For Russia's leader, Cromwell and Stalin are both Putinites

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/19/russia-leader-vladimir-putin-cromwell-stalin

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Vladimir Putin reckons there is no difference between Joseph Stalin and Oliver Cromwell, and that the former is no less deserving of a statue than the latter, who, despite cutting off the head of a king, gets pride of place outside the Houses of Parliament. "What is the essential difference between Cromwell and Stalin? Can you tell me? No difference," he said at his annual press conference on Thursday.

Before considering this urgent question, let's pause to congratulate Mr Putin on being able to make these comparisons. Could David Cameron talk confidently of the political legacy of a 17th-century Russian leader?

That said, Putin's comparison is meaningless. If anything, it is Trotsky rather than Stalin who stands comparison with Cromwell. Trotsky, like Cromwell, was both revolutionary theoretician and army organiser, and both were key figures in their respective revolutions. Trotsky is memorialised in Mexico, where he had sought exile and in 1940 was murdered by a Soviet agent, but not in Moscow. As well as having Trotsky murdered, Stalin set about obliterating his rival from Russian revolutionary history.

Cromwell is accorded a statue because ultimately he was unsuccessful. He led the parliamentary side in the English civil war and succeeded in overthrowing the king, but his revolutionary ideals quickly congealed, he became a quasi-king himself in his role as lord protector and left no legacy. His son Richard succeeded him, but ruled only briefly before the restoration of the monarchy. England had not been able to stomach the idea of a republic, let alone put into practice the ferment of socialistic ideals that had been unleashed by the civil war. Cromwell gets his statue in part because he upheld the rights of parliament – hence the location – but also because he had maintained the status quo. A statue to a true revolutionary would have been torn down long ago.

Putin gives an honourable mention to Cromwell and Stalin because, in his eyes, they are both Putinites. They revered power above all else and used nationalism to maintain their grip on it. Both were imperialists: Cromwell was the bloody hammer of the Irish; Stalin ruthlessly welded the disparate republics that made up the Soviet Union into what passed for a unitary state. It was a brilliant personal achievement that ultimately achieved nothing. The Soviet Union lasted little more than 70 years – the lifetime of a not very long-lived individual. Like Cromwell's revolution, it was a historical blip.

Cromwell and Stalin were great exponents of realpolitik who kept the show on the road, but no more than that. They were master conjurors, which may be what appeals to Putin as his country teeters between liberalism and authoritarianism, oligarchical capitalism and state provision. Putin is engaged in a majestic piece of mythmaking, constructing an image of "Mother Russia" that connects both the Tsarist and the Soviet periods. It is engagingly mad pick-and-mix history, and perhaps, in hymning two men who achieved so little, he is thinking about the way he will be remembered.

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