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Page 437
Cherny is still in the Kremlin, at least the titular ruler. He's been called a hero in the West for saving Russia from complete collapse, according to the headline today in the Washington Post. He promises that the rebels arrested after dynamiting the mausoleum will be fairly tried. Will he be able to keep his word?"
"Vincent, please, Anna," he said, smiling at her. "Well, you must have read his white paper. It was quite a statement. The Russian military is loyal. That the people want peace and democracy. That Russia is a law-governed state, just as it says in their constitution. But if you remember the constitution of the USSR, you could find all the protections in that, too. Except that no one with any power paid it the slightest mind," Kellner said.
"Morgan once told me that if you quoted any part of it to the authorities, you were immediately put down as a dangerous subversive. Is that true?"
Kellner nodded somberly. "True for years, Anna. Maybe things have changed. Aleksandr Cherny is the best man they have right now. He and his people are trying to govern legally, but there will be a next time, another Kondratiev, or worse."
Anna's face clouded and she started to protest. "After this fiasco, no one would be foolish enough"
Kellner interrupted her. "My dear, you come from the generation of the counterculture, and it has formed you. Both Plato and Confucius said, 'Let me write the songs the people sing, and you can write the laws.' You and your peers were beguiled by the notion that a country can experience a political and spiritual rebirth under the guidance of the uncorrupted. Every generation has that dream. The trouble is, that most of the uncorrupted don't stay that way, and those who do are devoured by their own revolutions. My generation was as idealistic as yours. And we got fascism and communism for our trouble, two sides of the same coin, and the inevitable war. Then came the cold war. Which we won, by the way, and oddly enough, that is one of the masons the world is in such

 
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