World leaders of all kinds sometimes wind up with admirers no matter how criminal their behavior.

From the murderous Adolf Hitler to Josef Stalin, whose regime caused the deaths of 20 million Russians, even the most infamous leaders can continue to find defenders.

So it goes with Genghis Khan, whom many consider one of the most ruthless, bloody conquerors history has known. Evidence of how time can change images is recent news that a Genghis revival is under way in Mongolia where the deeds of the 13th century despot are being celebrated 800 years after his time.

Khan is regarded as the father of the Mongol Nation and credited with uniting the many confederations of Central Asia in 1206 and giving previously nomadic tribes a sense of territory and identity.

“We Mongolians must be united and have one goal: to develop our country. Let us remember Genghis Khan and his great deeds,” says Nambaryn Enkhbayer, president of Mongolia.

Mongolia lies between China and Russia and is trying to survive and prosper under difficult circumstances. It plays down the brutality of Genghis Khan in his heyday and pictures him as “an agent of world change, a visionary statesman who promoted low taxes on trade, diplomatic immunity and religious tolerance.” Another way of saying the end justifies the means, no matter how suspect.

“We are forefathers of globalization,” commented one nonapologetic Mongolian official.

The Mongol hordes ravaged country after country in all directions in the 1200s under the leadership of Genghis Khan and his sons and other relatives. Even though the patriarch of the bloodletting died in 1227, at age 72, his kin continued to rampage. By about 1240, the well-organized and armed Mongol onslaught had pushed into Poland and Hungary, having defeated the best that terrified conquered nations could muster, killing thousands en route.

It seemed inevitable the invaders would push right on through the rest of Europe. Consider what our modern civilization might have become. But when the horde reached the outskirts of Vienna, one of the major Khans died back “home” and the leadership became fractured. The advancing, seemingly invincible army returned to Mongolia to regroup and find new leadership and the threat was never again the same.

When Genghis Khan died, all those who had any notion of where he was buried were murdered, then those killers were wiped out, and some say huge herds of horses were driven back and forth over the grave to obliterate it forever. There even is evidence a river was diverted to flood the area. Regardless, the burial plot of Genghis Khan remains as lost now as it was in the 1200s.

But the tales that have been carried down through eight centuries continue, and Genghis Khan increasingly is seen as the hero of Mongolia rather than a killer-conqueror.

Seldom has there been a better example of a perspective being fashioned by whose ox is being gored than the legend of Genghis Khan.