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socialist killers on econtalk
These two fascinating pieces surround people who were in the center of the Bolshevik revolution in Russia; the guests each authored biographies. The one about Trotsky has a chilling conclusion from Robert Service: "This is one of the terrifying things about Soviet history, that some of the bloodiest killers wrote poetry".
On further reflection it reminds me of a 1983 television series which period overlapped the lives of these characters: "Reilly, Ace of Spies", starring Sam Neill., and based upon the historical character of Sidney Reilly, a spy for the British in the early years of the 20th Century. Reilly was killed by the communists in the yearly years of the Soviet Union.
Trotsky (7/26/2010) - Robert Service of Stanford University's Hoover Institution and the University of Oxford talks about the life and death of Leon Trotsky. Based on Service's biography of Trotsky, the conversation covers Trotsky's influence on the Russian Revolution, his influence on policy alongside Lenin, his expulsion from Soviet Union in 1928 and his murder in 1940 by Stalin's order.
Politics, Murder, and Love in Stalin's Kremlin (7/12/2010) - Paul Gregory (U of Houston, Stanford U Hoover Institution) talks about the career and personal life of Nikolai Bukharin, one of the key founders of the Bolshevik Revolution that led to the creation of the Soviet Union. In the late 1920s, he disagreed with Stalin's policy of collectivization. Stalin ruthlessly pursued him, and eventually had him executed. The power and poignancy of the story lies in Bukharin's refusal to believe that his old friend Stalin is out to kill him. Gregory also discusses Bukharin's economic policies and whether Stalin or someone like him was inevitable.