Few events in history have exerted a more profound effect on our lives than the two revolutions of February and October 1917, which first established communism and the Soviet state in Russia and which ever since have served as an ambiguous symbol to socialists and would-be revolutionaries, to be imitated or despised, but never ignored. More than sixty-five years after the revolution, we still want to know: exactly how did the Bolsheviks capture power in 1917; and, even more important, how did they manage to hold on to that power in the face of the Party’s growing unpopularity? Leonard Schapiro is the author of the standard history of the Soviet Communist party and, in this beautifully written and meticulously researched book, he has provided us with what is bound to become the definitive account of the Bolshevik seizure of power for years to come. Drawing on the latest research findings as well as on a lifetime of reading and reflection, he guides us through that fateful year, examines the causes for the Bolshevik triumph and follows the course of communist rule up to the death of Lenin in 1924. He explores the complex relation of Lenin to Stalin, the crucial role of the army and the Party’s activities in the provinces. Above all, he focuses on the emergence of communism as a state force, a force with which the rest of the world is still trying to live. –- Dust jacket.

A vivid, human and radical history of one of the most powerful revolutionary movements of the twentieth century - told through the lives and in the voices of countless forgotten men and women.

This book, by a renowned and distinguished historian, is an arresting account of the role that resentment has played throughout history, from Antiquity and early Christianity through to the present day. At the origin of resentment we always find an injury, an act of humiliation, an affront, a trauma. Those who feel victimized cannot react because they are powerless. They brood on their desire for revenge, which they cannot satisfy but which constantly nags at them. Until finally they explode with anger. This period of waiting may also be accompanied by a repudiation of the oppressor's values and a rehabilitation of the victim's own values, and this gives the oppressed new strength, fuelling the act of revolt or revenge. Ferro effortlessly weaves together historical examples such as the role played by resentment in the French and Russian revolutions, the resentment against the historical suffering of African Americans that underpinned the civil rights movement and the rise of black power, and the revival of resentment by proponents of radical Islam whose violent acts of terror in New York, London and elsewhere have shaken the world.

Only a renewed historical materialism can accomplish the task. Meiksins Wood redefines the tradition's basic concepts and theory of history to identify the specificity of capitalism as a system of social relations and political power. This, she argues, is inimical to democracy-a concept she interrogates in both its ancient and modern forms, before asking how it can overcome its present limits.

Relations between Jews and non-Jews in the Hellenistic-Roman period were marked by suspicion and hate, maintain most studies of that topic. But if such conjectures are true, asks Louis Feldman, how did Jews succeed in winning so many adherents, whether full-fledged proselytes or "sympathizers" who adopted one or more Jewish practices? Systematically evaluating attitudes toward Jews from the time of Alexander the Great to the fifth century A.D., Feldman finds that Judaism elicited strongly positive and not merely unfavorable responses from the non-Jewish population. Jews were a vigorous presence in the ancient world, and Judaism was strengthened substantially by the development of the Talmud. Although Jews in the Diaspora were deeply Hellenized, those who remained in Israel were able to resist the cultural inroads of Hellenism and even to initiate intellectual counterattacks. Feldman draws on a wide variety of material, from Philo, Josephus, and other Graeco-Jewish writers through the Apocrypha, the Pseudepigrapha, the Church Councils, Church Fathers, and imperial decrees to Talmudic and Midrashic writings and inscriptions and papyri. What emerges is a rich description of a long era to which conceptions of Jewish history as uninterrupted weakness and suffering do not apply.

Was the Athenian democracy anarchic, given to domestic violence and hence unstable, as claimed by some scholars, or was it a stable, well-ordered, social system, provided with in-built mechanisms to overcome crisis? Various aspects of this question, central to the understanding of the Athenian democracy, are investigated in this volume by a team of distinguished experts. The often surprising answers they provide should be of interest to specialists as well as laymen. The volume is dedicated to the memory of the late Professor Alexander Fuks.

The reform era in Russia (1855-1881) witnessed the emancipation of the serfs, economic and social change, the reform of all imperial institutions, and the growth of national identity among Russians and the Empire's expanding Jewish population. Consequently, the 'Jewish Question' became one of most hotly debated topics in Russia. Attitudes toward the Jews which evolved during this period persisted up to the Revolution and beyond. This book, based on exhaustive archival research of materials published during the period, studies the interplay of public opinion and official policy. The author examines the attitudes of all sectors of Russian educated society towards the Jews. He also explores how a new group, the Russian Jewish intelligentsia, sought to define a modern Jewish identity in the midst of a multi-ethnic Empire.