next, "q&a" with author robert service. then, prime minister david cameron at the british house of commons. after that, another chance to see debate with the candidates running in arizona senate republican primary race. . . >> i got interested in this in

the late 1960's when i was a student. mainly because it was being talked about by all my friends at the time. i was doing languages and literature, ancient greek literature, russian literature. it was part of the atmosphere at the time. it started to suck money in and sat me away from literature. >> where were you located? >> england, cambridge. i loved tolstoy and all the great russian classics. i loved ancient greek tragedies. somehow, the blood got me. the really big question to answer about one of these amazing inventions of the 20th century, the one-party state, totalitarianism. how did it develop? what were its strengths to give

it endurance and what were its weaknesses? what were its terrorist? >> what years were you at cambridge? >> in the mid-60s. >> what were you studying? >> version literature. -- russian literature. i did not come at this as a historian. i became a historian. >> if i read correctly, the lennon book was in 2000 and the stolen boat was in 2004 and the trotsky book was in 2009? >> yes. they were gigantic figures of the staff of the soviet regime. they are the towering figures. they are all different. they have different talents.

they have different dangers. one of the unifying themes of my work is that, different as they are, they shared more than they held apart from each other. that was communism. this extraordinary invention that the russians obtained after 1917. >> defined communism according to what they thought it was supposed to be. >> communism as they saw it did not have anything to do with scandals. it did not have anything to do with long hair. it did not have anything to do with smoking pot. it did have something to do with rebellion. it did have something to do with ending exportation and oppression around the world. it was not diffuse. it was something that involves

systems, political order, economic regulation, cultural control, including censorship. it also included travel restrictions. he did not even let poets of the country if they thought that they might write a point of against your political system. this was not the sort of communism that was relaxed and open ended. it never could have held power anywhere. this is the sort of communism that involved power, it involved an obsession with power. it involved a big objective, which was to transform all of society, all of economics and all of politics and do it in a single generation. and do it not just in one country but all around the world. this system was a real

communism. it was not a pie in the sky communism of the mid-19th century. it was connected to what marx had developed in the middle of the 19th century. it took some of the ingredients of that doctrine and it added on russian fanaticism, the russian historical experience and practicality. these were very practical man, lenin, stalin and trotsky. >> can you go through those three names again? what is stalinism? >> it is a form of leninism. stalinism involves pervasive, permanent state terror on a scale that is probably neither london nor trotsky endorsed. it is a centralist politically

and economically of all the variants of communism. >> what is leninism? >> leninism is the idea that if you want a revolution, you have to use violence. there has to be an insurrection. you have to have a dictatorship. you absolutely have to have state terror. to initiate the movement towards something gentler in the future. the difference between the two men is that stalin did not really see that terror will ever cease to be necessary. in a sense, he was right. because men and women were always growing up with inconvenient ideas, inconvenient ambitions. what do you do about them? you maintain the dictatorship. >> what is a trotsky is? >> 8 trotskyist is someone that

gives priority to the spreading of the revolution around the globe as a means of ameliorating the conditions of the original country of the revolution, russia. trotsky thought that there were, indeed, problems. fundamental problems to do with russian historical backwardness that could be eradicated if only the revolution could be spread to germany from britain and america. to my mind, this was light headed thinking. the problems that existed in trotsky's variant of communism was not specific to russia. there are problems if you set up

a dictatorship if you use state terror that are going to arrive in any country. you can do it in belgium. you can do it in south africa. you can do it in peru. you would still get the same result. >> is there such a thing as a proxy -- as a trotskyite? >> of they hate being called back. it is a way of appeasing them. i call them trotskyists. it is ridiculous. >> like the republicans in this country calling the democrat party instead of the democratic party. >> it is a cultural irritant. if you really want to get them wound up problem, trotskyites. >> if you go to red square today, the lenin tune is still there for people who want to go

