Red flags and red guards, professional vanguards,
Stalin and Lenin, and rule from the Kremlin,
The Central Committee has told me to sing:
‘These are a few of my favourite things.’

Strict iron discipline and militarization,
Subject the nation to centralization.
Deep in my conscience I hear someone say:
‘When will the state start to wither away?’

When the Tsar falls,
Commissar calls,
Or I’m feeling sad,
I simply remember from March to September
Freedom was to…
Be had.

Alan Carter, ‘My Favourite Things’, in Marx: A Radical Critique, Brighton, 1988, p. xiv