In the midst of the festivities, somebody remembered Mom. "This day, let us transfer ourselves to the suburbs of Tbilisi," wrote Novelist Mikhail (And Quiet Flows the Don) Sholokhov, "and with reverent sorrow and ardent gratitude in our hearts silently bend our heads over the sacred remains of a small, modest Georgian woman, the mother who 70 years ago gave the world him who became humanity's greatest man, our leader and father."
It was probably the climax in a week of unrelenting semi-deification bestowed on Joseph Stalin during the celebrations of his 70th birthday. Throughout, a super-lifesized head of the...
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