” (capitalism, feminists, and the LGBTQ+ movement) and “in particular” (contemporary Russia and Vladimir Putin personally). The fourth related topic focuses on the Stalin regime’s economic and political achievements. Finally, the fifth group differs from the four groups identified during the VK group study. It is devoted to the admiration of Stalin’s personality, focusing on his appearance and aesthetics.

Our study adds to existing research on pro-Stalin attitudes in post-Soviet states, particularly Russia. Comparing our findings to previous research, we hypothesize that the celebrity framework used in TikTok being applied to Stalin may be more prominent on this social media platform than others due to its unique demographics and technological infrastructure. The celebrity framework also demonstrates how Stalin can be viewed as more of an image and a fictional character than a former political leader representing specific agendas and interpretations of the past.

For years, scholars studying Russian memory politics have warned that failing to condemn Stalin’s crimes would lead to moral and political corruption in society (Ferretti 2003; Khapaeva 2016; Merridale 2009). Although the causal relationship between the two is difficult to establish, there is some evidence of a correlation. The Russian invasion of Ukraine reveals many flaws and systematic societal issues that have alarmed academics and Russian “liberal” journalists for years by consistently indicating a positive outlook on Stalin and Stalinism (Dushakova 2020). In 2021, the Levada Center, a reputable independent pollster, presented the findings of its annual research on Russians’ attitudes toward Stalin, which revealed a rise in positive attitudes such as “respect” (from 27% in 2001 to 45% in 2021). The most significant change, however, is the number of people who said they did not care about Stalin at all: “indifferent” grew from 12% to 28%. These changes did not occur overnight or over a year; many were gradual. Some scholars believe that Stalinism is reemerging in Russia (Adler 2012; Khapaeva 2009; Sherlock 2007). Other scholars, however, are skeptical and continue to argue that these results are an outcome of the Levada Center’s methodology (Iudin 2019) or its theoretical foundations (Blackburn and Khlevniuk 2024). That is not to say that Russians do not support or admire Stalin: sporadic attempts to erect a monument to Stalin indicate at least some level of admiration (Durdiyeva 2021). However, it would be an exaggeration to say that Stalinism, at that time, resurfaced in Russian politics and public life. To quote Maria Lipman’s text in the report for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace: “Stalin is a hidden hero, and this status is part of the inherently vague nature of Russia’s post-Communist statehood and national identity. The public perception of Stalin is ambiguous, and the official discourse is ambivalent and evasive” (De Waal et al. 2013, 16).

The issue of re-Stalinization has been discussed frequently in the context of Russia but rarely, if ever, in the context of other post-Soviet states. Stalin’s role in these states is primarily seen as part of a larger Soviet legacy. Before the 2014 war in Eastern Ukraine, Ukraine was divided on the issue of Soviet legacy and commemoration of the war (and, consequently, Stalin). Decommunization processes that slowed in the 2000s are picking up speed, including discussions of genocides and Stalinist nationalist policies (Fedor, Lewis, and Zhurzhenko 2017). There was a similar societal polarization in Belarus over the Soviet past; however, in recent years, after the Maidan protests in Ukraine, the relationship between Soviet and ethnonational identities in symbolic politics has become nuanced (Bekus 2023). Similarly, Moldova demonstrated a schism between a forward-thinking Western-oriented “half” and a pro-Russian and pro-Soviet rest (Cusco 2012). The situation in many post-Soviet states may change as the war progresses; this is especially true in states where memory politics or general mood was, at least partially, aligned with Soviet or Russian ideologies, such as Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan (Abashin 2018). Both have a sizable Russian population; these countries are creating critical but non-antagonistic memories of the Soviet Union. Some post-Soviet states have already declared their independence from the Soviet legacy. Uzbekistan’s memory politics have primarily been anti-Soviet, focusing on the repressive nature of Soviet rule (Abashin 2018). The Baltic states regard Stalinism as Nazism (Mälksoo 2009).

Georgia presents a unique case of a post-Soviet state where the pro-Stalin attitudes are both pronounced and well-studied. Approximately half the population thinks highly of Stalin (Gugushvili and Kabachnik 2015). However, this assessment is based on a success story of a local person becoming a world-renowned political leader rather than a perceived positive influence on Georgia (Gugushvili, Kabachnik, and Kirvalidze 2017). Local communities see Stalin as the great son of small nations (Kekelia and Reisner 2021). As Lasha Bakradze (De Waal et al. 2013, 49) puts it, “Georgians and Russians express approval of Stalin for different reasons. Whereas in Russia, Stalin is a symbol of order and autocracy, in Georgia, he is regarded more as a rebel, who came from a colonized nation, fought against the existing order, and broke the rules by rising to the top of a system led by Russians.” Rural communities are more likely than urban to find positive sides to Stalin (Gotfredsen 2014).

