Raising the dead

There's a letter in today's FT from one Mariusz Kuklinski who remembers that Stalin was from Georgia and that the Georgians fared well economically in the post-Stalin Soviet Union era when they "formed the upper crust of the budding business elite." He says "many of them enjoyed wealth unimaginable to average Russians who swapped anecdotes describing the spending habits of their southern neighbours during short breaks in Moscow. One such anecdote ended with the mummy of Lenin being brought to the hotel of a visiting Georgian businessman, who was too busy to queue, by the guards from the Red Square mausoleum upon a particularly generous consideration."