Describes the internal and external forces that launched Joseph McCarthy on his political career and carried him to national prominence.

"The ideas of capitalism's most vigorous and eloquent enemy have been enlightening in every era, the author contends, and our current historical situation of free-market extremes suggests that reading Marx may be more important now than ever. Hobsbawm begins with a consideration of how we should think about Marxism in the post-communist era, observing that the features we most associate with Soviet and related regimes--command economies, intrusive bureaucratic structures, and an economic and political condition of permanent was--are neither derived from Marx's ideas nor unique to socialist states. Further chapters discuss pre-Marxian socialists and Marx's radical break with them, Marx's political milieu, and the influence of his writings on the anti-fascist decades, the Cold War, and the post--Cold War period. Sweeping, provocative, and full of brilliant insights, How to Change the World challenges us to reconsider Marx and reassess his significance in the history of ideas."--Publisher's website.

Books on Whittaker Chambers and Alger Hiss abound, as countless scholars havelabored to uncover the facts behind Chambers s shocking accusation before the House Committee on Un-American Activities in the summer of 1948 that Alger Hiss, a former rising star in the State Department, had been a Communist and engaged in espionage. In this highly original work, Susan Jacoby turns her attention to the Hiss case, including his trial and imprisonment for perjury, as a mirror of shifting American political views and passions. Unfettered by political ax-grinding, the author examines conflicting responses, from scholars and the media on both the left and the right, and the ways in which they have changed from 1948 to our present post Cold War era. With a brisk, engaging style, Jacoby positions the case in the politics of the post World War II eraand then explores the ways in which generations of liberals and conservatives have put Chambers and Hiss to their own ideological uses. An iconic event of the McCarthy era, the case of Alger Hiss fascinates political intellectuals not only because of its historical significance but because of its timeless relevance to equally fierce debates today about the difficult balance between national security and respect for civil liberties."

This book, first published in 1989, is the first general study of Communism in Mediterranean Europe during and immediately after the war. It explores controversial issues including Stalin's intentions in post-war diplomacy, Communist attitudes to Nazi collaboration in France, and the origins of the Cold War.

"In the elegant capital city of Warsaw, the editor Mieczyslaw Grydzewski would come with his two dachshunds to a caf� called Ziemianska." Thus begins the history of a generation of Polish literati born at the fin de si�cle . They sat in Caf� Ziemianska and believed that the world moved on what they said there. Caviar and Ashes tells the story of the young avant-gardists of the early 1920s who became the radical Marxists of the late 1920s. They made the choice for Marxism before Stalinism, before socialist realism, before Marxism meant the imposition of Soviet communism in Poland. It ended tragically. Marci Shore begins with this generation’s coming of age after the First World War and narrates a half-century-long journey through futurist manifestos and proletarian poetry, Stalinist terror and Nazi genocide, a journey from the literary caf�s to the cells of prisons and the corridors of power. Using newly available archival materials from Poland and Russia, as well as from Ukraine and Israel, Shore explores what it meant to live Marxism as a European, an East European, and a Jewish intellectual in the twentieth century.

Is Marxism really dead, or can it play a positive role in creating a just and fulfilling society? This study responds to these questions with a penetrating assessment of Marxism from its origins to the present day. Roger Gottlieb provides an incisive overview of the content, strengths and weaknesses of Marx's own work, and demonstrates how the socialist and communist movements between 1880 and 1935 betrayed the original vision of Marxism. He argues that theory was "reborn" in Western Marxism and socialist-feminism, and offers lucid accounts of their theories of social structure, oppression and revolution. The concluding chapters focus on important contemporary concerns: Marxist theories of present-day capitalism; current debates between Marxism and other radical perspectives, including postmodernism; and Marxism's confrontation with socially engaged spirituality. This study provides a thoughtful dialogue on the meaning of Marxism in the modern world.

