It was interesting to hear  that the Russian President, Vladamir Putin, has recently sought to compare Joseph Stalin with Oliver Cromwell.

(Here is a link to an article about this >>> http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/vladimir-putin-soviet-leader-joseph-stalin-was-no-worse-than-oliver-cromwell-9016836.html).

At one level it goes to show how little Mr Putin knows about history, but on another, there is a serious point that after the chaos of every revolution in history and the usual accompanying wild hopes for a better world, there has typically emerged a nasty dictator.

The striking differences between Oliver Cromwell and Joe Stalin (let alone the other Socialists like Lenin and Mao Tse Tung), is the fact that our devout evangelical Christian, Oliver Cromwell, not only refused the Crown of England which he was repeatedly offered, but also did not carry out mass murders and terror tactics unlike the 20th Century’s genocidal, Communist mass murderers.

Cromwell on the other hand sought to modernise the English government and had an important role in building the foundations of the very first modern nation state that is:- England.

Cromwell’s reforms set England and the English nation on the path, not only to the first industrial revolution, but world mercantile trade and indeed the largest empire the word has ever known.

Stalin on the other hand is directly implicated in the murder of up to 55 million people who were alleged to be class enemies (e.g. petit bourgeois) or who held heretical communist beliefs or who were ethnically inexpedient.  In contrast however to the total physical cowardice displayed by Mao Tse Tung, Stalin did show personal courage and resolve as the German Army reached Moscow.

Also Stalin had two strokes of luck back in the Second World War.  Churchill’s willingness to help him and Hitler’s greedy blunder in encouraging the Japanese to attack South rather than up into Siberia.  Personally nevertheless I would suggest that Stalin is better compared with Genghis Khan!

So much for the comparison between Cromwell and Stalin! Happy New Year!