s manner.

Kossuth crossed his legs comfortably. "See, here, major, you are all
but naive in your understanding of our society. Let me, ah, brief you,
on the history of this part of the world, and the organization which
governs it. Have you studied Marx and Engels?"

"No," Joe said. "I've read a few short extracts, and a few criticisms,
or criticisms of criticisms of short extracts. That sort of thing."

* * * * *

Kossuth nodded seriously. "That's all practically anybody does any
more, even in the Sov-world where we give lip service to them. The
point I was about to make is that the supposed founders of our society
had nothing even remotely approaching this in mind when they did their
research. It evidently never occurred to either that the first
attempts to achieve the--" the Hungarian's voice went dry--"glorious
revolution, would take place in such ultra-backward countries as
Russia and China. The revolution of which they wrote presupposedly a
highly industrialized, technical economy. Neither Russia nor, later
China had this. The, ah, excesses that occurred in both countries, in
the mid-Twentieth Century, were the result of efforts to rectify this.
You follow me? The Party, in power as a result of the confusion
following in one case the First World War, and in the second case, the
Second World War, tried to lift the nations into the industrial world
by the bootstraps."

The colonel cleared his throat. "Let us say that some elements
resisted the sacrifices the Party demanded--the peasants, for
instance."

Joe said, dryly himself, "If I am correctly informed on Sov-world
history, you do not exaggerate."

"Exactly. Let us admit it. Stalin, in particular, but others too, both
before and following him, were ruthless in their determination to
achieve industrialization and raise the Sov-world to the level of the
most advanced countries."

Joe said, "This isn't exactly news to me, colonel."

"Of course not. Bear with me, I was but making background. To
accomplish these things, the Party had to, and did, become a strong,
ruthless, even merciless organization, with all power safely--from its
viewpoint, of course--in its hands. And, in spite of all handicaps and
setbacks, eventually succeeded in the task it had set itself. That is
the achieving of an industrialized nation."

The Hungarian pursed his lips. "But then comes the rub. Have you ever
heard, Major Mauser, of a ruling class, c