Part II, From a Bird's Eye View, 1989-1991, Chapter 6, We Look, We Cry, Chapter 7, The Man on the Asphalt Mountain Summary and Analysis

At the beginning of Chapter 6, Ryszard is flying South to travel from Yerevan through Tbilisi and then to Baku. He is sitting next to Leonid P, a Moscow democrat that represents a new breed of people who are products of perestroika. They are not dissidents but instead members of the intelligentsia. The Moscow Democrat is different from the Western Democrat. He is interested only in how to defeat Communism. Many people also think that if Trotsky had beaten Stalin, democracy would have triumphed.

On the second half of the trip, his neighbor wonders whether Armenia would secede. Leonid prefers if the area would...