Modern Russia is very far from being a reincarnation of the Soviet Union, but if Vladimir Putin’s comments about what he would like to have done to Georgia’s prime minister have been accurately reported, they are just the latest evidence of how little Mr. Putin cares about the way in which the memory of Soviet rule still resonates in the now independent countries of the former USSR. A commemoration of Ukraine’s Holodomor, the terror-famine that was one of the most horrific of all Soviet crimes, being held at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City this Saturday, will provide a useful reminder of just how bad that past really was. It couldn’t be more timely.