© John Lehmann/The Globe and MailA homeless man gets a hot meal from a soup truck courtesy of the Nochlezhka homeless shelter in St. Petersburg January 18, 2014.
In the Soviet era, great leaders had cities named after them. St. Petersburg, the imperial capital, was rechristened in honour of Lenin and Volgograd became Stalingrad. Now, as modern Russia strives to recapture its past glory, the practice seems ready for a revival.
"Sochi is Putingrad," says Marat Gelman, who considers the $50-billion investment in the Black Sea resort and the Winter Olympics to begin there on Friday the personal handiwork of his former boss, President Vladimir Putin.
"He built the whole thing. It's his legacy."
And they are the Putin Games. Seven years ago, Mr. Putin travelled to Guatemala and campaigned so persuasively (in three languages) that the International Olympic Committee chose Sochi even though it lacked appropriate facilities and is Russia's only city never guaranteed to see snow in February.
Eager to erase painful memories of 1980's blighted Summer Games in Moscow, marred by a Western boycott after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the President and his supporters are now poised to celebrate, with by far the most costly Olympiad ever held, the rebirth of a country they say is strong and proud once again: stable domestically and able to walk on the international stage with a swagger.
The trouble is that Mr. Putin hasn't contained himself to Putingrad.
Comment: This is bad news for the German people. The constraints placed on the military in Germany and Japan in the postwar period, by freeing them from the burden of an imperialistic war machine, led to a golden age of export-led economic growth. Here's a crazy idea: maybe all countries should follow the policy of Ohnemicheltum (not with me).