In Kyiv they have voted to changethe names of some metro stations. Heroes of the Dnieper is to become Heroes ofUkraine. The station was named after the street outside, and there’s nothingwrong with the river Dnieper, which winds its S-shape through Ukraine like theGrand Canal through Venice.

The trouble was that the counter-offensive in 1943 by theSoviet Union against the German invaders made much propaganda of a unitedeffort by all nations under the Marxist flag, even though Stalin had not solong before presided over a famine that killed millions in Ukraine.