Communists: The Body Snatchers

The concluding days of Moscow's 22nd Party Congress were surrounded by a strange air of magic and the supernatural. The long list of speakers ritually cursing Stalin's memory was joined by frail, elderly Darya Lazurkina, who, as a fresh-eyed girl in 1902, had been a devoted pupil of Lenin. She was also one of the multitude of Reds purged by Stalin in 1937, and last week Darya told 5,000 rapt delegates that she had survived 19½ years of prison, labor camp and exile only because "I always had Lenin in my heart...

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