As the polls mentioned earlier show, strictly negative assessments of Stalin were uncommon in Russia. The discussion of Soviet state terror is frequently linked to a negative interpretation of Stalinism. Russians’ interest in this “difficult memory” was limited (in contrast to Baltic states, Ukraine, and former Asian Soviet republics). This memory was primarily promoted by civic mnemonic actors such as local museum curators and activists (Bogumił 2018; Flige 2019; Gavrilova 2023; Giesen 2015), so its modest reach was understandable.

The Memorial Society was (and remains, even if in exile), of course, the most well-known of these actors. The Russian Supreme Court dissolved it in 2022 after years of persecution. Its activists had to find new ways to work inside and outside Russia; their online and international activities continue. With the Memorial’s gradual decline, the Moscow Gulag Museum has become prominent. Though some scholars have criticized the museum’s portrayal of the repressions’ history (Zavadski and Dubina 2023), it is undeniably one of the key mnemonic actors in spreading Stalin’s negative image. The museum can be viewed as one of the state’s efforts to criticize Stalin, yet this effort’s scale should not be overestimated. The few projects funded by the state, such as the construction of a memorial to the victims of the repressions in Moscow (also coordinated by the Moscow Gulag Museum), are devoted to the victims’ memory. Nonetheless, Stalin was never named as the perpetrator. Only Dmitrii Medvedev, during his brief presidency, openly condemned Stalin. It should be noted that even these modest attempts at commemorating victims of Stalinist terror elicit adverse online reactions from some Stalinists. They opposed the establishment of a culture of victim remembrance because they believe repression is either necessary or simply effective (Khlevniuk 2018).

That is not to say that the Russian government actively promoted a positive image of Stalin. Russian official memory politics has been primarily concerned with the Great Patriotic War remembrance. It has become a foundational myth for Russians (Gudkov 2005; Malinova 2015), with widespread public support (FOM 2014, 2020). With the outbreak of the war in Eastern Ukraine in 2014, the prominence of this narrative grew even stronger (McGlynn 2020). It continued in 2022 with the framing of Ukrainians as neo-Nazis. From the start of the invasion, Russian propaganda spoke of “another” liberation of Europe from Nazism, and the Soviet “Victory Banner” was displayed on military hardware and government buildings throughout occupied Ukraine (Noordenbos 2022). While official memory politics did not promote a positive view of Stalin, the Great Patriotic War memory is inextricably linked to his name (Klimenko 2021). According to research, Russians believe that not only did Stalin lead the country and the army to victory, but he also prepared for it long before the war by implementing rapid, albeit harsh, collectivization and industrialization (Sullivan 2013). Currently, with the ongoing war in Ukraine and the growing repressiveness of Putin’s regime, Stalin’s role in media and education may change. As of now, we do not see definite indications of re-Stalinization, but the situation is unstable and prone to radical and instant changes.

Collective memory is a process: carrier groups, memory agents, or actors create narratives about the past in particular political contexts, using various media to advance their agendas (Olick 2007). This article focuses on the relationship between memory and media. Paul Hutton (1993) famously traced how memory forms changed with the progress in media technologies, such as the invention of the printing press. Like any other form of media, social media alters memory narratives’ forms, structures, and contents. On the surface, the Internet, in general, and social media, in particular, expanded the pool of mnemonic actors. Millions of Internet users can now broadcast their memory narratives to audiences far more prominent than their family or acquaintances. The sky is the limit. Some scholars saw this opportunity as evidence of the democratization of collective memory. According to Joanne Garde-Hansen (2011), new media allows almost anyone to create personal archives. Some believed that the Internet could be used to share and exchange cultural memories (Hilderbrand 2007) or even to challenge hegemonies and create counter-narratives and counter-memories to the versions of the past promoted by states, mass media, and popular culture (Garde-Hansen 2011; Hoskins 2017).

Though these aspirations were partially met, researchers overlooked new challenges and factors, such as technological infrastructures (Uffelmann 2014). The entire premise of broadcasting the memory narratives seemed exaggerated. The Internet, particularly social media, does not provide equal opportunities for all users. It merely established a new type of capital, so to speak, the attention capital (Lanham 2006). Those who lack such capital (a large online following) or cannot exchange a different capital for a large following do not broadcast anything. Ordinary users’ posts are frequently visible to a small number of their subscribers and a few other users. Users can share their thoughts on the post in comments, but how visible are these comments?

