Communism

• 
• SOURCE: Jacobin
  5/18/2023
  

  The Hollywood Blacklist, Screenwriters and Free Expression Under Attack

  by Larry Ceplair

  The current screenwriters' strike is occasion to look back at the targeting of writers by HUAC in the 1950s, the politics of moral panic, and the impact of political fear on the content of popular culture.

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  4/28/2023
  

  In Germany, Soviet Memorials Raise Painful Memories, But are Protected

  Germany stands alone among European nations in protecting many Soviet-era monuments in the former East Germany. Honoring victims of Nazis has long been a reason, but this has been complicated by German support for Ukraine after its invasion by Russia. 

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• 4/23/2023
  

  "Class War" is Back in the Headlines. But What is it, Really?

  by Mark Steven

  "The proclamation of class war is what linguists might describe as a speech act: a performative utterance that, when said, is also a kind of action," invoked in the hope of moving from class struggle to open conflict. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Baffler
  3/15/2023
  

  The Victims of Communism Museum is a Propaganda Machine for Normalizing the Hard Right

  by Billie Anania

  The museum, which counts numerous Nazi sympathizers among its founders, peddles a spurious notion of "double genocide" that lets fascists off the hook by promoting the number of 100 million victims of communism. How do they get that tally? Including every German soldier killed on the eastern front and every victim of COVID-19. 

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• SOURCE: Dissent
  3/12/2023
  

  Whittaker Chambers's Odyssey from Communist Spy to Conservative Hero

  by Matthew Sitman and Sam Adler-Bell

  Praised by the right and loathed by the left, Whittaker Chambers entered the public eye when he accused State Department worker Alger Hiss of being a Communist. But his story before and after reveals much more about the political history of midcentury America. 

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  3/7/2023
  

  Cracking Stasi Puzzles is Key to Some Germans Finding the Truth

  by Katja Hoyer

  With an informant for every 90 citizens, the East German secret police left behind 16,000 sacks of shredded documents. Can information technology help reconstruct a record of what happens when a government commits to spying on its own citizens? 

• 
• 2/6/2023
  

  Historians are Being Asked to Spin Simple Stories of Nationalism; The Past Won't Cooperate

  by Joe Djordjevski

  Nationalist forces in both Bulgaria and North Macedonia want to use historians to reach a definitive conclusion to debates over the territory's ethnic and national identity. But from the collapse of the Ottoman Empire to the fall of Communism, those questions have been complex, difficult, and ambiguous. 

• 
• 1/29/2023
  

  A Portrait of Carlos Franqui

  by Ken Weisbrode

  The autodidact poet, journalist and propagandist Carlos Franqui was instrumental in making the Cuban revolution chic. He was also one of the first of the revolutionary generation to abandon it. 

• 
• SOURCE: New York Review of Books
  1/22/2023
  

  How the Russian Jews Became Soviet

  The novelist Gary Shteyngart, who emigrated from the USSR to the US as a child, reviews Sasha Senderovich's "How the Soviet Jew was Made," a work that gives short shrift to neither the "Soviet" nor "Jewish" sides of the question. 

• 
• 1/8/2023
  

  The Legacy of Charlene Mitchell: The First Black Woman Presidential Candidate

  by Alyssa Spinosa and Adam Arenson

  Although Charlene Mitchell's candidacy with the Communist Party gained few votes, her campaign reflected an effort to advance a critique of capitalism that addressed the American context of racial inequality and oppression. 

• 
• SOURCE: Labor and Working Class History Association
  11/22/2022
  

  From Solidarity to Shock Therapy: The AFL-CIO and the End of the Cold War

  by Jeff Schuhrke

  The AFL-CIO's leadership saw the emergence of the Polish Solidarity movement in 1980 as an opportunity to advance their anticommunist agenda. Did they also undermine the ability of a post-Soviet left to protect workers' interests against global capitalism? 

• 
• SOURCE: NPR
  10/20/2022
  

  Two Books Highlight the Internal Flux and Politics of the Chinese Communist Party

  Books by Frank Dikötter and Julian Gewirtz highlight the path taken by the Chinese Communist state leading to the recent 20th party conference, and the alternative paths untaken. 

• 
• SOURCE: NPR
  10/16/2022
  

  Rana Mitter on Xi Jinping's Place in Chinese History and Politics Today

  "All of the last 10 years has been about making sure, as you might put it, that it's Xi Jinping's China. It's Xi Jinping's party, everyone else is just living in it."

• 
• 9/11/2022
  

  Russians' Disapproval of Gorbachev Shouldn't Dominate How He is Remembered

  by Walter G. Moss

  The combination of post-Soviet hardship, resurgent nationalism, and the destructiveness of the Ukraine war have led many Americans to embrace Russians' dim view of Mikhail Gorbachev. A historian of Russia says the leader had his faults, but his furtherance of humane values has been underrated. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Conversation
  8/31/2022
  

  The Contradictory Legacy of Gorbachev and "Revolution From Above"

  by Ronald Suny

  "A great emancipator, Gorbachev left a mixed legacy. He expanded freedom for millions but at the same time unleashed roiling waves of nationalism and left the upturned soil for renewed authoritarianism."

• 
• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  8/31/2022
  

  Gorbachev Never Understood What He Set in Motion

  by Anne Applebaum

  Sometimes seen as a visionary reformer, Gorbachev may have started the USSR's economic death spiral by restricting the sale of vodka to increase worker productivity. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  8/31/2022
  

  Gorbachev's Greatness Was in His Failure

  by Tom Nichols

  Gorbachev's personal decency made him the wrong man for his chosen task of saving Soviet Communism from collapse; today his reputation is far higher in the west than in the former USSR. 

• 
• SOURCE: Foreign Affairs
  8/31/2022
  

  Gorbachev's Vacuum: His Legacy and Russia's Wars

  by Michael Kimmage

  The last Soviet leader failed to intuit the ultimate consequences of the changes he unleashed, from the collapse of the USSR to the revival of Russian imperialsm. 

• 
• 8/14/2022
  

  How Poland's Solidarity Rejected the Temptation of Violence

  by David Richards

  The Polish Solidarity movement is an instructive study in how a coalition of workers, intellectuals and spiritual leaders maintained a commitment to nonviolence and dialogue in the face of repression. 

• 
• SOURCE: History Today
  7/28/2022
  

  Review: Elizabeth Dore's Grassroots History of Socialism's Decline in Cuba

  The loosening of state control over Cuba's economy has delivered most benefits to white Cubans with relatives sending remittances from the United States to start businesses in Cuba. Afro-Cubans and migrants from poorer provinces have suffered.