Sarah Paine

They're busy rebuilding.

But then when you get to the mid-70s, they're going into terminal decline.

So when Gorbachev comes to power in 1985, Soviet growth rates have been either 1% to 2% less than U.S.

growth rates for the preceding decade.

And the compounding effects of that are pretty horrendous.

In addition to other problems, Leonid Brezhnev was in power for 18 long years.

If you do that, you control the courts, army, and police, and then you can start expropriating everything and nationalizing things, and you can start eliminating other parties, and you make Romania trade only with the Soviet Union.

Okay.

All right, another toxic personality, Marshal Kliment Voroshilov, who, he's another part of the A-list purge team.

What had he done?

Signed loads of execution warrants to his military colleagues, officers, during the great purges.

What a great guy.

He's in Hungary, lucky people.

He's not quite as competent as the other one, because in the elections of 1945 in Hungary, the smallholders party wins.

Oops, they aren't communists.

He doesn't ever make that mistake again.

Then he's busily appointing communist ministers to different ministries, the land reform, taking over the civil service, getting the propaganda up and running, taking over youth and women's groups to infiltrate that way and arresting all sorts of non-communist politicians before he holds the 1947 elections, which of course the communists win.

And then afterwards, there's a really big purge, which 10% of the population faces tribunals.

Think of that.

If this room, 10% of you going to tribunals because Russians are in town?