Communism 
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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."
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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.
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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."
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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7/24/2022
Learning About Stalin from His Books: An Interview with Geoffrey Roberts
by Aaron J. Leonard
Researchers who access Stalin's books will find the dictator's library a source of insight into his political thinking and engagement with ideas (and his pithy marginalia), but not a Rosetta Stone for understanding his capacity for atrocity.
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SOURCE: Dissent
5/1/2022
The Xi Era Demands New Ways of Understanding China
by Jeffrey Wasserstrom
This is the introductory essay to a special issue on contemporary China.
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3/27/2022
Putin is Carrying on Stalin's War on Self-Determination
by Uriel Abulof
Before Woodrow Wilson, Lenin advanced the ideal of national self-determination as part of communist revolution. Stalin made the term a cynical tool of Russian imperialism, a move Putin's approach to Ukraine emulates.
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
3/22/2022
When Communism was Queer
by Samuel Huneke
American commentators have used the repression of gay life in states like Cuba to discredit socialism. The history of communist approaches to sexuality is more complex, as in the former East Germany.
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SOURCE: The New Republic
2/18/2022
The Communist Takeover in China is the Better Parallel to the Ukraine Crisis
Will American politicians repeat the error of asking who "lost China" instead of asking whether it was ours to lose?
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
1/18/2022
Student Protests over COVID Policy (and Adults Ignoring Them) is Part of a Long Tradition
by Jack Hodgson
"Their message: Education needs to be delivered in cooperation with young people. They have a right to advocate for their own welfare, feel safe in school and receive teaching, not just supervision."
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SOURCE: New York Times
11/7/2021
To Hold Control in China's Present, Xi Seeks to Rewrite its Past
The Chinese Communist Party's newest official history elevates Xi as a figure of historical significance alongside Mao and Deng Xiaoping, making the country's history an instrument of political power.
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