Appeals to readers interested in Marxism and communism, trade unions and labour history.[Bokinfo]

The Soviet Union, in the aftermath of the Brezhnev era, may well stand at a crossroads in its history. According to the authors of this volume, the Chernenko administration and the new generation of political leaders now on the threshold of power must steer through a difficult period in the USSR's international relations, especially where the U.S. is concerned, continuing to assert what they regard as the legitimate Soviet role as a world superpower while coping with an inflexible and aging political system, a stagnant economy, and growing social problems. The contributors provide a careful consideration of the choices confronting the USSR as this new era begins and analyze the paths its leaders may take as they grapple with the challenges of the 1980s.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Trotsky's theory of the permanent revolution is one of the most important additions to the arsenal of marxism. It was first developed by Trotsky in 1904, on the eve of the first Russian Revolution. At that time, all the tendencies of the Russian Social Democracy had the perspective of a bourgeois democratic revolution. Trotsky alone in 1905 put forward the idea that the Russian working class could come to power before the workers of Western Europe. The correctness of Trotsky's theory was brilliantly demonstrated in 1917, when the Bolshevik Party under Lenin and Trotsky led the Russian proletariat to power in the first workers state in the world. However, after the death of Lenin in 1924, the theory of the permanent revolution was subject to a vitriolic onslaught by the stalinist bureaucracy, which had in effect renounced world revolution in favour of "socialism in one country". The attack on the theory came to epitomise the struggle against "Trotskyism". Today, however, with the collapse of Stalinism (and with it "socialism in one country"), Trotsky's theory of the permanent revolution has become more relevant than ever. This edition contains an introduction by Alan Woods, editor of marxist.com.

This is a selection of essays written during the first decade of the twenty-first century, by a figure widely acknowledged as the conscience of European liberalism. In Walter Laqueur's lifetime, there have been more acutely dangerous situations, such as the coming of a world war or the seemingly unstoppable march to victory of totalitarian regimes, than in any other previous epoch. Such immediate dangers may not exist at the present time. But long-term trends are equally or even more threatening, as we now see in the ability of small groups of people, unprecedented in history, to inflict enormous damage. This is the underlying essence of Laqueur's thinking, as expressed in this new volume. As Laqueur observes, one learns from long experience that the worst does not always happen, and if it does, probably not in one's lifetime. Ideas and intellectual fashions emerging from the groves of academe, particularly in America can seem wrongheaded and often out of touch with the real world. This growing isolation causes growing bitterness, alienation, and a feeling of impotence on the part of intellectuals, which turns into greater radicalization and farfetched thinking. Laqueur fortunately does not fall into this trap. The articles and essays selected for this volume deal with a variety of topics. They do not entirely reflect Laqueur's interests, which during this period were more in the cultural field than in politics. However, politics intrude irrespective of the author's predilections. Laqueur deals with unpleasant truths in concrete geopolitical settings, but poignantly takes his stand with the men and women who strive to overcome self-censorship in the search for accurate judgment.

In the winter of 1909, a political bombshell exploded in tsarist Russia. Scandal swept not only the empire but the entire world with the exposure of the secret life of one man. Newspaper headlines introduced him as a 'twentieth-century Judas,' and since his initiation to the most notorious villains' club, his name, Evno Filipovich Azef, has remained in the Russian tradition as a synonym for scandalous duplicity, unscrupulous perfidy, and criminal provocation. His story is inseparable from the history of the Russian Socialist-Revolutionary party (PSR) and the terrorism that plagued the tsarist regime in the first decade of the twentieth century. More than 17,000 people were killed or wounded throughout the empire between 1905 and 1910 as a result of political assassination attempts alone. The use of undercover police spies to infiltrate oppositionist groups was a primary means of combatting terrorist activity. Enter Evno Azef, a man who, before being reviled by Socialist-Revolutionary party leaders as a traitorous double agent, would spend fifteen years inside the PSR, the largest terrorist organization in Russia. A man who would rise to a position of prominence in the party's Central Committee, and become one of the most trusted leaders of its famous terrorist arm, the SR Combat Organization: Evno Azef, Russian master spy. A thorough investigation based on all available documentary resources-available for the first time due to the Soviet government's demise-Entangled in Terror: The Azef Affair and the Russian Revolution sorts out the facts of the case from rumors and legends. Entangled in Terror explores the background and history of the radical SR party and its Combat Organization, the course of Azef's career, his role within the party, and the extent and frequency of his contacts with the secret police. The book evaluates the consequences of the Azef affair for the party, for the Russian revolutionary movement, and for terrorism in Russia. Finally, Entangled in Terror examines Azef's personal motivations: was he seduced by money or did he seek adventure and the thrill of a double life? A gripping expose on high-stakes political intrique, Entangled in Terror tells a powerful, true-to-life tale of power, money, deception, and deadly consequences.

