A puzzle still unsolved

Sara Moore would explain a rise to power as astonishing as any in history. A down-and-out house-painter and plebeian agitator becomes master at 43 of a country whose most influential classes expected its rulers to be of some social standing, and not to look absurd. The Marx, Lenin and Stalin, all in one, of his revolution; writing the manifesto, building the party; overthrowing the state after a lost war; then murdering his party rivals; becoming the subject of a ‘leadership cult,’ and then war leader; there differing only from Stalin in that he lost.

Take away any one part of the whole —defeat in 1918, inflation, the army and bourgeoisie owing no allegiance to the new republic, slump — and it probably would not have been possible. Put them all together, and it is the only way it could have been. Still, the world will never be able to explain something so unique.