If you know anything about the Yalta Conference, it’s probably that picture. You know the one: three war-weary leaders, sitting side-by-side, Roosevelt with his toothy smile, Churchill all eyebrows — and Stalin, grinning under his moustache, visibly pleased at the …
Wes Streeting is a man for all factions
Well, comrades, nearly a quarter of the way into the century, how’s it going for socialism? Oh dear. Our humourless, uncharismatic party leader has decided to launch a purge, apparently. Anyone defying the official line will be expelled. Voices of …
Despotism is a beast of capitalism
As history speeds ahead in the Age of AI, it is also being thrown abruptly into reverse. Authoritarian rule is our current Zeitgeist, spreading across the globe from El Salvador to Myanmar.
This isn’t, in fact, all that surprising. The …
Putin’s plan to starve the world
Lviv, Ukraine
“In the old days, we had horses and cows and pigs and chickens. Now we are dying of hunger. In the old days, we fed the world. Now they have taken all we had away from us and …
The empathy of Joseph Stalin
Once a book-hoarder, always one. In 1899, a promising young poet and would-be revolutionary dropped out of the theological seminary in Tbilisi, Georgia. He took with him 18 library books, for which the monks demanded payment of 18 roubles and …
