How else could one describe the actions of a leader who personally signed a Politburo order on July 2, 1951, authorizing thirty-three tons of copper to be used for the construction of a gigantic statue of himself, built beside the Volga-Don Canal, a project that killed thousands of its prisoner-laborers?3 The colossal statue was built with an electric current running through its head, to prevent migratory birds from defacing the idol. The birds would land and be electrocuted, their feathered bodies falling to the ground in silent tribute to this Soviet Ozymandias, the shoemaker’s son from
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