Red-letter weekend?

Dimitry Medvedev, President of Russia, hitherto regarded as something of a stooge for “Czar” Vladimir Putin, recently made an extraordinary attack on those trying to rehabilitate Josef Stalin, who has strong claim to be the greatest mass-murderer and originator of human misery in history.

On the face of it, it seems extraordinary that anyone in their right mind could possibly seek to rehabilitate such a monster, but for many Russians he represents “the good old days”, when Russia was “great”, and in particular the dark days of WWII, when he is supposed to have “saved” Russia from the Nazis.

This last of course ignores  the small detail that those who saved Russia were mostly young boys in Red Army uniforms who faced down the Wehrmacht in Stalingrad and elsewhere in unimaginably-terrible conditions.

However, despite being an “international communist”, Stalin “saved” Russia by appealing to nationalist sentiments. As this great country is once more going through tough times, the Russian conservatives, headed by Putin (“the loss of the Soviet Union was the greatest tragedy of my life”) have been seeking to play upon nationalistic sentiment by rehabilitating Stalin.

Now, nationalism is the most destructive of forces (apart perhaps from those inspired by “God”), and so we have a lot to fear from the extreme Russian version. But Medvedev has pricked the bubble in an act of considerable courage, for many enemies of the  Kremlin have died for less – witness Alexander Litvinenko in London …

So, hats off to Medvedev.

Is he deliberately distancing himself from Putin? We should follow these events closely. We need Russia as a friendly partner on the world stage, and not just because of her resources.

By Chris Snuggs