This book offers an analysis of the character and impact of ideological change, addresses a different arena of Soviet policy or social life, and reflects somewhat different concerns about the role or significance of ideology. It summarizes the way in which Marxism-Leninism has been understood.

"A fresh multi-faceted look at the overthrow of the Soviet State, the dismemberment of the Soviet Union, and the campaign to introduce capitalism from above. Roger Keeran and Thomas Kenny have given us a clear and powerful Marxist analysis of the momentous events which most directly shaped world politics today, the destruction of the USSR, the 'Superpower' of socialism."-Norman Markowitz, author of The Rise and Fall of the People's Century"I have not read anything e...

The collapse of communism was one of the most defining moments of the twentieth century. At its peak, more than a third of the world's population had lived under communist power. What is communism? Where did the idea come from and what attracted people to it? What is the future for communism? This Very Short Introduction considers these questions and more in the search to explore and understand communism. Explaining the theory behind its ideology, and examining the history and min...

"The Soviet Tragedy is an essential coda to the literature of Soviet studies...Insofar as [he] returns the power of ideology to its central place in Soviet history, Malia has made an enormous contribution. He has written the history of a utopian illusion and the tragic consequences it had for the people of the Soviet Union and the world."-- David Remnick, The New York Review of Books"In Martin Malia, the Soviet Union had one of its most acute observers. Wi...

Almost twenty years after the Soviet Unions' end, what are we to make of its existence? Was it a heroic experiment, an unmitigated disaster, or a viable if flawed response to the modern world? Taking a fresh approach to the study of the Soviet Union, this Very Short Introduction blends political history with an investigation into the society and culture at the time. Stephen Lovell examines aspects of patriotism, political violence, poverty, and ideology; and provides answers to so...

Mikhail Gorbachev and Zdenek Mlynar were friends for half a century, since they first crossed paths as students in 1950. Although one was a Russian and the other a Czech, they were both ardent supporters of communism and socialism. One took part in laying the groundwork for and carrying out the Prague spring; the other opened a new political era in Soviet world politics.In 1993 they decided that their conversations might be of interest to others and so they began to tape-record the...

Reinventing Politics gives an account of East European politics from the time of Soviet domination to the 1989-90 revolutions, and considers the effect of tyranny on East European culture and politics, the chances for successful and harmonious development in the region, and its relationship with the rest of Europe.“Using primary materials from Eastern European democratic movements, Tismaneanu shows how dissident enclaves, grassroots political groups, indep...

Over sixty years ago, C.L.R. James and a small circle of collaborators making up the radical left Johnson-Forest Tendency reached the conclusion that there was no true socialist society existing anywhere in the world. Written in collaboration with Raya Dunayevskaya and Grace Lee Boggs, this is another pioneering critique of Lenin and Trotsky, and reclamation of Marx, from the West Indian scholar and activist, C.L.R. James. Originally published in 1950, this definitive edition includes the ...

A Dorothy Rosenberg Prize–winner: "A remarkable social history that investigates the process of Sovietization among Jews in Belorussia" (Jeffrey Veidlinger, author of In the Shadow of the Shtetl).This insightful history demonstrates how Jewish life in Belorussia fundamentally changed when Jews started joining the Bolshevik movement and populating the front lines of the revolutionary struggle. While Andrew Sloin's story follows the arc of Bolshevik history, ...

Praise for Paul Le Blanc's Lenin and the Revolutionary Party:"A work of unusual strength and coherence, inspired not by academic neutrality but by the deep conviction that there is much to learn from the actual ideas and experiences of Lenin." -Michael LöwyAs a leader of the Russian Revolution, Vladimir Lenin was perhaps the greatest revolutionary of the twentieth century. These clearly written essays offer an account of his life and times, a lively view of his per...

The first volume of The Cambridge History of Communism deals with the tumultuous events from 1917 to the Second World War, such as the Russian Revolution and Civil War, the revolutionary turmoil in post-World War I Europe, and the Spanish Civil War. Leading experts analyse the ideological roots of communism, historical personalities such as Lenin, Stalin, and Trotsky and the development of the Communist movement on a world scale against this backdrop of conflict that defined the period. It...

The twentieth century cannot be properly understood unless we understand communism: its origins, growth, demise and legacy. This brief overview of the history of communism challenges us to think about its role in shaping the contemporary world.This book shows how the modern communist movement emerged out of radical millenarian movements of the Middle Ages and the English Civil War, becoming a mass movement of industrial society, seeking to overturn capitalism and replace it with a ...