Kiev is the important city through which much of what has become Russia flowed. The brief Ukrainian Socialist Republic also marked a high point of Ukrainian tolerance before its independence was crushed its population decimated and its culture suppressed by the monstrosity Stalin engineered in contemptuous defiance of the promises and ideals of Russian Revolution and its resonances. A fascinating fact borne our by the archival work of Edvard Radzinsky and comprehensive research of Marcel Liebman is that the last desperate struggle of the selfsame Lenin whose statues were toppled so enthusiastically by some Ukrainians was not only against Stalin, but precisely against the Russian- dominated “Union of Soviet Socialist Republics”. A decade before forced collectivization and the genocidal famines, though architect increasingly incapacitated by wounds from an attempted assassination and multiple strokes, the main architect of the Russian Revolution foresaw the neo-czarist empire for which Stalin was laying the groundwork. He did everything possible, including close collaboration with that revolution’s public and military leader, Leon Trotsk to forestall the birth of this monstrosity.