look at him, he is there. why is it there to this day? where is stalin buried and where is trotsky barry? >> lenin is still in the tomb because the post-communist government led by yeltsin wanted to get him out of the tomb and bury him, that was bad to popular opinion. london always comes out rather well and popular opinion surveys. he reassembled the land. he brought the old russian empire back together after 1917. russia was disintegrating. he is remembered as somebody who was tough, severe even. but he did the job of keeping russia together. all russian children in the 1920's, 30's and '40's were taught to look on uncle lenin as

a family friend. that is deeply ingrained. boris yeltsin did not dare to get him out of the tomb. trotsky is buried outside the center of mexico city. his casket is under the space where he was assassinated. >> what about stalin? >> stalin is someone who died in 1953, probably peacefully. it was probably the nine and medical neglect that killed him off. >> where is the very? >> he was incinerated and his ashes remained below the

grimaldi. he went into disgrace in the late 1950's after his death. the soviet leaders did not know what to do with his remains, so they hit on this device of moving him out of the lenin, stalin mausoleum, incinerating him and just putting his ashes below the kremlin wall. >> i want to put on the screen a chart that we made up based on your book. that we can get some idea of the time frame. you can see at the top, the years of tenure all the way up to 1950. you have lenin who was going in 1870. right below that, trotsky, going in 1879 and right below that stalin going in 1878.

in the 1917 era, lenin was 47, trotsky 38, and stalin 39. lenin died at age 53, trotsky died at age 60. lastly, stalin was 1953 at age 74. talk about the deaths of those three men. what were the circumstances are round london? where did he die and what caused it? >> lenin and chronic health problems. his impatience came from his presumption that he might die young. he said that all revolutionary leaders died young. he had problems with his heart. he may have had syphilis. he certainly had very, very

terrible problems with his health. more or less, as soon as he took power. he went off for periods of convalescence in a sanatorium south of moscow. from 1922 onwards, he was a cripple. he could barely talk. he wrote a testament in which he called for the removal from post of responsibility, joseph stalin. he predicted the possibility of a conflict between two potential individuals. one was stalin and one was trotsky. he had objections to both of them. ultimately, he had the biggest objection to joseph stalin. but when he was sick, what was

his role in the soviet union and what was going on in the world? >> in the early 1920's, the soviet union was in a bad way. in have come through a civil war. the country was exhausted. the economy was ruined. in order to restore the situation, lenin introduced a new economic policy and he also opened doors to trade with the west. this was awfully unpopular with his party comrades. this seemed to them as a the trail in the ideologies of communism. -- a trail in the ideology of communism. this temporary compromise was essential for the survival of the regime. >> how they relate at that time? where were they in 1922? >> stalin was the general secretary of the party, which

was thought to be a mainly administrative and not a political post. if you have a one-party state, and the party is doing the governing, it is not an administrative job to be the administrative head of the party. you are about to have your fingers in every piece of pie of politics. if that state lays down the rules on censorship and on the diffusion of culture, you are there, too. lenin did not quite understand this. he did not quite understand the architecture of the communist theory that he had put up. heat under estimated the potential for one-man rule by stalin that was to come into existence in the early 1930's.

he tended to set stalin against trotsky because trotsky seemed the more likely successor to practically everyone in the world. trotsky was a brilliant orator. he wrote like an angel. i think anyone who reads his autobiography cannot fail to be impressed by the first half of that autobiography. he is a master of russian prose and style. " how did those three men relate in that 1922 era? were they in the same office? for the all in the kremlin? did they all have jobs? what's lenin was in the sanatorium -- >> lenin was in the sanatorium and he was issuing general guidelines of policy. stalin was carrying them out. increasingly, he was carrying them out to his own wishes rather than to the desires of lenin. although lenin suspected

trotsky, thought him a very vain, fought him awfully arrogant, fought him lacking in judgment, he turned to trotsky in a way to winning back stalin. lenin was a great user of people. he knew how to pat people on the shoulder and make them go good about himself as -- about themselves. he knew that he could get through to trotsky and use them against stalin. >> on page 473, you have what is a letter to stalin from women -- from london. -- from lenin. i suspect this is near the end.

