Chavez and His Idiots By ANNE APPLEBAUM

Ninety years ago this week, a Bolshevik mob stormed the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, arrested the Provisional Government, and installed a "dictatorship of the proletariat" in its place.

Though the Russian revolution is no longer widely celebrated (not even by the Russians, who instead commemorate the expulsion of the Poles from Moscow in 1610, I felt it important to mark the occasion. In honor of the anniversary, I re-read "Ten Days that Shook the World," the famed account of the revolution written by John Reed, the American journalist and fellow-traveller. Then I re-read last week's press reports of the recent encounter between Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan president, and Naomi Campbell, the famed British supermodel, as well.

Chavez and His Idiots ...

Sphere: Related Content