> it's insane the state failed to support them in creating truly great things. Insane, and tragic. I blame Stalin. He created a state where the only people who

> it's insane the state failed to support them in creating truly great things. Insane, and tragic. I blame Stalin. He created a state where the only people who could stomach being an apparatchik had no moral center, where real power always flowed through backchannels, and where limits on official power were always provisional and informal. Putin is just the cynical dregs of this system.