The Forging of a Communist
The historian Eric Hobsbawm kept faith with the Marxist orthodoxies of his youth even after the Soviet invasions of Hungary in 1956, of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Why?
Communism
Zhou Enlai: Mao’s Enigmatic Shadow
How important was China’s senior diplomat to his nation’s rise to global power, or is it too early to say?
Revolution and the Fortune of War
On the centenary of the Russian Revolution, five books track its transition from idealism to tyranny.
The Man in Carriage No. 2013
Leo Steveni was a British officer based in St Petersburg at the time of the Russian Revolution. He became an active eyewitness to the chaos of the Civil War that followed.
The Russian Revolution: People of the Future
The October Revolution of 1917 inspired a generation of young Russians to embrace new ideals of socialist living.
Russia's Grassroots Revolution
Underneath the sweeping history of the Russian Revolution is another story, one told through the lesser-known people, moments and objects of a world in transformation.
The Iron Curtain Torn By Israel
The Six Day War of 1967, in which Israel devastated its Arab neighbours, also struck a blow against the military prowess of the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact satellites.
Rosa Luxemburg: Heroine of the Left
Michael D. Richards profiles the Marxist Revolutionary whose life was devoted to the Communist and Socialist movements in Poland and Germany.
Lenin and the Russian Revolution
It was Russia’s tragedy, writes Leonard Schapiro, that a greater man than Stalin supplied Stalin with the means to put his nightmare Utopia into practice.
Ghost of a Chance: British Revolutionaries in 1919
The leader of the British Communist party, in reminiscence, described 1919 as ‘a period of golden opportunities’ that were lost by left-wing disarray. By David Mitchell.