-- >> what brought that on? >> when lenin was in the sanatorium in 1922 and 1923, he was making himself will by his attempts to get rid involved in politics. the doctors told him and the

political leadership agreed with them, that he should ease out of politics. but lenin's wife knew that politics was the air that law and in brief -- when it breached. without politics, he was nothing. the man who was in charge of the medical regime of lenin was none other than stalin and when stalin found out that lenin's wife was doing this, he used all of the uncouth methods, all of the obscene language of which he was a master. lenin was a communist revolutionary. but in his private life, in his private habits, he was a middle-

class victorian. he did not use foul language. you did not smoke in the house. actually, in some ways, he was anti victorian because they all smoked in the house those days. this sort of uncouth behavior was completely unacceptable to lenin. stalin was giving him a hard time politically. stalin was getting more and more boisterous, soul and then went for him. lenin went for him because he had always thought of stalin as an errand boy. it was turning out that he was another lenin 3 >> on a similar high, alcohol was london, how cold was stalin, and help paul was trotsky? >> lenin and stalin were about the same height, 5 ft. 6. trotsky was a little bit taller.

none of them were giants. the man that had the greatest physical presence was trotsky. if you look at pictures of him, i collected fantastic pictures from the archives, about one- fifth of what is left in the world is in california. it is not in moscow. it is in california. you can see from these pictures that he had an almost matinee star physical presence. he could talk the hind legs off a dante and he did not need notes. the most he ever did with preparation for a speech was to have a tiny little memoir in his hand. there are speeches that we read from 1917. they do not come from the bureau

of trotsky, the come from the reporters who were riding down this in longhand. when trotsky wrote his memoirs, he had to go back to his notes. he only had little odds and ends 3 >> let's go back to our chart. again, we divide this. lenin did not last very long. he only lasted about six years. >> yes. >> what was the importance of 1917? what happened? >> 1917 was one of the turning points in modern world history. the communist party came to power. it left the cafes and it left the library and it came to power and it came to power in a big country at a time of war. >> how big was the country then? was it called the soviet union? >> no, it was the former russian

empire and it covered 16 of the world's earth's surface -- one sixth of the world's surface. it allowed the germans to concentrate forces on the western front against the british, the french and the americans. even more importantly, it brought into existence a totally new way of running society. it brought in to see -- into existence a one-party society that depended on state terror. brought into existence a system of rule that penetrated not only politics but the whole of the economy and the whole of culture and all of social life. it removed civic freedoms from anyone associated with the old days, with the old ways.

>> did that include the ukraine and kazakhstan and all that? also, georgia and those states, were the all included in the governing unit? what's when the war happened in 1918 through the early 1920's, first the communists took over russia and then they took over the ukraine again. they did not take over estonia, with u.n. and others, but they did take over georgia and they did take back central asia and it took over the whole of siberia. essentially, the russian empire was reconstituted. what's lenin was going and where? >> he was going in the boulder reason. what's in russia? >> he was a georgian.

>> what is the difference? >> it is the difference between an englishman and an albanian. the georgians were a small nation to the south of the mountain range. they speak an entirely different language and this is why the other communist leaders looked down on stalin because russia was not his first language and he was always making slight mistake and he had a heavy asking -- heavy accent it was trotsky was going where? >> what we now call the ukraine. it was a farming family. he tended to play down a lot of aspects of his early life. he tended to draw a veil over the enormous commercial success that his extraordinary father had been building up this form

in the south of the country. his father was jewish. that was not the most convenient national religious group to belong to in the russian empire. his father triumphed over the obstacles in his path and he built a huge farm. >> and trotsky's our original name was -- >> >> he changed it like all lot of people did. >> let's go back to the lenin death. we started in 1922 in a sanitarium. what were the circumstances of his death? >> if we go back to the era when london was dying, he tried to set down guidelines for how the communist state would operate when he departed. he knew that he was dying. and he knew that not only was

