Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of the History of Communism written by S. A. Smith and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2014-01-09 with total page 834 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Communism A Very Short Introduction written by Leslie Holmes and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2009-08-27 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The collapse of communism was one of the most defining moments of the twentieth century. This Very Short Introduction examines the history behind the political, economic, and social structures of communism as an ideology.

Download or read book Evolution of Communism written by Tarkan Özhan and published by eKitap Projesi & Cheapest Books. This book was released on 2018-06-25 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The beginning story of the communism was like this: A ghost walks in Europe - the ghost of communism. All the forces of old Europe entered into a sacred alliance to defeat this ghost: the Pope and the Tsar, Metternich and Guizot, French radicals and German police agents. Where is the opposition party not being accused of being communist by its opponents? Where is the opposition, which has not thrown this blightful communism accusation back to its reactionary adversaries as well as to the more progressive opposition parties? Two things come out of this phenomenon: I. Communism itself has already been recognized as a force by all European powers. II. It is already time for the Communists to openly react to the whole world, to publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and their Manifestos of the Party to this ghost of Communism. THE BOOK in your hand not only reveals the historical direction of communism, but also reveals an evolutionary history that extends to present and even to future years. In this study discussed Ukraine, Spain, and Bolivia, and so on the other small Countries, how your current revolutionary mobility will shape this century in the recent times or near future. EARLY HISTORY OF COMMUNISM: So far, history is the history of all societies, class struggles. Free people and slaves, patriarchs and plebes, gentlemen with serfs, guild masters and kalfa, one word, one oppressed with oppression have always faced each other, uninterrupted, occasionally covered, sometimes open, Either by a totally revolutionary reestablishment of the society, or by the collapse of the conflicting classes. In earlier periods of history, almost everywhere, we find a complicated social order, a wide range of social position grades, in various clusters. Patriarchs, knights, plebs, slaves in ancient Rome; From the serfs of the Middle Ages, came the distinguished urbanites of the first cities. The first items of the bourgeoisie also developed from these urbanites. The discovery of America, the circumnavigation of Cape of Good Hope, opened new fields for the emerging bourgeoisie. The East Indian and Chinese markets, the colonization of America, the exploitation of commerce, the increase in the means of exchange and in general the commodities, the commercial, the shipping, the industrial, the unprecedented breakthrough, and thus the rapid development of the revolutionary element of feudal society in its collapse. The feudal industrial system, in which industrial production was monopolized by closed lonces, was no longer sufficient for the growing needs of new markets. His manufacturing system took his place. Guild master craftsmen were pushed to an edge by the middle class; The division of labor between different guild units has disappeared in the face of the division of labor within each individual workshop. Meanwhile, the markets continued to grow steadily, demand continued to rise steadily. Even the builder was not enough anymore. On top of that, steam and machine revolutionized industrial production. Manufuction took its place in the giant modern industry, the industrial middle class, the industrial millions, the leaders of all industrial armies, the modern bourgeoisie. Modern industry has established a world market in which America has laid its foundations for exploration. This market has made great progress in trade, shipping, and road transport. This development also affected the spread of industry; And the bourgeoisie has developed in the same direction, in proportion to the expansion of industry, commerce, shipping, and railways, has increased its capital and has pushed all the classes from the Middle Ages into the background.

Download or read book Communism written by Emile Bertrand Ader and published by . This book was released on 1970 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Tailor of Ulm written by Lucio Magri and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2019-08-13 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Twenty years have passed since the Italian Communists’ last Congress in 1991, in which the death of their party was decreed. It was a deliberate death, accelerated by the desire for a “new beginning.” That new beginning never came, and the world lost an invaluable, complex political, organizational and theoretical heritage. In this detailed and probing work, Lucio Magri, one of the towering intellectual figures of the Italian Left, assesses the causes for the demise of what was once one of the most powerful and vibrant communist parties of the West. The PCI marked almost a century of Italian history, from its founding in 1921 to the partisan resistance, the turning point of Salerno in 1944 to the de-Stalinization of 1956, the long ’68 to the “historic compromise,” and to the opportunity—missed forever—of democratic transformation. With rigor and passion, The Tailor of Ulm merges an original and enlightening interpretation of Italian communism with the experience of a militant “heretic” into a riveting read—capable of broadening our insights into contemporary Italy, and the twentieth-century communist experience.

Download or read book The Cambridge History of Communism written by Norman Naimark and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-09-21 with total page 700 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book The Black Book of Communism written by Stéphane Courtois and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 920 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This international bestseller plumbs recently opened archives in the former Soviet bloc to reveal the accomplishments of communism around the world. The book is the first attempt to catalogue and analyse the crimes of communism over 70 years.

Download or read book A Short History of Communism written by Robert Harvey and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2014-12-23 with total page 596 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Today global communism seems just a terrible memory, an expressionist nightmare as horrific as Nazism and the Holocaust, or the slaughter in the First World War. Was it only just over a decade ago that stone-faced old men were still presiding over "workers" paradises in the name of "the people" while hundreds of millions endured grinding poverty under a system of mind-controlling servitude which did not hesitate to murder and imprison whole populations in the cause of "progress"? Or that the world seemed under threat from revolutionary hordes engulfing one country after another, backed by a vast military machine and the threat of nuclear annihilation? In the 1970s, with the fall of South Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, the march of Marxism-Leninism across the world seemed irresistible. Less than two decades later the experiment had collapsed, leaving perhaps 100 million dead, as well as economic devastation spanning continents. Even China now increasingly embraces free market economics. Only in a few backwaters does communism endure, as obsolete as rust-belt industry. This book is the first global narrative history of that defining human experience. It weighs up the balance sheet: why did communism occur largely in countries wrenched from feudalism or colonialism to twentieth-century modernism, rather than--as Marx had predicted--in developed countries groaning under the weight of a parasitic middle class? Were coercion and state planning in fact the only way forward for backward countries? What was the explanation for its appeal -- not least among many highly intelligent observers in the West? Why did it grow so fast, and collapse with such startling suddenness? A Short History of Communism sets out the whole epic story for the first time, a panorama of human idealism, cruelty, suffering and courage, and provides an intriguing new analysis.

