Three applications for an "anti-Soviet" sign were rejected by the city without explanation. And when Ostrovsky hoisted one without a permit, a local politician warned him that he was insulting the veterans of the Great Patriotic War, as World War II is known here.

Then came the coup de grace: With a crane, work crew, and police escorts, the government erased all evidence of lingering dissidence against the bygone Soviet Union.

Ostrovsky had not banked on the burgeoning admiration and nostalgia for all things Soviet, a sentimentality tangled up with pride that has come about as the government of Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin seeks to restore Russian patriotism and reawaken imperial self-regard.

But the visceral attachment to the icons is also the consequence of a country that never quite shook off the shadow of the Soviet system. The world may regard Russia as a place distinct from the Soviet Union, but here in Russia, where government buildings are still festooned with hammers and sickles, there is an abiding sense of continuum.

The kebab-house quarrel was one small battleground in a swelling war over identity. The unresolved question of how modern-day Russia ought to relate to its Soviet past continues to rattle through society.

On Friday, Russian President Dmitry A. Medvedev took to his blog to decry the millions of Soviet citizens who died "as a result of terror and false accusations" and to lament the revisionism taking place. "It is still possible to hear that these many victims were justified by some higher state goal," Medvedev said.

The president cited with dismay a poll in which 90 percent of young Russians were unable to name a victim of Soviet purges and camps. Russia must remember its tragedies, he said.

That's a striking departure from the general drift of the country, which takes a complicated view of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. Last month, a Moscow court heard a libel suit filed by Stalin's grandson. The descendant contended that a lawyer had besmirched Stalin's "honor and dignity" in newspaper columns that referred to him as a "bloodthirsty cannibal."

In the end, the court ruled against the Stalin family. But the finding was cold comfort to many in Russia, who were appalled that the case had made it to trial at all.

Defendant Anatoly Yablokov said that even a decade ago, he could not have imagined being summoned to court for having written pejoratively about Stalin. Today, however, he was not particularly surprised. "They have decided it's time to start whitewashing Stalin," he said.

Despite millions killed or sent to labor camps during Stalin's reign, many view his rule with a hazy nostalgia. True, they say euphemistically, he made difficult decisions, but it was a time that called for tough measures. In those days, they add, Russia was powerful.

Others go further. "The personality of Stalin is covered with lies and slander," said Leonid Zhura, a former government bureaucrat. "There is tremendous injustice done to this person."

Meanwhile, Stalin's image and name, bleached out as the waning Soviet empire began to grapple with its bloody past, are creeping back into Russian life. His name was restored to a Moscow metro station. His unmistakable mustached face beams from the wall of Soviet Meatpies, a retro, kitschy diner downtown.

The trend is even wider - many Russians are reconsidering cultural icons who were shunned by the Soviets.

This year, excerpts from The Gulag Archipelago were introduced in Russian schools. The masterwork by dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn had been banned during Soviet times, the author himself hounded out of the country. The book remains among the most scathing depictions of Soviet prison camps.

But Solzhenitsyn had come home to Russia and emerged as an improbable supporter of Putin. When he died last year, his body lay in state and the government changed the name of Big Communist Street in Moscow to Alexander Solzhenitsyn Street.