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Through a geographical setting Czechoslovakia, Poland, and East Germany, Tina's book walks through human, political, legal aspect of communism; the human aspect being the most important, for it is the person who defines the "ism" they follow and not the other way around. Through the stories of the prisoners and the jailers, the spies and the spied, the communists and the dissidents, the shooters and the shot; Tina paints the beautiful grey spectrum of the right, wrong, and left.

In 2018, as the global liberal is leaning left, with a very good intention to solve the rising global inequality, it is worthwhile to look at the dangers if we tipped a little too left. And for my own, free market social-capitalist self, I hope the book saves me from tipping too much to the right.

Hope the history helps us find the right moderation, the balanced path: the middle road.

Russia's history, revolution, communism has always fascinated me. From my late teen years, I have seen the "coolest" of my friends and classmates incline towards left policies. In our early rebel years in liberal free-market capitalist societies, it is a very conforming thing to be moderate republican, a Miltonian capitalist, and hence the coolest amongst us are Socialist, Leftist, Liberal Left.

The "ism" trajectory of society has been feudalism -> imperialism -> fascism -> communism -> and now I guess is capitalism. We can either change it to solve the critical challenges of our times, or we can see it deteriorate and be replaced by some other "ism". No "ism" is completely right or wrong, it is what we make of it.