Sometimes the “lesson of history” is in the eye of the beholder. Nationalist leanings, culture, and any number of other modifiers can affect the lesson learned. For example, how would you answer this question: Who is the greatest Russian of the twentieth century? As of the middle of July, the Tsar and Stalin were neck and neck. Stalin strikes me as an unlikely choice for any American or Western European who might be more likely to select a pre-Putin modernizing leader like Gorbachev or an anti-Stalin dissident like Alexander Solzhenitsyn. I doubt that the Tsar makes anyone’s list outside of Russia, assuming they remember him in the first place. An interesting but unanswered question is ‘what does it mean that Russians seem to hold the mass killer Stalin in such high regard?’ No answers here.
Read the London Times article:http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article4339108.ece?print=yes&randnum=1222385014066
or go here to see the article with the comments:http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article4339108.ece
