I was just catching up with the news on the bbc website and wondered onto ‘From our own Correspondent’. I sometimes listen to that programme as it reminds me of far flung places. I was, however, surprised to read that it is fifty years old, having began in 1955. they post some articles from the archive there.

What I found was quite incredible – an article written just after Stalin’s death. It allows us to glimpse the end of the cult of Stalin, when the man was worshipped as a god. we can see how the people of Russia loved him through fear.

I know a little about Russia, but it relates to the beginning of the communist era. During the October 1917 revolution, it was Lenin, not Stalin who lead – Stalin’s nickname among the Bolsheviks was ‘comrade paperclip’, because he just sat behind his desk. Only after he brutally came to the fore after Lenin’s death in ’24 did Stalin alter documents to show he was close to Lenin,

Fascinating, bloody era of history. How could this man, this insanely paranoid man, be worshipped as a god?