"Red Diaper Baby is James Laxer's compelling and extraordinary memoir of growing up in a communist family during the height of the Cold War. When Jim was born in a Montreal hospital, his father was living in hiding under an assumed name. And when it came time to begin school in Ottawa, Jim was enrolled under a false birth date. Throughout his childhood he was repeatedly instructed not to tell anyone what his father did for work. Laxer's parents were dedicated members of the Communist Party, true believers in an ideology that was generally reviled and had been outlawed during much of World War II. From an early age, Laxer was collecting signatures on ban-the-bomb petitions, delivering Party flyers door to door, attending eccentric left-wing Camp Naivelt, and campaigning for the charismatic J. B. Salsberg, a Communist MPP in the Ontario legislature. Dramatic, humorous, and full of period detail, Red Diaper Baby offers a rare look at the McCarthy years through the eyes of a child. It also explains a great deal about Laxer's eventual and crucial role in the founding of the Waffle faction of the NDP, his continued engagement with the left, and his evolution into one of Canada's preeminent intellectuals."--

"Theodore Draper is one of the two or three most cogent and thoughtful social historians in the United States today. Everything he writes merits close attention." -Irving Howe "Theodore Draper is a historian of today's world in a class by himself-formidably equipped with learning and experience, fearless in attacking the naivet of the left and the cruelty of the right." -Alfred Kazin Theodore Draper is one of America's most trenchant and informed critics. A Present of Things Past gathers together ten of his most recent and most powerful selected essays, in which Draper, with his customary acuity and wit, tackles a host of issues that define America's political culture. A Present of Things Past is concerned with a reexamination of the Second World War in both its military and its political aspects; the trajectory of American conservatism as it manifested itself during the Reagan years; the rise of Gorbachev and the history of "reform" in the Soviet Union; the revisionist debate over the origins and history of American communism; and the persistent mystery of a man named Max Eitingon, who was, depending on one's reading of the sources, either an important figure in the history of psychoanalysis or an agent of the Soviet secret police, or both. In "American Hubris," Draper illuminates the assumptions that have guided American foreign policy in the postwar period, and concludes that our costly misadventures-in Korea, Vietnam, Lebanon, and elsewhere-cannot be considered a string of aberrations. They were, he argues, a consequence of the Truman Doctrine. In "Reagan's Junta," Draper observes: "This is supposed to have been the era of the imperial presidency. It has turned out to be the era of presidencies that have tried to make themselves imperial-and failed." Throughout these compelling essays, Draper demonstrates the uses and abuses to which history has been put by ideologues of both the left and the right. He finds unacceptable, for example, the practice of many journalists of fictionalizing their sources. The New York Times has called Draper "one of the clearer-eyed observers of the issues that torment us." A Present of Things Past enhances that reputation. Theodore Draper is the author of numerous books, including Present History: On Nuclear War, Dtente & Other Controversies and American Communism. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and lives in Princeton, New Jersey. "Is especially recommended for students of political science, the Cold War era, and twentieth century American history as a powerful, thought-provoking view of the people and events that shaped nations, and through nations the world."-- Library Bookwatch

The Spanish Civil War has long been the stuff of legend. Thousands of brave young men from all over the Western world, most of them organized by their local Communist parties, rushed to Spain to support the democratic Republic against right-wing forces led by rebellious generals in the Spanish officer corps. Although the Republic was eventually defeated, some observers believed that the effort to defend it was a selfless undertaking of the international Communist movement and the Soviet Union -- a noble crusade against Hitler, Mussolini, and their Spanish puppet Franco. This book presents a very different view of the role of the Soviet Union in this war. Based on previously unavailable Moscow archives, it provides the first full documentation of that country's duplicitous and self-serving activities. Documents in the book reveal that the Soviet Union not only swindled the Spanish Republic out of millions of dollars through arms deals but also sought to take over and run the Spanish economy, government, and armed forces in order to make Spain a Soviet possession, thereby effectively destroying the foundations of authentic Spanish antifascism. The documents also shed light on many other disputed episodes of the war: the timing of the Republican request for assistance from the Soviet Union; the rise and fall of the International Brigades; the internal workings of the Comintern and its influence on Spain; and much more. Authoritative and startling in the new information it offers, the book is essential reading for anyone interested in Soviet foreign policy or the Spanish Civil War.

