Sunday Afternoon Cigar

Our new box of Camacho SLR's arrived yesterday, and we didn't waste any time setting one on fire.

We are finishing Lenin, Stalin and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe. What a great read. Our sincere thanks to Professor Robert Gellately for making the effort to tell the horrid story of pure, unhinged evil that was the Nazi and the Soviets systems.

Page 390 - a Byelorussian's regret for not seeing the Soviets for what they were:

When I ask myself why it is that in a very short time there remained no advocates of the Soviet system and - except for an entirely isolated group of men who were like a small island in the sea - no one who would not like a return to the prewar era, my answer is clear. Not because the prewar order (under Poland) was so good that we desired no change. Not because we could not live through a cold and hungry winter... The true reason is that no one was any longer master in his own home. Somebody had put a gag in our mouth, and spoken in our name. Somebody had intruded upon our life, and begun to boss us, and to push us around at his own will.

History repeats itself, as do the regrets.