his physique going, but his brain was going. lenin did not really know what would be done with him when he died. what was done with him was that he became the object of a quasi religious cults. this was of political convenience. lenin was thought of by the peasant as their friend. in fact, he had done a lot of damage to the peasant economy, but the peasants did not see it that way. they saw it as being lenin having given them the land. he was a rallying point for a substitute religion because the communist did not just want to change the practical way that society was run, it wanted to change the belief system. it wanted to get rid of religion, entirely. it found that this could not be

done without substituting it with something else. he became the object of a quasi -- religious cult. -- a quasi-religious cult. it was completely impossible for any soviet leader to willingly criticize any aspect whatsoever of women's life and career. >> who was with him when he died? >> his wife was there at the sanatorium with him and the last leader to see him was nikolai. he was someone who eventually was killed by joseph stalin in the 1930's. >> let's go back to our chart again. we can see where mr. linen was

age 53 when he died. the next one to die on the list is trotsky. there is that time between 1924 and 1940 when he died, about 16 years. what happened to trotsky? >> as soon as lenin died, and even before lenin died, a battle took place for the succession. it was a battle of personality, but also a battle of ideas and a battle of policy. stalin preferred to concentrate on building communism in a single country. at trotsky of wanted to expand communism to foreign countries and that battle went on until trotsky's comprehensive political defeat in 1927 and his deportation from the country. this was regarded by stalin as a

mistake. they should not have let him out of the country. he regretted letting him out of the country from abroad, first in turkey and in parts of europe and and eventually in mexico, trotsky tried to run an ideological campaign against stalin from abroad, from exile. >> how did he do it? >> he did it by writing furiously. he got onto the american newspapers, the european newspapers. he made appeals and the press. -- in the press. he was a wonderful propagandist. he was happier with a pen than with any other instrument in daily life. >> let's look at some video. i found this on youtube. a lot of people can see what he looked like, and he reads in english. it is not very long. >> it is built upon false

confessions. there is no history more terrible than the moscow trials of the communists. these trials developed not from communism, not from socialism, but from stalinism. that is now my principal task. it to reveal the truth and to demonstrate. >> what are you seeing there? >> i am seeing a man that bought he spoke english better than he did. if he had been speaking in french, especially if he had been speaking in german, you

would have seen greater fluency. he comes across a bit like a mad scientist in the 1950's. >> that is in mexico. how did he get to mexico and why? >> eventually, the turks did not want him. the french did not want him. and the scandinavian did not want him. >> why not? what's because -- >> because stalin put pressure on them. the germans would not have him at all. he wanted to create a dictatorship in germany. what country in the world would say yes, come in and be our guest. he was always an uncomfortable person to have in the country. the revolution in mexico was the only haven for him by the end of the 1930's. a very regretfully, that is where he went. >> how many years was he in mexico?

what's he was in mexico for three years. why was before stalin's political police caught up with him. >> what were the circumstances of his death? fo>> a trained assassin was sent out from moscow with the team. he was told to seduce one of the many young women who worked as a secretarial assistant for trotsky. he did this very effectively. he invaded his way into the villa on a regular basis in mexico city. one day, one sunny august 1940 afternoon, he turned up in a macintosh, claiming that he had heard that it was going to rain.

