I have always detested the statue of Cromwell erected in 1899 outside the Houses of Parliament in London. I have always said that if it were legal to destroy it, I would take great pleasure in doing so.

Let us recall that this regicide Cromwell was the monster responsible for the deaths of roughly 190,000 English people out of a total population of about five million, some 60,000 Scottish people from a population of about one million and some 616,000 Irish people from a population of about one and a half million. These estimates indicate that England suffered a 3.7% loss of population, Scotland a loss of 6%, while Ireland suffered a loss of 41% of its population.

Thus, today’s statement by President Putin that Cromwell and Stalin are indistinguishable as ‘bloody dictators’ makes sense. (I have always considered that Lenin was a parallel to the mass murderer and destroyer of monasteries Henry VIII, also for some strange reason widely ‘celebrated’ by the heritage industry in England). Indeed, statistically Cromwell was far worse than Stalin.

Thus, it does indeed make Western leaders and media representatives look utterly hypocritical when they, with their statues, ‘relics’ and tourist souvenirs of Henry VIII and Cromwell, Napoleon and Disraeli, Leopold of the Belgians and Churchill, complain that in Russia there are still statues of Lenin and Stalin. However, the hypocritical celebration of evil in the West still does not excuse the celebration of evil in today’s still impure, post-Soviet Russian Federation.