Putin's Real Hero May be Stalin

Time 's Man of the Year issue has an interesting article by Simon Sebag Montefiore concerning Putin & the long-time Russian historical tradition of "autocracy tempered by assassination."

History lives in Russia. Stalin was obsessed with history and based part of his style on the brutal Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great. "The Russian people need tsardom," Stalin said. When he walked around the Kremlin, he reflected, "Ivan once walked here." Now Stalin has become the best barometer of Russian leadership style. New state textbooks hail Stalin as "the most successful Russian leader ever" and a state builder along the lines of Peter the Great and Bismarck.

Putin has one unexpected connection to the past: his grandfather was a chef who cooked for Rasputin, Lenin and Stalin. Half of Stalin's huge library, with marginal notes in his red crayon, remains in Putin's office, and when he is bored, it is said, he takes down a book and discusses the notes with his visitors. Ironically, Stalin the Marxist—born a Georgian cobbler's son—has become the icon and prototype of the strong Russian Tsar, the hero of a resurgent, capitalist Russia.

Reassuring, isn't it?

The Guardian has another reassuring article on Vlad the Empoisoner [another trick he picked up from Stalin & Beria, who inherited their poisoning traditions from when the Iranian Shahs ruled Georgia and imparted their own Borgia/Medici/SunKingatVersailles court poisoning tradition to that distant satrapy in the 18th century. Now lil Vlad has Polonium 210 to work with!] who has amassed a fortune making him Europe's wealthiest man:

According to Panfilova, the "randomised" corruption of the 1990s has given way to the "systemic and institutionalised corruption" of the Putin era. Members of Putin's cabinet personally control the most important sectors of the economy - oil, gas and defence. Medvedev is chairman of Gazprom; Sechin runs Rosneft; other ministers are chairmen of Russian railways, Aeroflot, a nuclear fuel giant and an energy transport enterprise.

Putin has created a new, more streamlined oligarchy, his critics say. "The crown jewels of the country's wealth have ended up in the hands of Putin's inner circle," Vladimir Rzyhkov - a former independent MP - wrote in Monday's Moscow Times.

Before his death, Tolstoy famously predicted that Soviet Communism would generate "Genghis Khan with a telephone." Stalin certainly lived up [or down] to that prediction, killing more than 40 million Russians through ideology and incompetence.

Vladimir Putin appears to be Peter the Great with a portfolio. Oh yes, and a pharmacopeia to deal with his enemies that glows in the dark!