TThis week’s interview with Josh Ireland is filled with history, mystery, and the macabre. Who needs fiction when the stories of human lives are more tantalizing than anything our imagination creates? Josh Ireland, a well-established author, spins a compelling narrative from the dreadful history of the USSR. The death of Trotsky was a consequence of a Communist regime built on violence and policies that led to mass suffering among its own population.

On the day of his assassination, Leon Trotsky—an international celebrity and feared communist—was feeding his rabbits and writing his biography of Stalin. Ramón Mercader, his assassin, had long cultivated the trust of Trotsky’s inner circle. Using an ice pick, he killed the revolutionary.

Josh Ireland deftly illustrates how the USSR and Stalin built an international network to ensure Trotsky’s death.

Vladimir Putin can be seen as an intellectual heir to this tradition of political violence. As he continues to bomb Ukraine in a brutal campaign, the ice pick becomes a fitting metaphor for that legacy.