Part of the problem is that for most social media platforms, the visibility of the users’ content is technologically set up disproportionately. Content visibility is determined by social media recommendation algorithms that filter it for users: “Enabled by computer-driven epistemic procedures—algorithms—digital devices simplify our daily routines by helping us deal with information overload,” writes Mykola Makhortykh (2021b, 180). Most social media algorithms (for example, on Instagram or YouTube) base the visibility of a social media post on the number of subscribers its author has. Those who do not have a large number of followers on social media cannot create a post that a large number of people will see. TikTok, a new social media platform, is unique in this regard. Its recommendation algorithms barely consider the attention capital factor. This social media platform offers users a different setup, relying not on communities (as they are not included in the design) or subscriptions that are not encouraged as strongly by the design of TikTok as in other social media platforms but on the recommendation feed in which the algorithm itself selects content for users. The algorithm allows ordinary users to appear on the “recommendations” page regularly, gaining hundreds of thousands of likes on par with famous bloggers, which is impossible on any other platform. TikTok creates fundamentally different conditions for disseminating historical narratives compared to other platforms.

TikTok’s purpose is to upload short videos (from 15 seconds to 3 minutes) with audio track overlays, video effects, and other creative and interactive features. These brief videos are known as tiktoks. TikTok can be accessed via a web browser, but it was designed for use through the TikTok mobile application. All the effects mentioned earlier can be created using the built-in video editor. A tiktok is more than just a video; it includes a description with hashtags, the number of reposts and likes, and the author’s name. With 800 million active users per month, TikTok is the world’s fastest-growing app and the seventh most popular platform of the 2010s. In Russia, before its ban, TikTok “increased the number of visitors seven times since 2019 (from 2% to 14%), while surpassing Facebook (9% in 2021).”¹

The TikTok algorithm, according to its official position, is designed to tailor the recommendation toward a user’s interests. As mentioned above, “neither follower count nor whether the account has had previous high-performing videos are direct factors in the recommendation system.”² Users can select the categories they are interested in; however, the algorithm determines their interests based on their behavior. As a result, the algorithm collects data on users’ “likes,” comments, videos they watch to the end or scroll through, and so on. The concept of diversity in the recommendation feed is critical. The TikTok administration attempts to keep users out of a “closed bubble” of limited content. As a result, TikTok algorithms may include completely different, random, and less popular tiktoks, tiktoks of unknown users, or videos that are not typical of a TikTok user’s interests.

Diana Zulli and David Zulli (2022, 3) note that the design of the TikTok platform tends to “request, require, encourage, discourage, deny, and allow certain courses of action and social dynamics through the inclusion or exclusion of certain digital features.” The technical infrastructure (Uffelmann 2014) of TikTok imposes or limits certain practices for users. For example, TikTok encourages “discursive brevity” by setting a 140-character limit on video comments. A user’s attention is focused exclusively on the recommendation feed. In addition, Zulli and Zulli show that the relationship between algorithms, a recommendation feed, and a video editor encourages a user to create content similar to the one already watched, using, for example, the same effects, music, or movements. In other words, “imitation and replication are digitally and socially encouraged by the TikTok platform, positioning mimesis as the basis of sociality on the site” (Zulli and Zulli 2022, 2). Thus, TikTok elevated the Internet meme to the level of an entire platform, pushing users to create and play viral content to get into the recommendation system.

A common misconception is that TikTok is a frivolous form of social media. Yet, it has become an arena for various political topics. Users actively raise global (such as global warming) (Hautea et al. 2021) and local issues (Vijay and Gekker 2021). Furthermore, exploiting memetic means allows tiktok creators to post viral content that may inform broad audiences, creating a so-called “playful political participation” (Vijay and Gekker 2021). Though the TikTok administration attempts to limit the platform’s proneness to “hate speech” groups’ usage of the platform, the latter still find a way to promote their content. Moreover, they utilize the same means, such as popular hashtags and music, as other users to popularize their content (Weimann and Masri 2023). In terms of memory dissemination, TikTok shares some features with other social media platforms but also has been found particularly mimetic and prone to humor (Seet and Tandoc Jr. 2023) and has the ability to transmit complex memories about past atrocities (Pardo Abril 2023). Given the platform’s affordances and popularity, it is not surprising that users with pro-Stalin views utilize it to promote their ideas.

This research is based on analyzing tiktoks with the hashtag “#stalin.” We used an open-source TikTok scraper (https://github.com/drawrowfly/tiktok-scraper) to download the 600 most popular tiktoks with the hashtag (tiktoks were downloaded on August 15, 2021). From these 600 most popular tiktoks, we chose all the tiktoks that expressed approval of Stalin and his activities with a direct reference to him in the video or the caption. In questionable situations, we went to the user’s account who posted this video and studied their other content. A “controversial” tiktok was included in the sample if the content contained approval of Stalin’s activities. As a result, we formed a list of 259 tiktoks that directly mentioned Stalin and expressed approval of him. The 341 tiktoks we excluded were dedicated to Stalin’s son, constructed a positive image of the USSR without explicitly mentioning Stalin or Lenin, or were about World War II and did not mention Stalin.