A fascinating account of life as a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain The Lost World of British Communism is a vivid account of the Communist Party of Great Britain. Raphael Samuel, one of post-war Britain’s most notable historians, draws on novels of the period and childhood recollections of London’s East End, as well as memoirs and Party archives, to evoke the world of British Communism in the 1940s. Samuel conjures up the era when the movement was at the height of its political and theoretical power, brilliantly bringing to life an age in which the Communist Party enjoyed huge prestige as a bulwark for the struggles against fascism and colonialism.

"Whatever historical judgments one wishes to make about Mao Tse-tung and the Maoist era," Maurice Meisner writes, "that era will be recorded as one of the great utopian episodes in world history, and the history of Maoism will remain relevant for those who seek to understand the fate of Marxism and the role of utopianism in the modern world, whatever their political persuasions. In an age which suffers from a paucity of utopian imagination, it is perhaps a history worth recalling." In this volume, Meisner makes an important contribution to understanding the Maoist era in the history of Chinese Communism by exploring the utopian strains in the thought of Mao Tse-tung. Believing that an activistic utopianism is essential to the vitality of Marxism in the contemporary world. Meisner argues that it was precisely Mao's utopian departures from orthodox Marxism-Leninism that transformed the inherited body of Marxist theory into a doctrine relevant to the needs of revolution in the modern Chinese historical environment. He argues further that it was Mao's visionary utopianism in the years after 1949 that was responsible, in large measure, for molding much of what has been distinctive about the postrevolutionary history of the People's Republic of China. In examining the nature of Maoist utopianism, Meisner employs cross-cultural and comparative perspectives to analyze the relationship of Maoism to the original writings of Marx and Engels, early nineteenth-century Western European socialist theories, and classical Russian Populist thought. He also discusses the idiosyncratic character of Mao's utopian vision, the phenomenon of the cult of Mao, and the fate of Maoist utopianism in post-Maoist Chinese Marxist ideology.

Oscar Handlin is best known as America's leading historian of ethnicity and the immigrant experience in the new nation. In 1961 he produced what was perhaps the first critique of anti-Americanism as an ideological expression of Marxism-Leninismin the schools of higher learning. In his new opening essay to this second edition, he both tells how he was able to perceive the cancer of communist ideology early, and why this new edition is needed now. The Distortion of America is a handbook on avoiding error, a methodological primer on how historians gather evidence, presume witnesses to be reliable or not, and develop forms of verification in the conduct of analysis and research. As such this work is an introduction to the study of history, as well as an examination of specific instances of ideology and mindless passion as ruinous ways to look at America. Handlin shows how social history kept his vision close to the experiences of ordinary people, whose heritage of freedom and dedication to individual liberty was the necessary antidote to academic exaggeration. Six additional chapters supplement those gathered in the earlier collection. Two written in the 1950s describe the forces that later created the economic strength of the United States, while a third treats the problem of race which long contributed to the distortions of America. An account of Yugoslavia before its collapse describes the class divisions responsible for present troubles. By contrast, no inkling of the tensions that would erupt in bloody civil war caught the attention of hundreds of journalists who crowded Sarajevo in 1984. A brief article shows the relevance to China of democracy in the United States. The final new entry is a memorable piece on how the career of Arthur Koestler exemplifies the difficulties of the ex-communist in an unsympathetic environment. These essays illustrate Handlin's working philosophy: "the study of the human past persuades me that, despite the frequent risks of failure, man has the capacity to make order an find purpose in the world in which he lives when he uses the power of his reason to do so."

