Russia: Marx, Lenin, and the Death of an Illusion - The Wise World Traveler: Becoming a Part of All that You Meet - page 136

workers' paradise, became paralyzed with fear and permeated by cynicism and bone-weary
resignation. (“They pretend to pay us; we pretend to work”.)
Figure 9.6. Josef Stalin (Library of Congress)
The year was 1953. As poetic justice would have it, an aging and perhaps half-mad
Stalin died somewhere in the vast halls of the Kremlin, stalked and shot by Lavrenti Beria,
his appointed head of the Soviet Secret Police. But, sorry to say, the truth is less poetic.
Stalin died comfortably in his own bed.
After Stalin came a succession of Soviet rulers, some short-time servers, some ruthless
and efficient. Among them is Nikita Khrushchev, who proclaimed the Soviet right to in-
tervene where socialist regimes are threatened, and sent tanks and troops to crush demo-
cratic uprisings in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968. Then, in 1988, Mikhail
Gorbachev consolidated his power by assuming the position of head of state after having
taken control of the Communist Party as Secretary General in 1985. Under his tutelage, in
1991, the Soviet Regime spiraled into final collapse. [128]