The 259 selected tiktoks represent just the “tip of the iceberg” as the total number of tiktoks with this hashtag is over several tens of thousands. In addition, one of the article’s authors created a separate account to continuously view the less popular pro-Stalin tiktoks through the recommendation thread. Using this account for a month (August through early September 2021) allowed them to hypothesize that the narratives of less popular tiktoks are no different from those selected.

The primary problem media researchers face is the almost complete anonymity of Internet users. We know nothing about those who hide behind fake account names on TikTok and most other social media. Even users with real accounts share limited and often curated information about themselves. Therefore, the demographics or motivations of these users are unknown.³ The only thing that is known is that they are Russophone. Their nationality or place of residence is also impossible to examine. However, given the prominence of pro-Stalin narratives in Russia and Russian state politics of memory, we assume these tiktoks are affected mainly by the Russian context. Whether users reside in Russia or hold Russian passports is not critically important here. While we treat tiktoks as the means of bottom-up memory production, some users enjoy more state support than others (Zakhar Prilepin, a notorious nationalist writer and a supporter of the Russian invasion in Ukraine, is a case in point).⁴ Yet, none of the accounts clearly state their government affiliation. However, we, unfortunately, cannot prove or disprove that none of the accounts in our sample are bots or trolls.

Existing literature on Russian and post-Soviet attitudes toward Stalin outlines several contexts in which Stalin is commemorated. First, favorable attitudes toward him may reflect post-Soviet nostalgia (Boym 1995). Second, Stalin is closely associated with the victory in the Great Patriotic War. Third, Stalin stands in for the USSR in general and thus is often used to criticize the current capitalist and oligarchical political regime (Khlevniuk 2018). According to Alexandra Arkhipova (2017), people construct positive images of the Stalinist USSR as a period of broad social policies and a lack of corruption. Finally, Stalin can be seen through his alleged positive personal traits such as modesty or great leadership skills (Kabachnik, Kirvalidze, and Gugushvili 2016).

We used both deductive and inductive coding. The deductive coding was based on the aforementioned existing theoretical concepts. The inductive coding resulted from the coding process. The final list of codes included “criticism of current regime/capitalism,” “war,” “criticism of cosmopolitan memory” (that included criticism of Stalin critics), “an awe of Stalin’s image and personality,” “an awe of Stalin’s politics and economy,” “the Russians,” and so on. The coding was done in several steps. First, the first author coded the dataset using the theoretically grounded codes, then turned to inductive coding. Then, the second author went through the coded dataset noting disagreements and suggestion, also creating some additional codes. Finally, the two authors went through the resulting coded dataset and agreed on the final coding. Tiktoks present a complex case of qualitative coding as there are layers of information, including non-textual, such as imagery, video effects, and music. Tiktoks often present metatexts, alluding to other tiktoks, Internet memes, media products, or something else. Nevertheless, we attempted be attentive to those layers, including a tiktok description, hashtag, in-video texts, images, and music (including lyrics). The authors aimed to look at tiktoks as platform users and make sense of the contexts in which Stalin was mentioned (such as the aforementioned “war” or various criticisms).

In the end, we worked with 12 main themes. However, this article focuses on the most relevant themes (excluding, for instance, the theme of “movies about Stalin”). We did not try to fit tiktoks into one particular type but see tiktoks as being able to incorporate several themes simultaneously. However, as we uncovered, certain themes do not go together. We were primarily interested in how pro-Stalin users deal with his memory. Additionally, we analyzed common and popular hashtags (beyond “#stalin”), songs, and other memetic elements of the tiktoks. Finally, we tried to identify a correlation between the popularity of various narratives about the past, memetic content, and the popularity of a certain tiktok (the ratio of the number of views, likes, comments, and hashtags).

The majority of tiktoks were posted by different accounts (160 accounts). Those accounts with more than one video (27 accounts) publish pro-Stalin or pro-USSR content. Most of them have telling usernames such as “18iosiv_stalin78,” “socway,” and “koba.stalin.” References to socialism, the USSR, and Stalin were found in the usernames of 42 accounts from the sample. The account of the Riazan′ regional branch of the Russian Communist Party holds the record for the number of tiktoks in the sample: 17. It is important to note that only this account conducts direct political campaigning. Other accounts do not directly call for voting for a particular party, but some call for a vote against specific political forces. The median numbers for tiktoks in the sample are 212,200 views, 702 shares, 18,900 likes, and 586 comments. These numbers do not tell us a lot. The average engagement rate (the sum of shares, likes, and comments divided by the number of views) is 11%. To place this number in context: the average engagement rate of the so-called influencers (TikTok celebrities or most viewed accounts) in Russia in 2020 was 15.65%.⁵ Given that we deal with the most popular tiktoks referencing Stalin, the fact that the engagement rate is relatively high is not necessarily surprising or does not lead to a conclusion that Stalinism is popular on TikTok. It does, however, give us grounds to assume that content about Stalin is not a completely niche segment within the platform.