The Myth of the Jewish Menace in World Affairs-or, The truth about the forged protocols of the elders of Zion is a classic Jewish studies text by Lucien Wolf. The substance of the following three political essays was originally contributed, in the form of independent articles to the Manchester Guardian, the Spectator, and the Daily Telegraph respectively. They have been carefully revised, much amplified, and largely rewritten in order to make a connected argument and avoid repetition. Footnotes of authorities have been added. My grateful acknowledgments are due to the Editors of the Manchester Guardian, the Spectator, and the Daily Telegraph for their kindness in permitting this republication.

"[Shukman] explores a little-known piece of Jewish history, in a sequence of poems that forms the centrepiece of this book. In 1917 several thousand Jewish tailors were deported from London and shipped back to Archangel and the Russian Empire they had recently fled, ostensibly to fight on the Eastern Front. They arrived just as the Revolution was unfolding and the old regime was collapsing into chaos. Among them were Shukman's grandfather and great-uncle, and these poems chronicle their four-year struggle to return to their wives and children in London. ..."--Book flap.

"This collection views Russian music through the Greek triad of 'the Good, the True, and the Beautiful' to investigate how the idea of 'nation' embeds itself in the public discourse about music and other arts with results at times invigorating, at times corrupting. In our divided, post-Cold War, and now post-9/11 world, Russian music, formerly a quiet corner on the margins of musicology, has become a site of noisy contention. Richard Taruskin assesses the political and cultural stakes that attach to it in the era of Pussy Riot and renewed international tensions, before turning to individual cases from the nineteenth century to the present. Much of the volume is devoted to the resolutely cosmopolitan but inveterately Russian Igor Stravinsky, one of the major forces in the music of the twentieth century and subject of particular interest to composers and music theorists all over the world. Taruskin here revisits him for the first time since the 1990s, when everything changed for Russia and its cultural products. Other essays are devoted to the cultural and social policies of the Soviet Union and their effect on the music produced there as those policies swung away from Communist internationalism to traditional Russian nationalism; to the musicians of the Russian postrevolutionary diaspora; and to the tension between the compelling artistic quality of works such as Stravinsky's Sacre du Printemps or Prokofieff's Zdravitsa and the antihumanistic or totalitarian messages they convey. Russian Music at Home and Abroad addresses these concerns in a personal and critical way, characteristically demonstrating Taruskin's authority and ability to bring living history out of the shadows." -- Provided by publisher.

When Britain was compelled to introduce conscription in 1916, the question arose of what to do with its 'friendly aliens'-its 30,000 Russian-Jewish refugees of military age. The Tsar didn't want them back to serve in his army, and they had no desire to help his war effort. But when sections of the British press commented that as asylum seekers they should show gratitude and join up, a campaign with strong anti-Semitic overtones took off and became Parliamentary business. Then the Tsar was overthrown, and by the summer of 1917 the question was settled with the new regime: Russian Jews of military age had to choose either to join the British Army or to return to Russia to serve there. MI5 and Special Branch kept watch on the Communist Club in the West End, where Russian revolutionaries agitated tailors, cobblers and cabinet-makers who agonised over what to do. Many ended up in the British Army or were exempted for war work, but nearly 4,000 chose to go back to Russia-for a variety of reasons. Arriving there via the Arctic within weeks and days of the Bolshevik revolution, they found a vacuum of authority, which soon turned into the chaos and dangers of civil war. How they fared and how they struggled to return to their families in Britain is the story of War or Revolution. With the help of personal documents, official British and Russian archives, and interviews of survivors and their families, the author illuminates an unknown corner of the First World War and sets it against the background of the period.

Stalinism for All Seasons is the first comprehensive history of the Romanian Communist Party (RCP). It traces the origins of the once-tiny, clandestine revolutionary organization in the 1920s through the years of national power from 1944 to 1989 to the post-1989 metamorphoses of its members. Vladimir Tismaneanu uses documents that he discovered while working in the RCP archives in Bucharest in the mid-1990s and interviews with many of the party members from the Ceau_escu and Gheorghiu-Dej eras to tell the absorbing story of how RCP members came to power as exponents of Moscow and succeeded in turning themselves into champions of autonomy. Tismaneanu analyzes both the main events in Romanian communism and the role of significant personalities in the party’s history. Situating the rise and fall of Romanian communism within the world revolutionary movement, Stalinism for All Seasons shows that the history of communism in one country can illuminate the development of communism in the twentieth century. Tismaneanu discusses significant moments in the final six decades of world communism, including the Spanish Civil War, World War II, the Comintern, Stalin and the Bolshevization of the Eastern European communist parties, and de-Stalinization. He examines important events in international affairs during Nicolae Ceau_escu’s rule (1965-1989)―particularly Romania’s role in the Sino-Soviet conflict, the Middle East, European communism, and European security. Finally, Tismaneanu identifies the RCP’s descendants among Romania’s current political parties and personalities. Embracing a long and complex period, this book will interest readers of twentieth-century history and anyone curious about communism and postcommunism.

