The chapters brought together in this volume build on the idea that in the 1970s-1980s the global language of human rights contributed to stimulating ideas of reform in the communist world. The protagonists were Mikhail Gorbachev and the Italian communists. The experience of the PCI was in many ways a peculiar case, but one that was linked to underground ideas of cultural change even in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Gorbachev's ascent signalled a fundamental shift, as he rejected the approach of reducing human rights to an ideological battleground and instead made it the centrepiece of a universalist relaunch. By exploring the encounter between reform communists and human rights, the authors reconstruct the metamorphosis and the end of communism within the context of the wider transformations taking place in European political cultures at the end of the Cold War.
Two of the most pressing questions facing international historians today are how and why the Cold War ended. Human Rights Activism and the End of the Cold War explores how, in the aftermath of the signing of the Helsinki Final Act in 1975, a transnational network of activists committed to human rights in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe made the topic a central element in East-West diplomacy. As a result, human rights eventually became an important element of Cold War diplomacy and a central component of détente. Sarah B. Snyder demonstrates how this network influenced both Western and Eastern governments to pursue policies that fostered the rise of organized dissent in Eastern Europe, freedom of movement for East Germans and improved human rights practices in the Soviet Union - all factors in the end of the Cold War.
The end of the cold war and the fall of the Soviet empire have had major consequences for Italian politics. Leonard Weinberg explores some of those consequences, focusing on the transformation of the Italian Communist party from a Leninist to a democratic party. He also discusses the relationship between the end of communism and the unfolding of the entire Italian system.The Transformation of Italian Communism has two objectives. First, it calls the reader's attention to the role of international developments, an important but largely overlooked area involved in the study of European party politics. Traditional texts in this area emphasize domestic factors, but Weinberg focuses on the influence of international developments on domestic party politics in Italy. The implications for other nations are transparent.The second objective of this work is to examine how Italy's Communist party, the largest such party of its kind in the Western world, reacted to the fall of communism in Eastern Europe. Weinberg analyzes the meaning of these events for long-tune party members in Italy'as well as for Italian political and cultural life. The Transformation of Italian Communism offers an original, intimate, and unique assessment of how the end of the cold war has affected Italian political culture. It will be a valuable addition to those interested in the convulsions taking place in modem Italy, as well as to political scientists and theorists of political culture.
Human rights norms do matter. Those established by the Helsinki Final Act contributed directly to the demise of communism in the former East bloc, contends Daniel Thomas. This book counters those skeptics who doubt that such international norms substantially affect domestic political change, while explaining why, when, and how they matter most. Thomas argues that the Final Act, signed in 1975, transformed the agenda of East-West relations and provided a common platform around which opposition forces could mobilize. Without downplaying other factors, Thomas shows that the norms established at Helsinki undermined the viability of one-party Communist rule and thereby contributed significantly to the largely peaceful and democratic changes of 1989, as well as the end of the Cold War. Drawing on both governmental and nongovernmental sources, he offers a powerful Constructivist alternative to Realist theory's failure to anticipate or explain these crucial events. This study will fundamentally influence ongoing debates about the politics of international institutions, the socialization of states, the spread of democracy, and, not least, about the balance of factors that felled the Iron Curtain. It casts new light on Solidarity, Charter 77, and other democratic movements in Eastern Europe, the sources of Gorbachev's reforms, the evolution of the European Union, U.S. foreign policy, and East-West relations in the final decades of the Cold War. The Helsinki Effect will be essential reading for scholars and students of international relations, international law, European politics, human rights, and social movements.
The Global Revolution. A History of International Communism 1917-1991 establishes a relationship between the history of communism and the main processes of globalization in the past century. Drawing on a wealth of archival sources, Silvio Pons analyses the multifaceted and contradictory relationship between the Soviet Union and the international communist movement, to show how communism played a major part in the formation of our modern world. The volume presents the argument that during the age of wars from 1914 to 1945, the establishment of the Soviet state in Russia and the birth of the communist movement had an enormous impact because of their promise of world revolution and international civil war. Such perspective appeared even more plausible in the aftermath of the Second World War and of revolution in China, which paved the way for the expansion of communism in the post-colonial world. Communism challenged the West in the Cold War - by means of anti-capitalist modernization and anti-imperialist mobilization - showing itself to be a powerful factor in the politicization of global trends. However, the international legitimacy of communism declined rapidly in the post-war era. Soviet power exposed its inability to exercise hegemony, as distinct from domination. The consequences of Sovietization in Europe and the break between the Soviet Union and China were the primary reasons for the decline of communist influence and appeal. Since communism lost its political credibility and cultural cohesion, its global project had failed. The ground was prepared for the devastating impact of Western globalization on communist regimes in Europe and the Soviet Union.
Mikhail Gorbachev and Daisaku Ikeda are contemporaries raised in different cultures: Gorbachev is a statesman whose origins are the Marx-inspired world of communism while Ikeda is Buddhist inspired by the thirteenth century Japanese sage, Nichiren. Moral Lessons of the Twentieth Century emerged from a series of conversations between these two men. Together they explore their experiences of life amidst the turmoil of the twentieth century and together they search for a common ethical basis for future development. They conclude that values are born of culture and that peace, progress and social justice can only be achieved through sincere communication and cultural exchange. As the new century begins, they have sought to turn the spotlight on the challenges which face humanity. The book is a call for dialogue in pursuit of values that bridge culture and time.
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.
Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Biography Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction The definitive biography of the transformational Russian leader by the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Khrushchev. "Essential reading for the twenty-first [century]." —Radhika Jones, The New York Times Book Review When Mikhail Gorbachev became the leader of the Soviet Union in 1985, the USSR. was one of the world’s two superpowers. By 1989, his liberal policies of perestroika and glasnost had permanently transformed Soviet Communism, and had made enemies of radicals on the right and left. By 1990 he, more than anyone else, had ended the Cold War, and in 1991, after barely escaping from a coup attempt, he unintentionally presided over the collapse of the Soviet Union he had tried to save. In the first comprehensive biography of the final Soviet leader, William Taubman shows how a peasant boy became the Soviet system’s gravedigger, how he clambered to the top of a system designed to keep people like him down, how he found common ground with America’s arch-conservative president Ronald Reagan, and how he permitted the USSR and its East European empire to break apart without using force to preserve them. Throughout, Taubman portrays the many sides of Gorbachev’s unique character that, by Gorbachev’s own admission, make him "difficult to understand." Was he in fact a truly great leader, or was he brought low in the end by his own shortcomings, as well as by the unyielding forces he faced? Drawing on interviews with Gorbachev himself, transcripts and documents from the Russian archives, and interviews with Kremlin aides and adversaries, as well as foreign leaders, Taubman’s intensely personal portrait extends to Gorbachev’s remarkable marriage to a woman he deeply loved, and to the family that they raised together. Nuanced and poignant, yet unsparing and honest, this sweeping account has all the amplitude of a great Russian novel.
This book seeks to reassess the role of Europe in the end of the Cold War and the process of German unification. Much of the existing literature on the end of the Cold War has focused primarily on the role of the superpowers and on that of the US in particular. This edited volume seeks to re-direct the focus towards the role of European actors and the importance of European processes, most notably that of integration. Written by leading experts in the field, and making use of newly available source material, the book explores "Europe" in all its various dimensions, bringing to the forefront of historical research previously neglected actors and processes. These include key European nations, endemic evolutions in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, European integration, and the pan-European process. The volume serves therefore to rediscover the transformation of 1989-90 as a European event, deeply influenced by European actors, and of great significance for the subsequent evolution of the continent.
