Writers and artists, lured home by promises of fat commissions and vast print runs, found themselves turning out unreadable novels and Socialist Realist murals.But Stalinism contained the seeds of its own destruction.
Mr. Thielen runs Bertelsmann's vast printing business, which generates $3.5 billion a year in sales but is worlds away from the creative, hit-driven businesses that have become the company's focus.
In spite of another year of relentless cost-cutting, layoffs, and the shuttering and sale of the vast printing plants where the company's flagship newspapers were once produced, profit, in reality, was down a "solid" 86% on the year before, to a wafer-thin $26m, one of the worst results on record.
The official publishing houses printed vast quantities of a tiny selection of titles.
The Federal Reserve printed vast amounts of additional money, creating a raft of borrowing programs for financial institutions and businesses.
Two years later, Mr. Nixon pressured Mr. Burns to help the economy by printing vast amounts of money, contributing to an era of crippling inflation.
Until the past few weeks, any criticism of the Bank's formula for recovery – printing vast amounts of electronic money and cutting interest rates to a record low – was met with the united backing of ministers, opposition parties and all but a handful of Tory backbenchers.
Over time, the official commitment to keep interest rates as close to zero as possible by printing vast sums of money and using them to purchase bonds is likely to make markets more volatile and to increase the probability of extreme events, including financial crashes.
A galvanizing orator, Bryan criss-crossed the country giving electric rallies while McKinley spent his vast campaign funds printing more than 200 million pamphlets (the US population was about 70 million at the time).
In the 18th century, the Qianlong Emperor purged thousands of texts and their authors for treasonous ideas while assembling a vast imperial collection to be printed.
