Today is the 57th anniversary of the death of Josef Stalin, and the Communists and other nationalists are lining up to lay flowers at his grave on the Kremlin wall and bandy about other paraphernalia to sing his praises.  Naturally, many of the surviving family members of his victims are outraged and insulted.

But more than flowers and shots of vodka next to his portrait in his birthplace of Gori, Georgia, most of the current Stalin controversy is surrounding an idea from Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov to openly celebrate the former dictator as a decorated war hero during next May’s Victory Day parade, including the commissioning of a vast series of posters to paper his image all over the city.