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Perhaps the allure of image-driven narrative was becoming a distraction. Perhaps its was simply an odd discovery during the long holiday. Last night also witnessed a return to the Gulag Archipelago after a two week hiatus. No regrets are harbored after that four book sojourn, yet I have to concede that upon reopening the Solzhenitsyn I felt tethered by the sardonic wit and unblinking accounting.

As becomes AS's goal, the excesses of 1937 were anticipated by the constitutional adjustments that occured from 1919-1922. The idea that "terror is persuasive" and that the lists of offenses that warrented execution should be steadily enlarged; none of this happened without cause, a pause to solidify power.

The section on the plight of engineers is especially enlightening. Perhaps AS felt the blade's whisper and reacted in kind. Just as the persecution of the Orthodox Church angered his moral sensibilities, the policy of targeting of the brightest must have felt a peculiar injustice or abomination.