The New Soviet Man...Or Ape...Or Man-Ape?

Truth is stranger than fiction.

As reported in the Scotsman, Stalin literally tried to create The New Soviet Man:

THE Soviet dictator Josef Stalin ordered the creation of Planet of the Apes-style warriors by crossing humans with apes, according to recently uncovered secret documents.

Moscow archives show that in the mid-1920s Russia's top animal breeding scientist, Ilya Ivanov, was ordered to turn his skills from horse and animal work to the quest for a super-warrior.

According to Moscow newspapers, Stalin told the scientist: "I want a new invincible human being, insensitive to pain, resistant and indifferent about the quality of food they eat."

As you may have noticed, due to the lack of any Communist monkey overlords, that this project failed. But failure carried a high price in the Soviet Union:

Mr Ivanov was now in disgrace. His were not the only experiments going wrong: the plan to collectivise farms ended in the 1932 famine in which at least four million died.

For his expensive failure, he was sentenced to five years' jail, which was later commuted to five years' exile in the Central Asian republic of Kazakhstan in 1931. A year later he died, reportedly after falling sick while standing on a freezing railway platform.

History is silent as to whether his illness was due to acute lead poisoning, a common illness in Stalinist Russia.

The time has come to read Conquest, I think.