The Cuban Revolution of 1959 was a benchmark of triumph and a harbinger of tragedy to come. Rather than herald a new era of Cuba joining the world community of nations as a paragon of democracy as many fervently hoped and believed it would, it became instead a new stage in authoritarian rule in the Western hemisphere. For more than a half century since then Cuba has been defined by the capacity of a single family to command and determine the fate of a nation--and to do so with a minimum of opposition. Incredibly, even those professing adhesion to democratic norms have been ready to forgive the dictator his excesses. This volume explains the theory and practice of this absence of internal opposition and the persistence of external support for the Castro family and its entourage. "The Long Night of Dark Intent" is chronological in order, with the author indicating major points in each of the five decades covered. The volume covers five centers of system analysis: economics, politics, society, military, and ideology. Who or what "determines" events and decisions is the stuff of real history. It is precisely due to variability in causal chains in society that we have huge variance in levels of predictability. The course of the Cuban Revolution gives strong support for such an approach to the Castro Era. This is a unique, unflinching account with a strong emphasis on the importance of U.S. policy decisions over time.

Nearly five centuries after the first wave of Catholic missionaries arrived in the New World to spread their Christian message, contemporary religious workers in the Bolivian highlands have begun to encourage Aymara Indians to return to traditional ritual practices. All but eradicated after hundreds of years of missionization, the "old ways" are now viewed as local cultural expressions of Christian values. In order to become more Christian, the Aymara must now become more Indian. This groundbreaking study of the contemporary encounter between Catholic missionaries and Aymara Indians is the first ethnography to focus both on the evangelizers and the evangelized. Andrew Orta explores the pastoral shift away from liberation theology that dominated Latin American missionization up until the mid-1980s to the recent "theology of inculturation," which upholds the beliefs and practices of a supposedly pristine Aymara culture as indigenous expressions of a more universal Christianity. Addressing essential questions in cultural anthropology, religious studies, postcolonial studies, and globalization studies, Catechizing Culture is a sophisticated documentation of the widespread shift from the politics of class to the politics of ethnicity and multiculturalism.

"In 1917, a band of communist revolutionaries stormed the Winter Palace of Tsar Nicholas II, a dramatic and explosive act marking that Vladimir Lenin's communist revolution was now underway. But Lenin would not be satisfied with overthrowing the Tsar. His goal was a global revolt that would topple all Western capitalist regimes starting with the British Empire. This book tells the story of the British spies in revolutionary Russia and their mission to stop Lenin's red tide from washing across the free world. They were an eccentric cast of characters, led by Mansfield Cumming, a one-legged, monocle-wearing former sea captain, and included novelist W. Somerset Maugham, beloved children's author Arthur Ransome, and the dashing, ice-cool Sidney Reilly, the legendary Ace of Spies and a model for Ian Fleming's James Bond. Cumming's network would pioneer the field of covert action and would one day become Britain's Military Intelligence 6 (MI -6) -- book jacket.

In this vivid memoir, Silviu Brucan traces half a century of East European history, bringing to life the drama of a generation caught between the 1944 communist revolution and the 1989 anticommunist revolution. Brucan himself was at the heart of political power from World War II through the formation of a new government after the overthrow of Nicolae Ceausescu. After participating in the antifascist underground movement in World War II, he became acting editor of Romania's leading communist daily. He served as Romania's ambassador to the United States and then as its ambassador to the United Nations. He later grew disenchanted with the Ceausescu regime, becoming a prime mobilizer of popular support for reform and subsequently one of the leaders of the National Salvation Front. Brucan's insider position gave him a unique perspective on the inner workings of the Gheorghiu-Dej and Ceausescu regimes as well as of the political machinations of Soviet and other East European leaders. He reveals for the first time the details - available nowhere else - of secret meetings between communist leaders: the 1944 conspiracy with King Michael against the German occupation; the extraordinary 1945 meeting between Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej and Joseph Stalin when the Soviet dictator decided that Georghiu-Dej and not Ana Pauker should lead the Romanian Communist Party; the secret mission assigned to Gheorghiu-Dej by Nikita Khrushchev during the 1956 revolution to install Janos Kadar as leader of the communist party; the 1958 Khrushchev-Gheorghiu-Dej meeting after a bear hunt in the Carpathians, which appeared to be a chat between two canny old peasants but concluded with Khrushchev's decision to withdraw Soviet troops from Romania; and Ceausescu's astute maneuver to seize power while Gheorghiu-Dej was on his deathbed. Brucan then recounts the real story behind the 1989 revolution, which was rooted in earlier plots to overthrow Ceausescu. He traces his own memorable transformation from staunch communist to outspoken critic of the regime, weaving his own story within the larger framework of his country's transformation and hopes for the future.

