alternatehistory.com

Hi all, hope I've put this in the right thread.

This is a question that's been nagging at me for a couple of weeks since a visit to the KGB museum in Prague- if anyone's going there for holidays, I urge you to check it out, even of the proprietor is a terrifying Stalinist who claims that a) only Soviet soldiers were killed in Operation Danube, b) Gorbachev was an American agent and c) Finland attacked Russia first in 1939.

Anyway, the guy, lunatic though he may be, has a wealth of fascinating stuff on display, including a metalwork beetle that Felix Dzerzhinsky apparently kept on his desk.

Packed full of cocaine.

In the words of the proprietor-
"Every 45 minutes, Iron Felix, is sniffing cocaine, for inspiration, you see?"

Now, cocaine is a horrible drug that brings out the worst of everyone's personality- arrogance, a complete lack of empathy and awareness ofconsequences - and crucially, paranoia.

Bearing in mind that cocaine was perfectly legal at that time with no stigma attached to it, it's easy to assume that if Dzerzhinsky was banging rocks, then Stalin, Beria et al. probably were to some degree also.

This begs a fascinating question- to what extent was their paranoia and the murderous actions that resulted from it - influenced by coke? How much might the drug have exacerbated the negative aspects of their personalities, and immured them from feeling any degree of guilt over the consequences of their actions?

"The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of a million is a statistic" - now I come to think about it, it does sound like the kind of arrogant bollocks cokeheads talk.

Anyone got any thoughts on this?
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