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Currently reading "Stalin - The Court of the Red Tsar" by Simon Sebag Montefiore. Really fascinating, uses a lot of archival material to explore Stalins personality. Funny to think of someone usually characterised as a monster having wife and kids etc, not to say he wasn't a monster, just not a one dimensional one.
Just getting to the part where the Terror and purges of '37 and '38 get going. Hundreds of thousands are being shot, millions in prison camps. The executioners happily despatching thousands of innocent people with not even the flimsy evidence used in show trials, just shooting to meet a quota. And then justifying on the basis that they were ensuring future happiness for the people.
Amazing what we humans are capable of.
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