In July 1961, just before David Aaronovitch's seventh birthday, Yuri Gagarin came to London. The Russian spaceman was everything the Aaronovitch family wished for - a popular and handsome embodiment of modern communism, of the forward march of history. When Gagarin went to Highgate to visit the tomb of Karl Marx, the local communists came out to cheer, David's father, a full-time worker for the Communist Party, and his mother among them. But who were they, these ever hopeful, defiant and (had they but known it) historically doomed people? In a sense they were like a non-magical version of the wizards of J K Rowling's world, living part secretly with and parallel to the non-communist majority, sometimes persecuted, sometimes ignored, but carrying on their own ways and traditions. Where others went to church they went to Socialist Sunday School, where others watched the Black and White Minstrels they went to see the Red Army Choir (always providing that visas had been issued). Society's up was their down, its heroes were their villains and vice versa. Trade unions were never more noble than when militant, the blacks were right and the whites were wrong. Who wanted American TV when you could have Russian movies? A memoir of early life among communists and an exploration of the world that created that life, Party Animals first took David Aaronovitch back through his own memories of belief and action. But there was much more to it. He found himself studying the old secret service files, his mother's diaries and letters, uncovering the unspoken shame and fears that provided the unconscious background to his own existence as a party animal. Only then did he begin to understand what had come before - both the obstinate heroism and the monstrous cowardice. And the elements that shape our fondest beliefs

Unless the socialist societies of the East adapt their system to the scientific-technological revolution, as the West has done, they will remain caught in the twentieth century. This is the theme of Silviu Brucan's book on the crisis of world socialism. He contends that these countries are at the crossroads and must make some changes in their political ideology or they will perish. This insightful book written by a veteran communist living in the East, will interest anyone concerned with Soviet studies, Slavic studies, political economy, Marxism, Communism, political sociology, and East-West relations.

From a height of almost 100,000 members during the Depression, when politicians, workers, and intellectuals were drawn into its orbit, the American Communist Party has descended into irrelevance and isolation, failing even to run a presidential candidate in 1988. Indeed, as Guenter Lewy writes in this critical account of American Communism, despite decades of feverish activity and ferocious discipline, it was a cause doomed to fail from the very beginning. In The Cause that Failed, Lewy offers an incisive narrative of the American Communist Party from the days of John Reed to the advent of glasnost. He traces its origins and development, underscoring how its devotion to Moscow and inflexible Marxist ideology isolated it from the American scene--in fact, most of its first members were Eastern European immigrants. During the left wing tide of the Depression the Communist Party reached the peak of its influence, as it joined labor unions and progressive organizations in a "Popular Front." But Lewy reveals the deceptive, antidemocratic, self-defeating tactics the Communists pursued even then, as they manipulated front organizations, seized control of political parties, peace groups, and labor unions, and enforced political conformity among members and sympathizers. He follows the Party through its inexorable decline in the succeeding decades, up to its current position as one of the last Stalinist parties left in a world of glasnost and perestroika. Lewy also provides a sharply critical discussion of the encounter between Communism and liberal and mainstream America