90th Anniversary of the Russian Revolution

Joseph Stalin
Originally uploaded by malias.

Strolling by the River Seine in Paris the other day I came across a bookseller selling posters of Joseph Stalin, Lenin and others from Soviet Russia.

If someone was selling a poster of Adolf Hitler he'd probably be lynched by the nearest lampost but somehow it is acceptable to sell images of Stalin a mass murderer of at least 20 million of his own people during the purges of the 1930s. Lenin was no pussycat either but he murdered a mere 3 million people.

Two excellent books on the subject are Robert Conquest's The Great Terror and Martin Amis's Koba The Dread.

Meanwhile this week sees the 90th anniversary of the Russian Revolution. There will be, no doubt, a fair few die hard communists in Paris and elsewhere celebrating the fact.

As for me I subscribe to Jon Luc Godard's assertion ""Je suis Marxiste, tendance Groucho,"