Stalin news roundup

He's back again, the perennial bad boy, this time because the Moscow city government has decided to plaster the city with Stalin posters for the 65th anniversary V-Day celebrations. Khrushchev look-alike winner Mayor Yury Luzhkov responded to criticism by saying: "I am not an admirer of Stalin - I am an admirer of objective history”... whatever that means.

Meanwhile, the other day marked the 57th anniversary of the dictator's death and crowds - of both protestors and well wishers - flocked to Red Square for the event. As Robert Amsterdam's blog usefully observes:

"It seems to be permanently confusing to outsiders how it is possible that Russians can acknowledge that Stalin was responsible for the extermination of, say, about 27 million citizens, but still can't make up their minds whether this was good or bad. (...) 

Stalin may have been terrible for the people, but he was great for the state, and for some there seems to be no human cost great enough to hinder the pursuit of statehood grandeur."

Finally, Alexander Arkhangelsky argues that the difference between historical memory in Germany and in Russia is that Germans have learned to place their past in "historic quarantine," to museum-ize it.

"What’s to be done with the plaques that adorn the gates of Hitler’s concentration camps: 'Jedem das Seine,' 'Arbeit macht frei?' Why can they, the Germans, keep them, while we, the post-Soviets, can’t? Answer: because the Germans are not restoring the writings on the metro, but keep them at museum complexes instead. Excluded from our immediate surroundings. Enclosed by a symbolic border, placed in historic quarantine. If you really do want to preserve the memory of our tragic past, please be our guest and place the words about Stalin in a museum context."

Uh-oh. Is that a comparison between Nazism and Stalinsim? We all know how dangerous that can be...