Ghost of Stalin strides the Caucasus

Knowing the origins of Stalin, and his later record, the current mess in Georgia, and the aggressiveness of the Soviets Russians is unfortunately part of the pattern of the new cold war, same as the old cold war.

AT the centre of Gori, Georgia, where every window has been shattered and Russian T-72 tanks patrol, the marble statue of the world’s most famous Georgian, Joseph Stalin, stands gleamingly, almost supernaturally unharmed. As this vicious colonial war turns into an international battle over spheres of influence, Stalin is Banquo at the feast, metaphorically present in the palaces of the Kremlin, the burning houses in the villages, the cabinets of Europe’s eastern capitals.

Today, as far as Moscow is concerned, the Georgian cobbler’s son and Marxist fanatic has been laundered of any traces of Georgia and Marx. He is now a Russian tsar, the inspiration for the authoritarian, nationalistic and imperial strains in today’s capitalistic, pragmatic, swaggering Russia.

In this crisis, and in who knows how many future ones, Stalin represents empire, prestige, victory.

Given the historical fact that Stalin’s USSR killed more of its own people than the Nazis did in their rightly despised death camps, where’s the outcry over Russia’s Stalinist revival?

What would the reaction be if Germany similarly launched a rejuvenation of Hitler’s rep?