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reluctantly admitted that the Soviet Union in the 1980's
might be in more dangerous hands with the modern generation
of non-war veterans for the reason that their ideology did
not contain the idealistic content and that they would be
therefore less stable under pressure. Hitler could not have
run the purges of '36 and '38. Leninism is the name of
the ideology and the party is the source of power, and we will
read about that in a book he wrote in 1902 called "What is
to be Done?"

Arthur Koestler was born in Hungary in 1905, was a
European communist in the '30's, split with the party in '38,
got in trouble in Spain, and spent his productive literary
years in England. Commissar N.S. Rubashov is a fictional
character, but N.S. Rubashov the prisoner is real to me.
He is prison-wise and as the book shows him being arrested
early in the morning, it brings back memories of a similar
situation in January 1969. When he comes into the prison
he notices the acoustics, and the bricks, and thinks in terms
of communication and tapping. He notices the names on the
doors, and knows he is in an isolation block. He catalogs
the gait of the guards, as he must ultimately know whether
they are right-handed or left-handed and whether they have
good eyesight or not. And he has a sixth sense of knowing
when the people are using the peephole against him, like I
do in the office early in the mroning seeing the shade of light

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