>> a macintosh being a trench coat. >> a trench coat, a raincoat. in that raincoat, he had a huge dagger. and also, the end of an ice ax. he had to possibilities in mind. >> both in his coat? >> both in his coat. no one noticed that this was an odd way of arriving on a day that was as funny as it was. >> described the bill. >> the bill was like a fortress by them. -- of the villa was like a fortress by them. there was an alarm system. there were a guard post outside the villa. there were raised guard posts at the corners of the the lavilla. inside the compound, it was like

a fortress. it had ragged hutches that camp rabbits. it was very cheap to feed all of his followers that would sit at his feet. they kept chickens, group cactuses, grew flowers. he liked that aspect of life. >> was his wife with him? what's his wife was with him to request, many years? what's his wife had been with him since the first years of the 20th century, long-suffering wife. a wife who idolize him who very rarely contradicted him. she was really a saint. >> in those three years, he had an affair with a figure that a lot of americans know. >> he indeed had an affair that practically destroyed the message -- the marriage.

it was diego rivera, the painter, that had invited trotsky to seek refuge at their house in italy. right towards the end of his life, trotsky behaved very badly to his wife. but she stuck with it. she had chosen the life of being married to the greatest revolutionaries of modern times and she did not have regret. >> in 1940, what did people, including americans, think if they were trotsky thyist, what e they getting out of it? >> most of those that existed in

france and a few dozen men the united kingdom and some hundreds in the united states. the ones in the united states were the most trolls' some of the lot. -- the most troublesome of a lot. they could not stomach trotsky's support for stalin's a geostrategic policies at the beginning of the second world war. a lot of them could not see why trotsky condoned stalin's invasion of finland. a lot of them could not see why trotsky recommended that no american soldier it should fight on the allied side in the second world war. there were tremendous battles

between these young trotskyists. he treated them with disdain, with total disrespect. that side of trotsky came out and his followers, to this day, try to draw a curtain across it. it was an embarrassment. ultimately, trotsky believe in the fundamentals of leninism. the one-party state, the one ideology state. the state that seeks its own interests at the sake of the world. trotsky was a very flexible thinker for the communist leader in the middle of the 20th century. what i am trying to say in my boat is that he was not being very flexible at all.

what 1940, august. stalin sends his henchmen in to kill him. >> yes. >> he comes to the villa. he has the trench coat on three he has the ice axe in his pocket. what does he do? what's he comes in for a discussion about politics. he has written a draft article which is a pretty pathetic article and trotsky, in the way that he had, he was a teacher, he agreed to give a brief tutorial to him about this draft. as trotsky is peering over the draft, he gets to his feet and are talking. he makes a snap decision that he will use the ice ax. sometimes it is translated as an

ice pick. but an ice pick is something that a talk show we're uses. this is a huge ice ax. >> we have a photograph that people can see. >> he buried it in the back of the head of trotsky. it did not kill him. but it morally wounded him. he struggled for life. >> what happened after he hit him? was the unconscious? >> he was not unconscious, he was writing. he was screaming. the guards came in and they laid hold of the assassin. the police turned up. trotsky was under constant surveillance by the mexican police. the u.s. consulate was keeping an eye on him, too. journalists were all over him all of the time in mexico city.

so the assassin is taken into captivity. he denies his real identity. he denies having anything to do with the soviet union. he is put on trial and he is kept in prison for decades, always denying that he had any connection with joseph stalin. he said, in fact, that he was a disappointed follower of trotsky. >> what happened to him once he got out of jail? >> he went back to the soviet union. >> did he ever confess that he was a stalin -- >> he was given rank in the kgb. he was awarded prizes and metals, but he could not stand the soviet union. he could not stand living there. this was not the place it was built up to be in his imagination. he moved to cuba. >> what did stalin think he accomplished by taking trotsky

out? >> you have to say, i think, that for too many resources were put to the extermination of the life of this one single individual. a man who had, at most, a few thousand followers in the world. his message barely ever got through to the u.s.s.r. in the late 1930's. trotsky was politically dead before he was physically dead. stalin was a bit of an obsessive. if you wanted to get rid of a problem, you exterminated the manifestation of the problem. >> how long did he live and what was the funeral like? >> the funeral was a great mexican state occasion. crowds turned out to see the

