The best way to control the opposition is to lead it ourselves.
--Vladimir Lenin lives on in today's politics
We live, deaf to the land beneath us,
Ten steps away no one hears our speeches,
But where there's so much as a half a conversation
The Kremlin's mountaineer will get his mention.
-- from "Stalin" 1934 by Osip Mandelstam
If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in
the end, despair.
