Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Raising the dead

There's a letter in today's FT from one Mariusz Kuklinski who remembers that Stalin was from Georgia and that the Georgians fared well economically in the post-Stalin Soviet Union era when they "formed the upper crust of the budding business elite." He says "many of them enjoyed wealth unimaginable to average Russians who swapped anecdotes describing the spending habits of their southern neighbours during short breaks in Moscow. One such anecdote ended with the mummy of Lenin being brought to the hotel of a visiting Georgian businessman, who was too busy to queue, by the guards from the Red Square mausoleum upon a particularly generous consideration."

2 Comments:

Blogger kinglear said...

My brother in law was in Georgia for 8 years up to about 18 months ago and we visited him a couple of times.
We visited Gori and saw Stalin's house and his armoured carriage. Our driver was adamant that Stalin was good for Russia. When he died, they had lots of gold, were a world power and were making good advances in science and improving the russian people's health and wealth.
He maintained Kruschev blew it.

2:35 pm  
Blogger Whispering Walls said...

Did you see that recent Russian survey of the most popular historical figure? It was a close run thing between Stalin and Tsar Nicolas II

7:43 am  

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