Stalin's Professor - The awful, influential career of E. J. Hobsbawm.(communist and historian)

The present-day tyrant always sends out two kinds of emissaries: armed men and forgers of ideas; robust individuals and thin men with glasses and sunken chests; rowdies who beat the nation and other rowdies who give thanks for the beating in the name of the nation. The policeman is followed-and sometimes also preceded-by the liar.

Ferdinand Peroutka wrote these words, and they are to be found in Arch Puddington's informative book Broadcasting Freedom, about Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty. An outstanding Czech democrat, Peroutka was in a position to speak for the…