Download or read book Communism written by Richard Pipes and published by Modern Library. This book was released on 2003-08-05 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With astonishing authority and clarity, Richard Pipes has fused a lifetime’s scholarship into a single focused history of Communism, from its hopeful birth as a theory to its miserable death as a practice. At its heart, the book is a history of the Soviet Union, the most comprehensive reorganization of human society ever attempted by a nation-state. This is the story of how the agitation of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, two mid-nineteenth-century European thinkers and writers, led to a great and terrible world religion that brought down a mighty empire, consumed the world in conflict, and left in its wake a devastation whose full costs can only now be tabulated.

Download or read book The Evolution of Communism written by Adam Westoby and published by . This book was released on 1989 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "First published 1989 by Polity Press in association with Basil Blackwell"--T.p. verso. Includes bibliographical references (p. [303]-319).

Download or read book The Cambridge History of Communism Volume 1 World Revolution and Socialism in One Country 1917 1941 written by Silvio Pons and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-09-21 with total page 1069 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 addresses the making of Soviet institutions, economy, and society while also looking at mass violence and relations between the state, workers, and peasants. It introduces crucial communist experiences in Germany, China, and Central Asia. At the same time, it also explores international and transnational communist practices concerning key issues such as gender, subjectivity, generations, intellectuals, nationalism, and the cult of personality.

Download or read book Evolution of Communism written by Adam Westoby and published by Polity. This book was released on 1991-01-15 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: `The Evolution of Communism' forms a unique synthesis from the specialist literatures on twentieth century communism. Organized thematically, it discusses: the formative phases of Lenin's Bolshevik party and of subsequent communist parties; communism's spread, and its differing routes to power; the bases of communist parties' independence, and the deep divisions which have fractured world communism; the great variety of communisms and communists; the evolution of communist ideas and theories; the social character of communist states; communist crises and efforts at self-renewal. This book focusses on the variable, adaptive character of communist party organization, with its capacity to apply flexible policies and exploit widely different bases of support, and explores the connections between communism's methods when in quest of power and the distinctive character of communist states. Linking the mechanisms of communist rule to the structure of communist societies, it examines the long history of communist attempts at self-reform, culminating in the transformations now being overseen by Gorbachev in the Soviet bloc and Deng Xiaoping in China. `The Evolution of Communism' will be essential reading for students of politics and sociology. In addition, the book will be of interest to all those concerned with the nature and future of one of the most influential and powerful political forces of our times.

Download or read book From Lenin To Khrushchev written by Hugh Seton-Watson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-04-09 with total page 397 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is intended to be both less and more than a survey of communism in the world today or a history of communist movements. It focuses on the relationship of communist movements to social classes and to the internal balance of political power in their respective countries.

Download or read book Manifesto written by Ernesto Che Guevara and published by Ocean Press. This book was released on 2015-04-10 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “If you are curious and open to the life around you, if you are troubled as to why, how and by whom political power is held and used, if you sense there must be good intellectual reasons for your unease, if your curiosity and openness drive you toward wishing to act with others, to ‘do something,’ you already have much in common with the writers of the three essays in this book.” — Adrienne Rich With a preface by Adrienne Rich, Manifesto presents the radical vision of four famous young rebels: Marx and Engels’ Communist Manifesto, Rosa Luxemburg’s Reform or Revolution and Che Guevara’s Socialism and Humanity.

Download or read book The Red Flag written by David Priestland and published by Open Road + Grove/Atlantic. This book was released on 2016-05-03 with total page 567 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “The best and the most accessible one-volume history of communism now available . . . A far-reaching, vividly written account.” —Foreign Affairs In The Red Flag, Oxford professor David Priestland tells the epic story of a movement that has taken root in dozens of countries across two hundred years, from its birth after the French Revolution to its ideological maturity in nineteenth-century Germany to its rise to dominance (and subsequent fall) in the twentieth century. Beginning with the first modern Communists in the age of Robespierre, Priestland examines the motives of thinkers and leaders including Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Castro, Che Guevara, Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Gorbachev, and many others. Priestland also shows how Communism, in all its varieties, appealed to different societies for different reasons, in some as a response to inequalities and in others more out of a desire to catch up with the West. But paradoxically, while destroying one web of inequality, Communist leaders were simultaneously weaving another. It was this dynamic, together with widespread economic failure and an escalating loss of faith in the system, that ultimately destroyed Soviet Communism itself. At a time when global capitalism is in crisis and powerful new political forces have arisen to confront Western democracy, The Red Flag is essential reading if we are to apply the lessons of the past to navigating the future. “Detailed and scholarly but written in lively prose, this is a rich, satisfying account of the most successful utopian political movement in history.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review

Download or read book A History of Socialism and Communism in Modern Times written by Warren Lerner and published by Prentice Hall. This book was released on 1982 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Communist International and US Communism 1919 1929 written by Jacob Zumoff and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2014-08-21 with total page 455 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.