Man of Stalin

Stalin was born in Georgia, Trotsky in Ukraine and Nikolai Bukharin in Moscow. Bukharin was an economist and after the 1917 revolution returned from exile to edit Pravda. After Lenin died, Stalin aligned with him to defeat Trotsky in the Politburo. In time, however, Bukharin's anti-statist tendencies brought him into conflict with Stalin. In particular he opposed Stalin's brutal collectivisation of agriculture, particularly in the Ukraine. Stalin exacted tribute from the farming peasantry and eliminated the price mechanism. Small wonder the Soviet Union had decades of grain shortages. Eventually Stalin destroyed Bukharin, subjecting him to a show trial and he was executed in 1938. Today, Georgia has aligned itself with the West while Ukraine is playing the middle course, despite the Orange Revolution. The QSL is from Radio Moscow's transmitter site in Simferopol, Ukraine. At one time you could send a reception report to Moscow asking it to mention the transmitter site on the QSL. I collected a whole bagful of these. (Orsha in Belarus is also on this one). Later it was revealed that it was by no means certain that these were indeed the sites. Today we watch agricultural prices oscillate at fantastic speeds. Wheat has shot up in recent weeks while cocoa is making a multi-year high. Sugar plunged after a huge run and rice is rolling over. It's a trader's paradise!