<blockquote>Joy in the suffering of others was the first habit Apolek broke me of, sparing me a couple hundred hours in a Pavlov Box in the process. Class enemies saw us coming and attacked, or begged, or burst into tears, but I no longer singled them out for special brutality.
“Lenin says we need to punish the parasites,” I had said, the first day I was assigned to Apolek’s detail, when he urged restraint.
“Not with violence,” he had said. “Not with cruelty.”</blockquote>
➤ Does a remarkably good job of putting the reader into the mindset of focus on Apolek
