News Snapshot:
Sunday’s centenary of the death of Vladimir Lenin, one of the most influential leaders of the 20th century, will largely go uncelebrated in his home country of Russia this weekend, where the revolutionary leader stands accused of laying a “timebomb” underneath Russia and Ukraine that has exploded in the past decade. There will be no parades or stirring speeches in Red Square. The obvious reason is that one of Lenin’s most strident critics is Vladimir Putin, who appears far more enamoured with the empire that Lenin’s revolutionaries overthrew. Often portrayed in official Soviet culture as a grandfatherly, nurturing figure who...
