Russian Icon

No, this is not a joke apparently.

"An icon depicting Soviet leader Joseph Stalin has appeared in a church of Leningrad district's city of Strelnya, Novaya Gazeta reported Wednesday."

could lead to a revival of iconoclasm. One can hope.

The Great Patriotic War - Again

Most Americans have absolutely no idea just how vast the war on the Eastern Front was in World War II or that it was the Russians who are most responsible for destroying Hitler and the Third Reich. I've mentioned this once or twice already, but the latest issue of The Atlantic magazine has a review article by Benjamin Schwarz on several new books that reveals just how much new info has come out about the Great Patriotic War and the debt the allies owe to Stalin. In every way imaginable it is a sobering story, especially for those of us who like to find neat little moral lessons attached to our history.

Schwarz slings some impressive numbers around to get our attention: 27 million dead Soviets, 4 million dead Germans, 2 million suspect minorities force marched into the interior, 158,000 Soviets executed for disertion, 926,000 dead Red Army soldiers at the battle of Moscow alone.

He is in agreement with Norman Davies' Europe at War in finding "insufferable" the notion that Britain and America stopped Hitler. For four years 400 Red army and Wehrmacht divisions faced off in a series of vicious and nearly constant battles along a 1,000 mile front. 85% of all German military dead were killed by the Red army. On the Western front, on the other hand, the most intense fighting saw 15 allied divisions facing 15 German divisions.

Now, about those moral lessons. Davies loves Poland and has no liking or sympathy for Stalin, especially after what he did to Poland. Yet his conclusion is clear, as Schwarz puts it: "the most odious criminal regime in Europe's history was defeated by an even more murderous regime, if numbers are the yardstick - which significantly tarnishes any notion of the "Good War."

Geoffrey Robert's is just as provocative in Stalin's Wars, an examination of Stalin's wartime leadership:

To make so many mistakes and to rise from the depths of such defeat to go on to win the greatest military victory in history was a triumph beyond compare... Stalin ... saved the world for democracy.