Dimes and Judas swing into a review of the book “Stalin’s War: A New History of World War II” by Sean McMeekin. An exhaustive exploration of Stalin’s agitation of international conflict for the Soviet Union’s benefit, it lays out a model for international relations that explains the role of Communism in the 20th century as much more realistically antagonistic. This leads into a discussion of the book “Building a Ruin” by Yakov Feygin. There they learn about the history of Soviet economic reform during the cold war, the market demands that handicapped their success, and how the Communist model was forced to cynically converge towards technocracy like everyone else.