Only by understanding Central and Eastern Europe's turbulent history during the first half of the twentieth century can we hope to make sense of the conflicts and crises that have followed World War II and, after that, the collapse of Soviet-controlled state socialism. Ivan Berend looks closely at the fateful decades preceding World War II and at twelve countries whose absence from the roster of major players was enough in itself, he says, to precipitate much of the turmoil. As waves of modernization swept over Europe, the less developed countries on the periphery tried with little or no success to imitate Western capitalism and liberalism. Instead they remained, as Berend shows, rural, agrarian societies notable for the tenacious survival of feudal and aristocratic institutions. In that context of frustration and disappointment, rebellion was inevitable. Berend leads the reader skillfully through the maze of social, cultural, economic, and political changes in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, Austria, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and the Soviet Union, showing how every path ended in dictatorship and despotism by the start of World War II.

Scholars have struggled for decades to explain why Jews have succeeded extravagantly in modern science. A variety of controversial theories from such intellects as C. P. Snow, Norbert Wiener, and Nathaniel Weyl have been promoted. Snow hypothesized an evolved genetic predisposition to scientific success. Wiener suggested that the breeding habits of Jews sustained hereditary qualities conducive for learning. Economist and eugenicist Weyl attributed Jewish intellectual eminence to "seventeen centuries of breeding for scholars." Rejecting the idea that Jews have done well in science because of uniquely Jewish traits, Jewish brains, and Jewish habits of mind, historian of science Noah J. Efron approaches the Jewish affinity for science through the geographic and cultural circumstances of Jews who were compelled to settle in new worlds in the early twentieth century. Seeking relief from religious persecution, millions of Jews resettled in the United States, Palestine, and the Soviet Union, with large concentrations of settlers in New York, Tel Aviv, and Moscow. Science played a large role in the lives and livelihoods of these immigrants: it was a universal force that transcended the arbitrary Old World orders that had long ensured the exclusion of all but a few Jews from the seats of power, wealth, and public esteem. Although the three destinations were far apart geographically, the links among the communities were enduring and spirited. This shared experience of facing the future in new worlds, both physical and conceptual provided a generation of Jews with opportunities unlike any their parents and grandparents had known. The tumultuous recent century of Jewish history, which saw both a methodical campaign to blot out Europe's Jews and the inexorable absorption of Western Jews into the societies in which they now live, is illuminated by the place of honor science held in Jewish imaginations. Science was central to their dreams of creating new worlds - welcoming worlds - for a persecuted people. This provocative work will appeal to historians of science as well as scholars of religion, Jewish studies, and Zionism

Thirteen essays by acknowledged economic experts explore the rapid changes in the transition economies of Eastern Europe, with discussions on political and economic freedom, monetary control and privatization, labor markets and social safety nets, and taxation and crime.

Leading writer Boris Kagarlitsky offers an ambitious account of a thousand years of Russian history. Encompassing all key periods in Russia's dramatic development, the book covers everything from early settlers, through medieval decline, Ivan the Terrible-the "English Tsar", Peter the Great, the Crimean War and the rise of capitalism, the revolution, and the Soviet period, finally ending with the return of capitalism after 1991. Setting Russia within the context of the "World System", as outlined by Wallerstein, this is a major work of historical Marxist theory that is set to become a future classic.

In a time of massive social transformation in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, worldwide attention has been focused on the growth of independent peace movements in this region. In Search of Civil Society is the first comprehensive analysis of the progressive social movements that are proving vital to the expansion of grassroots civil societies. The volume presents case studies of Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Germany, and the Soviet Union. Written by some of the best-informed scholars in Eastern European studies, many of them dissidents and activists, these essays analyze the current status of civil societies. The contributors tackle a host of related issues and concerns: dissent, non-violence, intra- and anti-systemic opposition, post-Stalinism, conscientious objection, and human rights. Moving beyond the arena of politics, the volume also examines the various ways peace movements are affecting cultural and moral life in these societies. Through a combination of first-hand information and scholarly interpretations, these changes are examined in view of the movement of Communist society towards pluralism.

In March 1921 the sailors of Kronstadt, the naval fortress in the Gulf of Finland, rose in revolt against the Bolshevik government, which they themselves had helped into power. Under the slogan of Òfree soviets,'' they established a revolutionary commune that survived for sixteen days, until an army came across the ice to crush it. After a savage struggle, the rebels were subdued. Paul Avrich vividly describes the uprising and examines it in the context of the development of the Soviet state.Originally published in 1970.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

"Singer's travel narrative of the Soviet Union offers a picture of pre-Holocaust Jewish life in the Pale of Settlement (urban and rural) under the young Communist regime"--

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Embark on a remarkable journey through the heart of Asia with Julius M. Price's "From the Arctic Ocean to the Yellow Sea." This captivating narrative recounts the author's extensive travels in 1890 and 1891 across the vast and varied landscapes of Siberia, Mongolia, and North China. Experience the challenges and wonders of traversing the Gobi Desert and venturing near the Arctic Ocean. Price's detailed account offers a window into a world of unique cultures and breathtaking scenery. This book provides a vivid historical perspective on a region of the world often shrouded in mystery. Explore the stark beauty of Siberia, the nomadic traditions of Mongolia, and the intricate tapestry of Chinese life. This meticulously prepared print republication allows readers to follow in the footsteps of a seasoned traveler and discover the timeless allure of adventure and exploration. A must-read for anyone interested in the history and geography of Asia. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.