Books: Excerpt

""A lover of my fellow creatures, a mere nameless worker for the cause—I aspire to be no more. In none of the textbooks of socialism is human affection expressly forbidden.'

'Is,' asks Vol, 'human affection part of the substructure or of the superstructure?'

'That will have to be worked out,' Trotsky says. 'Comrade Stalin is good at that sort of thing.'

Chud says: 'I fear, Lev Davidovich, I fear—'

'Fear Comrade Stalin? What nonsense.'

'I fear that you will be absorbed by this city and its decadent culture. What shall we tell them in Russia? That...