On average, tiktoks in our sample have seven hashtags. Users utilize the common TikTok hashtags “#rec,” “#recommendations,” and other derivatives of the word in 147 tiktoks in our sample. These hashtags simply refer to the “For You” recommendation page that, as was mentioned, is the primary mechanism of watching tiktoks. Apart from these, the most popular hashtags are “#USSR” (187), #History (76), and derivatives from the Great Patriotic War and World War II (113). By adding such hashtags, pro-Stalin accounts distribute their content to fans of historical content (not necessarily related to the USSR) and random groups of users using general hashtags like “#rec.”

The main topics that we have marked after coding was the criticism of the current regime and capitalism (41% of the sample), respect for Stalin as a person (29%), respect for Stalin’s economy and politics (26%), the Great Patriotic War (or World War II) (25%), and criticism of Stalin’s critics (13%). The correlation analysis shows that respect for Stalin’s economy sometimes goes with the criticism of current affairs (0.37). Other correlations are too low to be of any significance. None of the topics inspire more interest than others: the average engagement rates of all the subjects are the same as the average engagement rate for the sample. In other words, there is no “winning” Stalin portrayal. On the contrary, all of them appear to be equally engaging.

The most prominent narrative is the criticism of the present issues with references to Stalin. The analysis of VKontakte groups about Stalin (Khlevniuk 2018) and online reception of a YouTube video about repressions (Khlevniuk and Maksimova 2021) show that people often refer to positive images of the USSR to talk about current social and economic problems. Stalin stands in for a myth of a fair past and, sometimes, facilitates a very particular point of criticism of capitalism.

There are very few tiktoks that are dedicated to capitalism in general. Even if a video features Stalin’s footage and a long quote about capitalism, the hashtags unambiguously refer to the specific issues its authors want to highlight. In one tiktok, the list of hashtags includes #capital #socialism #father #peoples #victory #war #moscow #quote #kremlin. We can assume that the authors of these tiktoks refer to current Russia as a capitalist state and thus call for changes. None of the tiktoks provide a nuanced picture; primarily, they refer to the lack of freedom under a capitalist regime.⁶ The message is usually straightforward. A good example is a tiktok with the hashtag “#notocapitalism” and a text across a Soviet banner: “Join the ranks of Stalin’s guard!!” against the song “The Sacred War,” one of the most well-known and upbeat Soviet war songs.⁷ As the research of Runet shows, the pro-Soviet segment is portraying itself as the left, yet, it has little to do with the European progressive left. Instead, it is a conservative group that does not care for the values of tolerance and minority rights (Nikiporec et al. 2016). Moreover, Stalin is used, albeit rarely, to criticize the “new left” agenda. Six tiktoks explicitly criticized the LGBTQ+ movement⁸: using the “duet” function, a user recorded a response to a tiktok with same-sex people kissing and/or flags of the LGBTQ+ movement. The reactions include an image of Stalin and the text: “There was no such shit in my time.”⁹ This slogan sums up the message of most tiktoks critical of present issues (Figure 1).

Directly or indirectly, users contend that day-to-day life, the economy, and politics under Stalin were better than they are now. Some of these tiktoks can be interpreted only against specific laws and policies. For instance, eight tiktoks claim that the retirement age was 55 and 60 for females and males under Stalin, respectively.¹⁰ This topic emerged as a response to the rise of the retirement age in Russia in 2018. As mentioned above, Stalin is used here to discuss social rights (Arkhipova 2017; Khlevniuk and Maksimova 2021). As a reference point, his rule allegedly provided such rights, while the current regime does not. Consequently, some users maintain that Stalin was “the only one who cared for the Russians [russkie].”¹¹ By “care,” these users often quote Stalin’s achievements (these posts include respect for Stalin’s politics and economy), such as providing a high standard of living, giving access to education to the majority of the population of the USSR,¹² and building many factories and cities.¹³ Most often, tiktoks that talk about the achievements of Stalin’s regime simply list everything they deem successful against newsreels, documental videos, or images of Stalin. Users sometimes refer to “the experts,” politicians, or Internet personalities and include fragments of their speeches.

In contrast, today, the tiktoks claim, the population is impoverished. A popular tiktok with 55,000 likes shows an elderly man talking about his motivation to come to a rally: “’Cause I’m a f***ing beggar! No pension, nothing, no apartment.…I do not support any government. Except for Stalin! Only under his rule could we live. He would have rounded up all these whores and driven them to prison.”¹⁴ The user who posted this video added a description: “The granddad SHOOTS STRAIGHT about the corrupt government and STALIN.”

