Bolshevism, Stalinism and the Comintern

Bolshevism, Stalinism and the Comintern

Author: N. LaPorte

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2008-07-24

Total Pages: 329

ISBN-13: 0230227589

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Bringing together leading authorities and cutting edge scholars, this collection re-examines the defining concepts of Stalinism and the Stalinization odel. The aim of the book is to explore how the common imperatives of a centralized movement were experienced across national boundaries.


The Oxford Handbook of the History of Communism

The Oxford Handbook of the History of Communism

Author: S. A. Smith

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2014-01-09

Total Pages: 834

ISBN-13: 0191667528

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The impact of Communism on the twentieth century was massive, equal to that of the two world wars. Until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, historians knew relatively little about the secretive world of communist states and parties. Since then, the opening of state, party, and diplomatic archives of the former Eastern Bloc has released a flood of new documentation. The thirty-five essays in this Handbook, written by an international team of scholars, draw on this new material to offer a global history of communism in the twentieth century. In contrast to many histories that concentrate on the Soviet Union, The Oxford Handbook of the History of Communism is genuinely global in its coverage, paying particular attention to the Chinese Revolution. It is 'global', too, in the sense that the essays seek to integrate history 'from above' and 'from below', to trace the complex mediations between state and society, and to explore the social and cultural as well as the political and economic realities that shaped the lives of citizens fated to live under communist rule. The essays reflect on the similarities and differences between communist states in order to situate them in their socio-political and cultural contexts and to capture their changing nature over time. Where appropriate, they also reflect on how the fortunes of international communism were shaped by the wider economic, political, and cultural forces of the capitalist world. The Handbook provides an informative introduction for those new to the field and a comprehensive overview of the current state of scholarship for those seeking to deepen their understanding.


The Devil in History

The Devil in History

Author: Vladimir Tismaneanu

Publisher: University of California Press

Published: 2014-03-14

Total Pages: 334

ISBN-13: 0520282205

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The Devil in History is a provocative analysis of the relationship between communism and fascism. Reflecting the author’s personal experiences within communist totalitarianism, this is a book about political passions, radicalism, utopian ideals, and their catastrophic consequences in the twentieth century’s experiments in social engineering. Vladimir Tismaneanu brilliantly compares communism and fascism as competing, sometimes overlapping, and occasionally strikingly similar systems of political totalitarianism. He examines the inherent ideological appeal of these radical, revolutionary political movements, the visions of salvation and revolution they pursued, the value and types of charisma of leaders within these political movements, the place of violence within these systems, and their legacies in contemporary politics. The author discusses thinkers who have shaped contemporary understanding of totalitarian movements—people such as Hannah Arendt, Raymond Aron, Isaiah Berlin, Albert Camus, François Furet, Tony Judt, Ian Kershaw, Leszek Kolakowski, Richard Pipes, and Robert C. Tucker. As much a theoretical analysis of the practical philosophies of Marxism-Leninism and Fascism as it is a political biography of particular figures, this book deals with the incarnation of diabolically nihilistic principles of human subjugation and conditioning in the name of presumably pure and purifying goals. Ultimately, the author claims that no ideological commitment, no matter how absorbing, should ever prevail over the sanctity of human life. He comes to the conclusion that no party, movement, or leader holds the right to dictate to the followers to renounce their critical faculties and to embrace a pseudo-miraculous, a mystically self-centered, delusional vision of mandatory happiness.


The Communist International and US Communism, 1919-1929

The Communist International and US Communism, 1919-1929

Author: Jacob Zumoff

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2014-08-21

Total Pages: 455

ISBN-13: 9004268898

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Since the Cold War, most historians have set up an opposition between the “American” and “international” aspects of early American Communism. This book examines the development of the Communist Party in its first decade, from 1919 to 1929. Using the archives of the Communist International, this book, in contrast to previous studies, argues that the International played an important role in the early part of this decade in forcing the party to “Americanise”. Special attention is given to the attempts by the Comintern to orient American Communists on the role of black oppression, and to see the struggle for black liberation and the fight for socialism as inextricably linked. The later sections of the book provide the most detailed account now available of how the Comintern, reflecting the Stalinisation of the Soviet Union, intervened in the American party to ensure the Stalinisation of American Communism.


