PHOTO: Giant Stalin above Prague. He lasted seven years, then they shot him down

It was supposed to look down on Prague forever, but its cult collapsed just a year after its ceremonial unveiling. We are talking about the giant monument to Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin in Letná, which had stood there since May 1955. The dictator himself died during the construction of the 30-meter monument. Eventually, the statue itself fell, even though it had to be shot down three times in 1962. May 1st marks 70 years since its unveiling.

There was great glory at the beginning, and a top-secret assassination at the end. On May 1, exactly 70 years ago, a monument to Stalin was ceremonially unveiled at the top of Letná Hill in Prague, where the metronome is now located. Paradoxically, it was erected at a time when Stalin's cult of personality was beginning to crumble after criticism from his successor, Nikita Khrushchev. And so the monument remained in place for only seven years. T…