[mazabotman]

I share Fr Raphael's unease at the way Stalin is depicted. In the icon in St Nicholas' church in Moscow, Stalin is shown in a rather diminutive way, sideways on and standing respectfully before St Matrona. Seeing this icon was the first time I knew of Stalin and St Matrona and when I asked about it, nobody knew anything save that it happened. One would like a better justification for the scene than that what it depicts happened. But nothing is ever straightforward in Russia; it is, as Churchill remarked, 'a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma'.