• IN a booklet accompanying the Royal Academy’s excellent exhibition of Russian art, 1917 to 1932, there is a quote from a letter Lenin wrote to the Congress in 1922: “Comrade Stalin, having become Secretary General, has unlimited authority concentrated in his hands, and I am not sure he will always be capable of using that authority with sufficient caution.”

Nearly a century later perhaps all one can say is plus ça change…

ANITA PLATTNER
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