The Bolsheviks and the Chinese Revolution, 1919–1927

The Bolsheviks and the Chinese Revolution, 1919–1927

Author: Alexander Pantsov

Publisher: University of Hawaii Press

Published: 2000-02-01

Total Pages: 354

ISBN-13: 9780824823276

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The opening of former secret Soviet archives has broadened the documentary base for a new study of Bolshevik policy in China on the eve of and during the revolution of 1925–1927. The aim of this work is to incorporate these new documents into a scholarly study and on that basis to explore the essence of the Russian Bolsheviks’ main concepts concerning the Chinese revolution. The work was designed to determine the influence of these concepts exerted on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) through an analysis of the way various adherents of the Chinese Communist movement perceived them. The primary sources used in this book include: previously unpublished archival material on the Comintern, the All-Union Communist Party (Bolshevik), and the CCP, reflecting the theories and political practice of Leninism, Trotskyism, and Stalinism, and of the Russian and Chinese Left Oppositions; works by Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky, and other leaders of the Executive Committee of the Communist International and the CCP published in East Asia, Europe, and the U.S.; Comintern journals and bulletins; private interviews carried out by the author with participants and eyewitnesses of the events treated in the book; and memoirs of various Chinese revolutionaries.


The Cambridge History of Communism

The Cambridge History of Communism

Author: Norman Naimark

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2017-09-21

Total Pages: 700

ISBN-13: 9781107133549

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The second volume of The Cambridge History of Communism explores the rise of Communist states and movements after World War II. Leading experts analyze archival sources from formerly Communist states to re-examine the limits to Moscow's control of its satellites; the de-Stalinization of 1956; Communist reform movements; the rise and fall of the Sino-Soviet alliance; the growth of Communism in Asia, Africa and Latin America; and the effects of the Sino-Soviet split on world Communism. Chapters explore the cultures of Communism in the United States, Western Europe and China, and the conflicts engendered by nationalism and the continued need for support from Moscow. With the danger of a new Cold War developing between former and current Communist states and the West, this account of the roots, development and dissolution of the socialist bloc is essential reading.


Mass Culture in Soviet Russia

Mass Culture in Soviet Russia

Author: James Von Geldern

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 1995-12-22

Total Pages: 548

ISBN-13: 9780253209696

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This anthology offers a rich array of documents, short fiction, poems, songs, plays, movie scripts, comic routines, and folklore to offer a close look at the mass culture that was consumed by millions in Soviet Russia between 1917 and 1953. Both state-sponsored cultural forms and the unofficial culture that flourished beneath the surface are represented. The focus is on the entertainment genres that both shaped and reflected the social, political, and personal values of the regime and the masses. The period covered encompasses the Russian Revolution and Civil War, the mixed economy and culture of the 1920s, the tightly controlled Stalinist 1930s, the looser atmosphere of the Great Patriotic War, and the postwar era ending with the death of Stalin. Much of the material appears here in English for the first time. A companion 45-minute audio tape (ISBN 0-253-32911-6) features contemporaneous performances of fifteen popular songs of the time, with such favorites as "Bublichki," "The Blue Kerchief," and "Katyusha." Russian texts of the songs are included in the book.


Bolsheviks Against Stalinism (1928/1933): Was there an alternative to Stalinism?

Bolsheviks Against Stalinism (1928/1933): Was there an alternative to Stalinism?

Author: Vadim Zakharovich Rogovin

Publisher:

Published: 2019

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 9781893638815

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"This book was published by Vadim Rogovin in Moscow in the fall of 1993, slightly less than two years after the Soviet Union had been dissolved. It is the second volume of what would become a seven-volume study of the struggle of the Left Opposition led by Leon Trotsky, both inside the Soviet Union and abroad, as it fought the Stalinist degeneration of the workers' state established after the October Revolution in 1917. The first volume raises the question: "Was There an Alternative to Stalinism?" It studies the rise of the Left Opposition led by Leon Trotsky in 1923, and ends with the expulsion of Trotsky and his supporters at the Fifteenth Party Congress in 1927. The succeeding volumes examine the history of the resistance to Stalinism up through Trotsky's assassination in August 1940 and the outbreak of World War II. The period under consideration in this book was a time when new oppositions composed of former Bukharinists and Stalinists arrived at "Trotskyist" ideas. This process concluded in 1932 with an attempt to unite the old and new oppositional groups inside the party. This book attempts to trace the history of the inner-party struggles of 1928-1933, comparing the following fundamental types of sources: official "party documents" (decisions of congresses and plenums of the Central Committee, the speeches of Stalin and his accomplices, Stalinist propaganda); memoirs of the participants in political life of those years; Soviet archival material that exposes im- portant aspects of historical events hidden from contemporaries; and oppositional docu- ments, a large portion of which are unknown to the Soviet reader."--