James Rodgers: Resurgent Reds in Russia

Stalin is back. For a while, it looked like Nicholas II, Russia's last tsar, might resist the Bolshevik threat - achieving in death a victory which eluded him in life.

Now the Reds have seized control once again. Stalin has first place, the Tsar is still holding on to second, but then Lenin comes in third, like a second revolutionary wave waiting to sweep away the monarchy once more. A Russian woman carries a portrait of Soviet leader Josef Stalin in a Victory Day celebration in Moscow on May 9, 2008

The"Name of Russia" is still in its early stages. The online poll was inspired by the BBC series"Great Britons". At present, Russians have 50 people to choose from. From September, only the top 12 will remain in the contest. The winner will be chosen at the end of the year.

Stalin's strong showing has prompted suggestions that organised voting has pushed his rating artificially high. It has also prompted some soul-searching.

"How are we going to look in the eyes of the West?" asked the newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets last week.

"The way we already look in the West," the paper wailed in answer to its own question:"Stalin, vodka, frost, bear".

These, of course, are outdated stereotypes. Contemporary stereotypes would have to include the excesses of the oligarchs buying up large swathes of the south of France, and behaving badly in ski resorts.

Stereotypes, and vote-rigging, aside, the"Name of Russia" shows how Russia is divided and confused over its 20th Century history.

From his death in 1918, until the collapse of the Soviet regime in 1991, the Tsar was reviled as a tyrant and an"enemy of the people". Now he is a saint - canonised by the Russian Orthodox Church.

Even by the standards of the changes this country has been through in the last 100 years, it is an astonishing transformation....