hearse going through the city. people turned out who were catholics for the death of a militantly atheist revolutionary leader. this is one of the aspects of trotsky's life that you have to take account of. what people thought trotsky was was not what he had been. it was a tremendous a session -- it was a romantization. most people who had written about trotsky had fallen in love with him. all those that have not really gotten trotsky out of their head. i try to read every single thing that he wrote and i tried to

read the draft of everything. the drafts of his autobiography in the hoover institution archives are amazingly helpful. >> do you speak or read russian? >> yes, you cannot do this without -- that is another problem with a lot of the trotsky biographies. they are written by people who do not read the originals. the translation of his works are not done in a good fashion. >> whoever is on the campus of stanford. how did they get the trotsky biography in there and had it ever been published? what's it was published. >> they have the actual script? >> this is the most amazing thing to handle. he had a very peculiar way of writing. an eccentric way of writing. during the day, he would take lots of water sized pieces of

paper. at night, when the secretary wrote home to his temple, because he was exiled on an island off the turkish mainland, he physically stuffed the pages into a big long scroll. they had each chapter rolled up into a squirrel. in other words, when he edited what he dictated in the morning, he like to see the brunt of it. he had an esthetic -- >> he would read the original. it allows you to rollout out and read it? >> they did. the introduce restrictions on what you can do now to these extraordinary artifacts. >> do you have any idea how many people have read this? what i am the only one who has read the drafts of the

autobiography. it was a thrill. it was a magical experience for it would be hysteria. >> when did you do it? next two or three years ago. >> how much time did it take you to do it? >> thankfully, he wrote in a very legible hand. i look at the manuscript of the great dictators of the soviet union. lenin did not write legibly. stalin wrote legibly, but to have to work at. trotsky was a bit of an artist and he wrote very clearly. you can read it quite easily. >> let's go back to our chart. to down, want to go. lenin died in 24. trotsky is dead at age 60 in 1940. but all through this process, stalin is still alive and he

lasts until he is 74 years old in 1953. is he in charge of russia during that whole time, and how would to encapsulate what it was like. give us a capitalization of what you think this time was like in the soviet union. >> stalin introduced stability to the ussr. it was a sort of stability of chaos because people live in a whirlwind of experience. the farms were collectivized. all of the industry was taken into state ownership. the cultural system was regimented. the whole society was motorized -- and militarized.

the apex of this political system was that single figure, joseph stalin. he was more dominant over the political system that even lenin had been in soviet russia because he had stabilized that system. he had made it possible for that system to endure. people started to wear uniforms wear uniforms had not been invented before. if you work for the foreign ministry, you have to wear a uniform. you were a cog in the machinery of state and the state in golf society. -- the state engulfed society. it reached its peak in the stalin years in the 1930's and 1940's. >> how many people did he kill? what's we do not really know for sure.

but it is millions. millions disappeared. >> do you agree with the 50 million figure? what i do not think that anybody knows. there are lots of ways of killing people. you can put them up against the wall and shoot them. you can put them into the black and starve them, but you can also settle them in inhospitable regions of the country. you can run the agriculture and deprived even the free citizenry of all the nutrition that they need. you can mangle your foreign policy and do a deal with adolf hitler and prepare your country for war in 1941 and you have to evacuate territories where the germans will enter and kill even

more people. in this respect, the number can be even higher than the one that you just mentioned. >> let's go to the end of his life. lenin is buried in the tomb in red square. stalin's ashes are there. trotsky is in mexico. what was the end of stalin's life like? >> stalin was exhausted by his involvement in the second world war. he was an old man before he was old. he had to russian his interventions in politics. one of the reasons he was so deliberately terrified to his associates was that he could not afford to keep intervening on a daily basis with the intensity that he had done in the 1930's and 1940's. he spent his holidays in the south of the country.

