Josh Ireland

And after that, he comes to the Soviet Union again, the first time he's ever been there.

So this is a weird thing in that, you know, he's given his life for this country.

He's given 20 years of his life.

He's killed a person, but he's never been there.

You know, he's not, he's not even a member of the NKVD officially until he arrives there.

Like, unlike so many fellow travellers, like when he actually encounters what,

you know soviet your soviet union is actually like the sort of grim boring repressive reality of uh so i think he arrives when it's the beginning of the brezhnev regime you know when it's beginning to decay but it's still malicious it's still you know everyone is there's a no you still there's still very very fierce limits what you can and can't say where you can and can't go but you know there's no the optimism and the excitement and the

The passion that sort of animated the early years of the Soviet Union has disappeared, is ossified.

And he wants to leave.

After a while, again, he gets to Cuba.

And there he dies of an astonishingly painful bone cancer, which a lot of people think was actually brought on by a poisoned watch that the NKVD gave him.

So, I mean, they get everyone in the end.

And he's buried as a hero.

But yeah, it's a very sort of Russian end to a Spanish story.