Decided to do a deep dive into the paroxysm of violence of the 20 Century’s interwar years in Eastern Europe. Kinda wish I hadn’t. Absolutely nightmarish stuff, but good perspective nevertheless on the capacity for societal depravity. Worth the read/listen, but def do so in small doses

I boned up on this rather macabre topic given the genocidal violence currently afflicting the Mideast. And one thing I found interesting was the uniqueness of Soviet Communism in world history. Hitler, as one historian described it, was like a Genghis Khan motivated by a modern tribal ideology and armed with modern killing machines. But the meticulous degree to which the Soviets tried to reprogram human nature seemed novel. Like a mass psychological torture campaign to break down society totally and utterly. Indeed, getting society to turn on itself at the most individual level — friend against friend, family member against family member — for achieving a collective good was novel. Victims couldn’t be expelled — they had to be broken down and remade, all of them, like a new societal factory setting. That’s not to say one of these evil ideologies was worse or better — all were monstrous. It’s about the novelty of a methodical attempt, driven by utopian ideals, to change what makes humans tick