Dust

The intensity and moral nature of my work have weighed heavily this past week. My reading likely suffered. I did spend considerable time with Wedgwood and Arendt as well as a 125 pages of Thomas Kelly’s Empire Rising which I am reading with samizdat. This mist of uncertainty was burnt away by the barrage of thought and journalism which dominates Lenin’s Tomb by David Remnick. As noted previously, I bought the book while in Ohio largely after hearing Remnick eulogize Boris Yeltsin on NPR the day before.

I remain a slavophile with particular bent for the Civil War and the horrific excesses of Koba. That said, the sweep of Remnick’s tome is simply dazzling. His interviews with dissidents and scholars are remarkable, an even-handed survey of dark times