The participants in this conversation were a middle-aged prime of life man whose degree course included a year on Comparative Communist Systems, and a child born three years after the Berlin Wall came down and who is now studying the Russian Revolution and the rise of Stalin.

See if you can guess which speaker is which.

– “Yugoslavia had maybe the most successful communist system, though it was only held together by Tito-”

– “Dorothy’s dog?”

– [after baffled pause] “what?”

– “Dorothy, in that film …”

– “The Wizard of Oz?”

– “… had a dog called-”

– “TOTO!”

– “Oh. Well. It’s only one vowel.”