backed by a murderous secret police, now called the OGPU, and a network of concentration camps, the GULAG, Stalin mastered the propulsive politics of the Mass Age, mobilizing millions of people, particularly the young, in the Bolshevik project to destroy the old and build a new, more just world in the thrilling drama of revolution. But he also appreciated that modernity was a struggle of geopolitics, driven by mass weapons, mass killing, mass production and mass spectacle.
