A day with Stalin

I just spent a Day with the former leader of the Soviets. I was taken on a typical Russian "tangent" (I'm sure there's a technical name for side stories, but like I said, I'm not a writer or anything remotely close) and read and entire biography of Stalin in a few chapters.

And it wasn't just that, it was a brief history of the Soviet Union. I had forgotten that Stalin had been a seminarian, and about to be ordained, too, before he was expelled for being a socialist. Reminded of the "Liberation Theology" priests of post Vatican II, but that's a topic I will leave to the experts, like my friend Joe, whose blog you can and should read and that's why I have his link in mine.

Anyway, as predicted, the original tangents are becoming a cohesive story. I went to jail so I could meet the men (I'm not being sexist, it's just men) that are working on technology that will help the government figure out who called the American embassy. The problem is that instead of having GE run the project and subcontract parts of it to Lockheed Martin, Boeing and others, you have two guys that are fighting for the favor of the Stalin and a Lenin prize, so the leaders of these two teams keep trying to sabotage each other, while the engineers, who are all political prisoners, could not care less because, as one of them put it "You should realize that you can't take everything away from a man, because when you do, he is no longer under your control, he is free again" (I told you it had great quotes).

If this is true, if this is how Socialism really worked, it's no wonder it imploded the way it did. Then again, the author was forced into exile by the system he is describing, so he's not what we could call impartial.

Now I know where this is going. It's only a matter of time before he throws me into another loop, I'm sure of it.