Myself, I have some doubts about the veracity of this poll, particularly given that the television station in question is state-owned, and therefore manipulated by the Kremlin. Also, first place went to Alexander Nevsky, a medieval prince who defeated German invaders – and an ideal symbol for the Putinist regime, which prides itself on its defiance of the West. Second place went to Piotr Stolypin, a turn-of-the-century economic reformer who, among other things, gave his name to the cattle cars (Stolypinki) in which prisoners were transported to Siberia – another excellent symbol for the “reformer with an iron fist” label to which both Prime Minister Putin and President Medvedev aspire...

We live apart from our land
Our words dying at 10 paces
And anything put edgewise
Concerns the Kremlin backwoodsman
His coarse fingers are thick, like worms
His statements trusty, like the weights
on a scale
Cockroaches smile on his upper lip
And the rims of his shoes blind

He is surrounded by a flock of
pencil-neck hacks
He plays on the servility of half-men
Who whistle, who meow, who sob
But he alone roars and sticks it in
Forging his edicts like so many
horseshoes

One in the groin, one on the brow, one in the eye
Execution is his relish, this Southerner
With an open heart

By Osip Mandelstam, November 1933;
translation © Roger Pulvers, 2008

Has there ever been a poet with more courage? This is Osip Mandelstam's "ode" to the Russian dictator Josef Stalin (1878-1953). His reading of it...