VLADIMIR PUTIN, in his effort to restore the Stalinist legacy in Moscow, exceeds himself as a defender of Russia’s totalitarian and genocidal past. In the wake of President George W. Bush’s tour of the new post-Soviet democracies, Putin has attempted to revise history.

First, let’s begin with a review of accepted history: The Baltic countries, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, as well as Georgia, are not Slavic in culture. They have no ethnic affiliation with Russia at all. They were taken over by the tsarist Russians in the 18th and 19th centuries.