in 1946, Joseph Stalin had changed tack, feeling that he needed religion to shore up popular support. He revived the Church in zombified form, an instrument of the state that was massively surveilled and controlled by the security services. When some of the KGB’s archives were exposed in 2014—thanks in part to the brave efforts of the late Gleb Yakunin, a dissident Russian priest who spent years in prison—the collusion of the Church’s leaders was revealed.

As ajournalist, historian, novelist, and autobiographer, Adams was con-stantly focused on the American experiment, testing a statementoffered by another figure in Democracy: ‘You Americans believe your-selves to be excepted from the operation of general laws. You care notfor experience’ (LA 37–8).

most dangerous of all are those whom Lenin called false friends of the people, namely moderate-socialist or social-democratic leaders (in other words, non-Communist left-wing). These are more dangerous than out-and-out reactionaries, for latter at least march under their true colors, whereas moderate left-wing leaders confuse people by employing devices of socialism to seine interests of reactionary capital

Stalin was also brutalized by his father when he was a child, she pointed out. Stalin was an only child. Like Hitler he was the first child to survive after three siblings who had died in infancy. His irascible father was almost always drunk and laid into his son from an early age. Despite the fame and power he later achieved, Stalin suffered throughout his life from a persecution mania that drove him to order the killing of millions of innocent people. Just as the infant Stalin lived in fear of sudden death at the hands of his unpredictable father, so the adult Stalin lived in fear even of his closest associates. But now he had the power to fend off those fears by humiliating others

"Мастер и Маргарита"

Sei que, entre os comunistas chineses, existem camaradas que não consideram convenientes as greves dos operários pela melhoria de sua situação material e jurídica e dissuadem os operários de organizá-las (Uma voz: “Isso aconteceu em Cantão e em Shanghai”). É um grave erro, camaradas. É um profundo desprezo do papel e da importância do proletariado da China. Deve ser assinalado nas teses como manifestação indubitavelmente negativa. Seria grande erro os comunistas chineses não aproveitarem a favorável situação atual para ajudar os operários a melhorar a sua situação material e jurídica, ainda que seja por meio de greves. Para que serviria então a revolução na China?