Police detain a 63-year-old, award-winning poet for ripping down Stalin’s portrait in the Moscow metro

Renowned Russian poet and essayist Sergey Gandlevsky was detained on Monday after ripping down a portrait of Joseph Stalin that was glued to a wall in Moscow’s Lyubanka metro station. According to Gandlevsky’s interview to news site OVD.info, the police were informed of his “misdemeanor” by an unidentified man.

Once in police custody, the poet was allegedly told he would be imprisoned for having committed “an act of vandalism and minor hooliganism.”

The poet, who was allowed to call his friends and inform them of his detention, was released shortly thereafter. No official file has been opened against him.

Gandlevsky defended his decision to tear down the portrait and called Stalin a criminal.

• Gandlevsky won the Little Booker Prize and the Anti-Booker prize for his collection of poems “Trepanation of the Skull” in 1996.