Guardian writer Jonathan Steele dies, and as such goes straight to Hell.

He is greeted warmly by the Devil, who praises his life’s work and offers him a choice of bijou accommodation. Jonathan peers uneasily through three windows.

In the first cell is Tito, screaming as he twists impaled on a Balkan stake, his juices dripping sizzlingly into eternal fire.

In the second is Hitler, howling as he is cut to pieces atom by atom by fiendish imps.

In the third is Stalin, slurping and slobbering, with Marillyn Monroe squealing in pain on his knee as he grossly abuses her, for ever.

"Hmm. If it’s all right with you I’ll pass on Hitler’s hell and Tito’s hell and opt for Stalin’s hell – that third room."

"Granted. Please, pass in my son."

Jonathan enters the room. Clang. Locked in. For eternity.

"Oh, Jonathan my dear boy, just to be clear. That is not Stalin’s hell. That’s Marilyn Monroe’s hell…"

Silence.

Then scuffling noises.

Then a very long shriek.

* * * * *

Here is Jonathan while he is still in our midst sharing his thoughts with us about the Molotov/Ribbentrop Pact :

"… the issue is still a political football" 

You know, a bit like fox-hunting or MPs’ expenses, issues people kick around to pass the time.

"… the issue matters as it marks an unpleasant effort by many Baltic and central European politicians to equate Stalinism and Nazism or claim Stalinism was worse" 

Unpleasant indeed! How dare these people make this nasty, grubby claims. Such poor form. Positively vulgar. It makes me shiver to think of it. Brrr.

"In part concerned by the continuing strength of former Communist parties in the region, they use the Nazi-Soviet "equation" as a device to smear any party of the left. (The draft resolution was watered down by left groups in the European parliament.)" 

Phew. Thank goodness for left groups in the European Parliament, holding the line against any such ‘equation’.

"It is also a barely disguised attempt to maintain extreme wariness, if not outright hostility, to contemporary Russia." 

Good grief, these people are just stupid. Can’t they see that Putin’s peace-loving dismemberment of Georgia last year was in Georgia’s and Europe’s best interests?

"The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact certainly showed Stalin to be as cynical as Hitler." 

I accept that Stalin was cynical. You know, like David Cameron and Tony Blair, but not quite as odious and public-schooly.

"But to jump from that to equate the two men’s record or ideology does not accord with reality." 

Let’s jump from cynicism to the reality of Stalin’s murder of many millions of people, and then be realistic.

"Nor does it take account of the fact that Soviet policy evolved after Stalin’s death so that political activity, let alone ordinary family life, in the two decades under Brezhnev was not subject to arbitrary terror." 

No, let’s not mention all those tiresome communist murders. Once Stalin left communism was all not so bad, really. No, really!

"Rightwing Baltic politicians have a point in saying most other Europeans are unaware of Stalin’s mass deportations from the Baltics. Perhaps 100,000 people were sent to Siberia after 1939 or when the Red Army defeated the Nazis and re-entered the region. But to believe that western Europeans did not know about the Gulag ignores the massive influence of Alexander Solzhenitsyn after his books were translated into every European language in the 1970s."  

Huh? OK, we will mention some of them. But not the mass deportations of Poles, or Katyn, or the thousands of summary murders of democrats across Eastern Europe after WW2, or the blighted lives of millions of people. Only unpleasant Rightwing (sic) people dwell on such trivia.

"There is always more to learn, and historians are always trying to re-interpret. One of the biggest areas which remains to be explored is the extent of local civilian participation in the Nazis’ central European killing fields." 

Quite so. The Nazis and Soviets were merely opening the way to all that latent evil in these unpleasant central European people. In a way, a sort of much-needed therapy for them – to get it all off their chests, once and for all.

"When it comes to numbers, Hitler’s record is dominant. He killed almost twice as many people as Stalin. Snyder lists the number of European Jews murdered under German auspices at 5.7 million, German starvation of Soviet citizens at about 4 million and mass reprisal killings against civilians, mainly for actual or suspected partisan activity, as at least 750,000. Stalin killed about 5.5 million Soviet citizens by starvation and had about 700,000 people shot in the prewar Great Terror." 

Can’t you people do elementary maths? Hitler killed about 10 million and Stalin killed only 5 million. So Hitler was twice as bad as Stalin, duh. In fact, Stalin was 50% less bad than Hitler, well on the way to being not bad at all.

So no way can you equate them.

NO WAY.

"There is a difference between memory and history … But, important though it is to be reminded how the Soviet authorities (until 1989) blamed their 1940 massacre of imprisoned Polish officers on the Nazis, one should not forget that in Operation Tannenberg the Nazis killed a comparable number of Polish intellectuals a few months earlier." 

No, let one not forget that. In fact, it’s far more important. Because as I have already pointed out to you dullards, life under Brezhnev was not subject to arbitrary terror, only unarbitrary terror, so the fact that the Soviets kept on lying for decades about Katyn is quite beside the point.

"Is there a moral?" 

In your case, Jonathan, no. Only an immoral.

"The Baltic Way’s commemoration of Molotov-Ribbentrop sent a particular message in August 1989 by breaking a 50-year taboo and expressing a widespread demand for independence. But what was right in one part of Europe at a special moment should not be extended across the continent for ever."  

For ever is the time you’ll spend in that cell being rogered by whiskery vodka-reeking Stalin, my friend.

But let’s agree that until the Left stops making excuses for Stalinism and the Russian government opens all the communist archives once and for all and lets the truth out, we have to assume that Moscow’s overall attitudes and motives remain at best ambiguous. Hence remembering events such as these plays an essential part in defining modern Europe.

"History is too complex and sensitive to be left to politicians. First they manipulate anniversaries, then they move to textbooks, and the slide gathers speed." 

Why have you started talking about Russia all of a sudden?

* * * * *

The. Most. Catastrophically. Bad. Guardian. Article.

Ever?