The impoverishment of the population is compared to the riches of the elites. Corruption is shown as the leading Russian problem that has always existed, yet, Stalin knew how to deal with it. Moreover, a myth that Stalin was ascetic is reproduced: “Thank you, Comrade Stalin, for our happy childhood!…All the people knew he did not take anything from the national wealth! He did not arrange a feast during the plague in a terrible time for the country!…Thanks to our father for this!”¹⁵—says a tiktok with 57,000 likes. In total, 23 videos raising the problems of corruption are in the sample. Some users refer to “a firm hand” that would bring “order” in modern Russia. One tiktok is dedicated to the Soviet golden boys, sons of the elite, who, according to the author, fought in war instead of doing whatever the golden boys usually do.¹⁶ In other words, the Soviet elites, including Stalin, did not ask for special treatment for their kids. Such tiktoks interpret repressions as a means to fight corruption: “Stalin ordered to allocate two cemeteries to fight corruption, not 89 million rubles”¹⁷ (87,000 likes).

Stalin is portrayed as the solution to every problem. Consequently, the sole political account in our sample that actively propagates its agenda, the Riazan′ regional branch of the Communist Party, uploaded 15 videos criticizing Russia’s current standard of living and the ineffectiveness of local deputies and used the hashtag “#stalin.”

A significant contradiction mainly characterizes Stalin’s figure: Is he a war hero or a vile dictator repressing his state’s population? Pro-Stalin tiktokers focus primarily on the first portrayal of Stalin. Yet, they cannot ignore the second one. The GPW is one of the major themes for the Russian memory, yet, curiously, only a quarter of tiktoks about Stalin mention the war or allude to it. Here, Stalin is portrayed as the winner of WWII. As mentioned above, some tiktoks focus on the personal sacrifice Stalin had to endure during the war. Sometimes, the tiktoks are reels with war documentaries¹⁸ or a documentary of Stalin’s victory speech.¹⁹

Some documentary reels are devoted to the Yalta Conference or Roosevelt and Churchill. For instance, in some tiktoks, photos of Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt follow each other, accompanied by music.²⁰ Sometimes their photographs are mixed with images from their funerals.²¹ Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill are shown as heroes: their funerals symbolized the end of the age of heroes. In some cases, users produce these reels in response to the viral trend on TikTok: posting a tiktok with the song “SugarCrash!” by ElyOtto, and its slowed version. In this trend, users use soundtracks with two versions of the song in constant succession: the original, when something fun or good happens in the video, and the slowed version, when it is about something sad. Pro-Stalin accounts join the TikTok trends by playing the original soundtrack on footage of the leaders and the slowed-down performance at their funerals. Nothing in these tiktoks indicates Stalin’s pivotal role in the victory over the Nazis: the order in which the photos of the leaders are shown is different in each tiktok. Although the prevailing role is not emphasized, Stalin is shown as an equal ally.

War is often mentioned more as a slogan or a symbol than a historical event. For instance, in one tiktok, there is an audio of someone’s story about their grandfather who would go into battle crying, “For Motherland! For Stalin!”²² This is a common myth that became a triviality of sorts. The tiktoker “18iosiv_stalin78” posted video footage of a computer shooter with this slogan and the Soviet anthem as the background audio.²³ Stalin’s central role is not elaborated, and no proof is given, in contrast to the discussion of his politics, the economy, the rule of law, and great day-to-day life under his rule. Given the prominence of the Great Patriotic War memory in Russia, it is unsurprising that references to it are often used uncritically and superficially in various loosely related contexts: a video from a computer shooter being a case in point.

Moreover, even the rare tiktoks that mention Stalin’s ambiguity (3% of the sample) argue that, in any case, Stalin was the best option that the county had. For instance, Zakhar Prilepin²⁴ posted a tiktok of his speech about Stalin. He notes that, indeed, Stalin was not an ideal leader, yet, the war was won only thanks to Stalin. In the tiktok, he refers to several liberal journalists and politicians, including Yuri Dud²⁵ and Ksenia Sobchak.²⁶ He states that even those who criticize Stalin would not want these people to be in the Kremlin at the beginning of the war.²⁷ The narrative in the tiktok follows the general idea that repressions were necessary for the greater good. Such interpretation follows a general tendency to see repressions through the administrative, statist lenses that overlook victims’ experiences and treat them as martyrs for the state (Klimenko 2021; Figure 2).

