LONDON — The Georgians took down the last statue of Josef Stalin last week. There used to be thousands of such statues all across the old Soviet Union, but the Communists themselves tore almost all of them down after the great dictator and mass murderer died in 1953. They left the one in Gori, in northern Georgia, because that's where he was born and the locals were still proud of him.
Even after Georgia got its independence in 1991, the six-meter statue of Stalin continued to stand in Gori. Now, just when you might think that the Georgians would be starting to approve of Stalin — after all, he was responsible for the deaths of more Russians than any other Georgian, or indeed anybody else — they go and tear his statue down.
They're planning to replace it with a monument to "victims of the Russian aggression" in the 2008 war, so the history they're peddling in Gori will still be based on lies. (It was Georgia that started the war with Russia in 2008.) The bigger lies will be told in Russia, and they will be told mainly about Stalin.