Koba the Dread - post V

The end of this book is very personal with Amis mourning his sister and writing to his dead father and although not directly related he expresses the feelings that so many felt in Russia of loss and hopelessness. But he still manages to have a final pop at his friend who has communist sympathies which he believes cannot be supported by a right-minded informed individual.

Bullet points between ages 230 - 277

* Stalin was someone that wanted to humiliate his enemies as well as kill them and in the end the way he himself died was riddled with some sort of justice with his own doctor in chains and his stroke depriving him of the chance to use his power

* Then having gathered all his evidence Amis writs to Christopher Hitchens the communist sympathiser he described working with at the New Statesman at the start of the book and hammers home his point that there was no point at which it was a glorious revolution and it was always a murderous regime

* He then tells the moving story of his sister’s funeral and how he misses her and then ties that back in with the feelings of those who missed loved ones that died in the terror and how although Stalin said one death was a tragedy and one million a statistic all of them were tragedies

* He finishes by writing to his father telling him that although he saw the light eventually he was wrong to support Stalin for around 12 years and in so doing challenges a liberal generation that was suckered into turning a blind eye to the brutality of the regime in the USSR

A review will follow soon…