these are like medieval fortresses. these were gigantic fortresses. he got on the telephone to his subordinates and the concentrated on the guidelines of policy. >> what was his health like? what's his health was terrible. a very brave dr. said that he must ease off. he was going to kill himself if he kept that pace was only at half pace. he had the doctor arrested. this was a state secret, the declining physical health of joseph stalin. joseph stalin did not intend for anyone to learn of it. a medical judgment almost cost the doctor his life. >> when did he know that he was

not going to live very long? what's biting 1950's. when the 19th party congress met in 1952, for the very first otime, it was not stalin that made the speech did it was one of his associates. >> coup was it? >> his place was on the platform. his health was so poor, his frailty was so obvious, he did not want to expose himself and a way that would be involved in a long speech. everyone knew something was wrong with stalin when they saw him. even though he was sitting on the podium. >> what was it like at the very end? >> at the very end, most people who were alive in 1953 had been

brought up. most of them were young and most of them died in the 1950's or the second world war. most people in their 20's or '30's or younger had no no other ruler than joseph stalin and they have been taught to revere him. when the day of the funeral came, there was a huge crowd of people pushing towards red square. a lot of them got trampled to death in the rush. even in death, joseph stalin, for once, inadvertently was a killer. >> what was the story around his death -- i remember reading in your book that he would not sleep in places he was expected to because he was afraid that somebody would find him and kill him. in the last couple of weeks,

what was going on? >> you are right. he was very suspicious. if you go around these fortresses, you can see how many beds that he had upstairs and downstairs. they are quite modest. he was not a man that wanted a luxurious lifestyle. he had his guards who he spoke to who had a regime of supervision. his health started breaking up. there is more than a suspicion that the rest of the political leadership decided that he was so dangerous to them all, personally, that they would not rush to get the doctors out to see him. there is a good reason to think that the secret police specialists, especially one

individual that was under threat from stalin at the time, decided that the nine medical neglect would be the key to the personal survival of his successor. i do not think that he was actually killed, but i do not think that is natural death was unassisted. >> but at the very last moment, he was in a bedroom and they were afraid to go in and looked at him. >> they were afraid to go in and look at him. i think that they made the excuse that they were afraid to go in and look at him because they made it very awkward for the doctors and for the guards to go in either. he was a dangerous man at the very end. he was turning on all of his close associates. what would anyone do in those circumstances? whose death sentence to you prefer? that of the dictator or that of

yourself? >> we have to wind this up. in your book, you write that the bolsheviks were universal militants -- >> we only have a minute. what happened? >> there was a ruthlessness that blinded them to the dangers of using the methods of building that paradise. what sort of paradise was it where the paradise always had to have walls? paradise is somewhere where anyone would want to live voluntarily. that was not the case in the old

u.s.s.r. of lenin, stalin and trotsky. >> last question. what is next for robert service? >> i am doing two big books. i am doing one on russia and the west in the russian revolution and i will do a second on the soviet union and the west at the end of the cold war. i think there are lots of big questions to be answered about the international dimensions that i have not done enough about. >> as we said, the three books that we have been talking about today are the books about lenin , the 2004 book on stalin, and just recently the 2009 to vote . thank you for joining us.

>> thank you for having me. for a dvd copy of this program call 1-877-662-7726. for free transcripts or to give us your comments about this program, visit us at q&a.org. episodes are also available as podcasts. >> watch more on our web site with trotsky authored robert service. he discusses his archives in russia visit. you can fine that at c-span.org. >> to night, prime minister's questions with british prime

minister david cameron on the costs of reorganizing the national health service and updating the minimum wage system. also, the second and final arizona senate primary debate. following that, a news conference announcing the replacement for late west virginia senator robert byrd. later, another chance to see " q&a"with robert service. >> congress is in session this week. the house gavels in tomorrow at 12:30 p.m. eastern for general speeches with legislative business beginning at 2:00 p.m.. house leaders plan to work on two pieces of legislation stalled in the senate. the war supplemental and the extension of jobless benefits. live coverage of the house on c- span. the senate resumes business at 2:00 p.m. for one hour of general speeches. then, at 3:00 p.m., work