While none of the pro-Stalin tiktokers deny the fact of repressions, they are dissatisfied with the culture of victims’ commemoration. Admittedly, they often overestimate the strength of this culture. In our sample, 13% of tiktoks were dedicated to criticizing Stalin’s critics. The main idea that such tiktoks propagate is that Stalin was much more than the organizer of repressions. One tiktok sums the concept up: “He gave us a great country, and you only remember [his words] ‘Shoot!’”²⁸ Some tiktoks are simple short messages; others are longer and contain a more elaborate argument. Users sometimes simply repost pro-Stalin well-known personalities such as Prilepin or Puchkov.²⁹ Other users create their content and share their ideas and “facts” about the role Stalin’s repressions played in the overall Soviet system. The claim that the number of victims is inflated and that the morale of the time cannot be judged from today³⁰ or that the repressions were necessary to prepare for the war with Hitler (coming back to the idea of the ultimate value of the victory in GPW).³¹

Stalin is portrayed as a political leader and a celebrity in these tiktoks. As previously stated, discussions of his leadership are sometimes linked to criticism of contemporary Russia: 72% of tiktoks about Stalin’s achievements as a political leader are also devoted to criticism of the Russian regime. Stalin is portrayed in these tiktoks through his actions and policies. One of the tiktok’s descriptions says: “Let’s judge people by their deeds and not by their promises.” Any disadvantages of his regime are not refuted but instead explained. As repressions are re-vamped into an efficient anti-corruption policy, gulag camps, and settlements are hinted to be a side effect of rapid industrialization. One tiktok, for example, includes a video of Dmitrii Puchkov (also known as Goblin), a popular Internet personality who hosts a history-themed YouTube show, explaining that the USSR had to go through the process that took European countries several decades in just ten years, or the country would have ceased to exist. He claims people would not want to work that hard, but it was necessary for the greater good.³²

However, Stalin’s achievements are not the only aspect of his personality that draws TikTok users’ attention. Seventy-six tiktoks (29% of the sample) are dedicated to his attributes and image. The aesthetics of his photos, his physical appearance, demeanor, communication with his colleagues, habits, specific actions in his personal life, and sense of humor are all things that tiktoks highlight. In some ways, he becomes a celebrity rather than a historical figure. Users talk about Stalin’s humbleness (“he left behind a moth-eaten cap and a nuclear shield”³³), his modesty,³⁴ and small salary as the head of the country³⁵ (similar tropes are present in the Georgian memory of Stalin [Kabachnik, Kirvalidze, and Gugushvili 2016]). In other cases, users do not talk about Stalin from their point of view but refer to alleged quotes from famous and respected personalities. For instance, Churchill is cited to praise Stalin’s mind, intellectual abilities, and being “an outstanding person.” Other references tell stories of Stalin’s sense of humor³⁶ or perfect hearing.³⁷ Several tiktoks use the format “facts about…” to include information about Stalin’s personality. For instance, they talk about Stalin’s habits, such as reading 300 pages daily (Figure 3).³⁸

The Great Patriotic War is mentioned in 30% of tiktoks dedicated to Stalin’s personality. That is unsurprising, given that GPW is the main event in Russian collective memory and is actively promoted by the Russian state. However, the intersection of other topics and war is less frequent. References to his children make a point about Stalin’s personal sacrifices during the war. Vasilii, his son, is fighting—among other “golden boys,” as claimed by a tiktok discussed above. Stalin’s other son, Yakov, was a prisoner of war. Episodes from the series and the 1968 movie Arc of Fire show Stalin reacting to a proposition to exchange Yakov for Friedrich Paulus by saying, “I don’t exchange a soldier for a field marshal.”³⁹ In a sense, this episode probably also refers to the corruption topic. Stalin not only did not want anything for himself, but he also did not use his power to save his son, saying in so many words that his son was not above any other soldier

Some of these tiktoks do not necessarily advocate for a specific stance on Stalin. Instead, these are reels of his photos⁴⁰ or video chronicles with descriptions “aesthetics of the chief.” At best, these reels are accompanied by generic calls to “subscribe if you respect this man.” However, there are no other references to specific attitudes toward Stalin. These types of posts deserve special consideration in future research. On the one hand, they promote a historical figure’s image, yet, they shift attention away from his biography and personal traits and back to aesthetics. In other words, Stalin appears in these posts as a celebrity, an image from a glossy magazine. On the other hand, the format is partly influenced by the platform’s technological infrastructure and its emphasis on visual rather than textual content.

