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I'm John Batser visiting with the author Joseph Tarigian.

His new book is a very careful look at the life of one revolutionary communist in the 20th century.

A critical way to look because this is not Mao, this is not dung, this is not the paramount leader.

This is a man who served them all, was persecuted,

jailed, his family was very much mistreated, and yet he remained a very devoted communist to making a revolution. Joseph Terrigion is here to help me understand this transformation of human beings into subservient to an

idea or an ideology or in this case the word revolution.

Sometimes, Joseph, while reading a book, I was reminded of Arthur Kessler's fiction about

darkness at noon.

There is a scene somewhere early on when our hero, she, is arrested

and persecuted, though he knows he is not guilty. He's usually persecuted for being a rightist.

I don't remember. It might have been being a leftist at this point. And he said, if they condemn

me, that is the party and it's right.

Do I compare that to how Kessler presented the show trials of the Soviet Union about the same time in the 1930s?

...