Nocturnes: Molotov's Visit To Some Gulag

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Seryddwr

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Nocturnes: Molotov's Visit To Some Gulag

The gulags, too, are part of Lenin's vision,
which was (and so they say, by his admission)
vengeance again the Czars (one hung his brother;
and Nicholas, not that one, was another
like him). The locomotive, History,
leaves in its steaming wake all kinds of slaughters:
the murder of the Czar's four teenaged daughters,
or peasants who did not yield us their land.
Those who defy the Party's least demand
will find themselves charged, tried, judged, and shot dead
with the most modernized efficiency.
I sign death warrants while I sip hot tea;
I work, late through the night, methodically.
Why do you think our very flag is red?

Author's Notes/Comments:

Vyacheslav Molotov, Stalin's foreign minister during World War II, was the most dapper and well dressed of the Bolsheviks and also, after Stalin, perhaps the most ruthless toward enemies---real and imagined. Lenin always looked threadbare in a dusty suit; Stalin looked like a rehabilitated drunk; Trotsky looked like a hippy from the 1960's (forty years before that time); but Molotov, in his three piece pinstriped suits and pressed white shirts, was the only Bolshevik who looked like an official of the government. He was no less a sonofabitch.