Although TikTok appears to be a social media platform with affordances distinct from other social media platforms, the themes evoked by pro-Stalin users are very similar to those explored in the “traditional” VKontakte. The repertoire is nearly identical. Tiktokers discuss the GPW because it is one of the most important events for the Russian people and for the Russian state. Stalin is portrayed as the main, if not the only, Soviet war hero (the people or his generals, for example, are underrepresented) or as one of the world’s winning leaders. Beyond the war victory, his politics and economics are portrayed as effective. It is claimed that life was much better under Stalin than now. Tiktokers primarily discuss general issues or their current state of life. They may refer to specific problems, such as retirement age, in some cases. In other words, discussions of Stalin’s achievements are frequently juxtaposed with today’s chaos. Corruption is seen as a significant problem. Stalin, on the other hand, was well-versed in dealing with corruption. Several tiktoks suggest that repressions were the most effective way to combat corruption, prepare for war, and industrialize the country. As a result, Stalin’s detractors did not comprehend the excellent results and greater good achieved through the repressions system.

Two points are of interest here. First, even though the Russian state has been promoting the cult of the Great Patriotic War intensely, this context does not dominate the TikTok platform. Instead, the most prominent theme (with 41% of our tiktoks) relates to grievances about the present and admiration of the alleged past societal well-being. The finding corresponds with the existing theories that Stalin is often used in critical political narratives (Arkhipova 2017). However, we need to be clear that the critical narratives should not be seen as full-on oppositional movements. It is absolutely possible that, while criticizing economic policies, the same people can strongly support other Russian state policies and international decisions, including the war in Ukraine. In other words, it is important neither to demonize, nor to romanticize, the memory culture we discuss here. Second, in terms of users’ engagement, none of the themes stand out. While TikTok users might prefer to use Stalin to refer to current problems, in terms of audience, this topic does not attract more likes, comments, or shares.

The most noticeable difference between Stalin’s representation on VKontakte and TikTok that we could find is the emphasis on Stalin’s personality in tiktoks. Part of this is due to a renewed focus on his character, which is linked to the narrative of his regime’s effectiveness. Tiktoks promote his image of a simple wise man who worked for people, had no wealth, and never gave himself or his family preferential treatment. However, this is not the only thing TikTok users are interested in. Many tiktoks are devoted to Stalin’s image, using his photographs, paintings, and documentary reels. His physical appearance and aesthetics become the focus of attention. As a result, he is portrayed as a celebrity rather than a historical and political figure. TikTok’s technological infrastructure partly explains this theme’s presence on TikTok. TikTok is a very visual social media platform. It is unsuitable for long texts or videos, and there is no way to create a nuanced narrative. His image, particularly video footage, fits the platform better than long lectures. To summarize, TikTok, through its unique technological infrastructure and participation culture, creates a new type of Stalin representation: Stalin as a mere aesthetic object, an image, or a celebrity from a poster. It could be argued that this is not a valid memory narrative; however, we would argue that it is yet another public reincarnation of Stalin’s memory. Unlike tattoos (which can be described as a form of radically committed memory culture [Asavei 2023]), this type of tiktok is a low-commitment memory culture form that might not even represent long-lasting interests and agendas of their creators. TikTok’s role here is twofold. On the one hand, it provides an easy environment to revive the orthodox, cult of personality’s imagery of Stalin (Plamper 2012). On the other, precisely this ease creates a particular, low-commitment, superficial memory work that brings Stalin to users’ attention, in a straightforward, unnuanced, and uncomplicated manner.

Moreover, TikTok allows for broader dissemination of pro-Stalin narratives and images. TikTok suggests an entirely new regime of publicity. Pro-Stalinist tiktokers and other “marginal” political groups on TikTok (Weimann and Masri 2023) “play by platform rules”: incorporate popular hashtags and music. The engagement rates of pro-Stalin tiktoks are rather high. We hypothesize that they could be explained by TikTok’s recommendation algorithm that, as mentioned above, is set up to show users both tiktoks they can be interested in and those that fall out of their information bubble. In this sense, the TikTok algorithm becomes a mnemonic actor in its own right that promotes historical narratives that “human” mnemonic actors chose to narrowcast.

This article examines the case of pro-Stalin content on TikTok to demonstrate how new media, specifically social media, create new opportunities for producing and disseminating memory content. The new “aesthetic” and “celebrity” Stalinism creates a different dimension for Stalinism’s memory—one that cannot be easily engaged with using arguments and counter-narratives and one that can be easily broadcast as straightforward and “catchy” content. On the other hand, TikTok, as a platform in general, opens up new avenues for broadcasting previously-unheard niche memory narratives (including pro-Stalin content), which, in turn, can become a driving force in changing attitudes toward Stalin and Stalinism at least among specific demographics.

The authors are grateful to the editors of the special issue, Ekaterina Klimenko and Matthew Blackburn, for the invitation to contribute, their valuable input, and productive criticism. We want to thank the “Conspiratorial Memory” project team and anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions.

Research for this article was supported by funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement No. 949918) for the project “Conspiratorial Memory: Cultures of Suspicion in Post-Socialist Europe.”