A little news roundup

Does French identity still rest on the ideals of the French Revolution?  Agnes Poirier comments in The Guardian on the controversy arising over Sarkozy's debate.  She argues that history is still the ultimate deciding factor in shaping our mindsets.  Nevertheless, how much room for maneuver do political entrepreneurs really have?

Pope Pius XII's role in the Holocaust is again a source of controversy, writes a blogger for CNN's Connect the World, as the Vatican recognizes his 'heroic virtues'.  This article's timing is good for me, since I'm just about to finish Peter Novick's fascinating The Holocaust in American Life.  With this book in mind, I want to ask - what purpose does this debate really serve, and for whom?  Who's got what to gain or lose?

Yesterday was Stalin's birthday, and lots of poll results are coming out of Russia about people's attitudes towards the Soviet past.  The Levada Center finds that 60% of Russians regret the fall of the Soviet Union, which marks only a slight decline from the peak in December 2000.  On Stalin himself, Lyudmila Alexandrova reports for ITAR-TASS that Russians remain ambivalent about his role - particularly how to balance his leadership to victory in WWII against his brutal repression at home.  Meanwhile, the lasting legacies of the gulag system are back in the news, as Maria Golovnina writes for the New York Times about how victims' and their descendants fears about the rehabilitation of Stalin and Russia's refusal to 'face up' to their past.  This is a really interesting piece, particularly the part about mass graves, which isn't much discussed in the Western press.  It's great to call attention to these issues and for that I appreciate the article, but I can't help but find much of this sort of writing on Russia repetitive, and even somewhat oversimplified.