6 December 1930

It has been quite a while! I ended up spending more time in the Soviet Union than I had originally planned (my first thoughts were to get out of there as quickly as possible!).

Nikolai Bukharin ended up being Father’s cousin. I have no idea how that man at the post office could have figured it out, but he somehow made the connection. I stayed with Nikolai for weeks, and got to know him quite well. He received quite a lot of attention from a girl named Anna while I was there . . . I am interested to see if that develops into anything!

I am now in Italy, the boot of wonder that I have always wanted to explore. Unfortunately I am on a mission, and won’t be able to do much exploring, but nonetheless I am here! On the streets here, the gossip is all about a man by the name of Benito Mussolini; people are all talk about “IL DUCE”. In fact, people really seem to like him. We all know that it is a terrible time in the world right now; people everywhere are suffering because of the economy. However, the Italians don’t seem to have it as bad! The economy here is different, in that it is mixed . . . the there are elements of both command economies that I have seen as well as supply and demand, and it seems to be beneficial. One of the things that Mussolini has promised is financial security, and people love it! He gives a great many speeches that attract everyone.

On another note . . . I discovered another relation. It came about in a strange way. I was surrounded by a huge crowd at one of Mussolini’s speeches, and the hordes of people were overwhelming me so I snuck out the back to get some air. When I got to the back of the pack I saw a couple of men wearing black, standing by a couple of trees, smoking cigars and looking mysterious. Naturally, I investigated. In hindsight, I probably shouldn’t have, but it didn’t turn out too badly. They made me promise that I would not divulge any details on this blog, but to out a long story short there is some mafia blood recorded on my family tree now, and Toothless Tony is the first cousin I have discovered. These guys were distressed, because Mussolini has been trying to squelch them out for some time now. They’ve needed counseling, but I didn’t know what comforting words I could provide for them, so I left as soon as I could.