Communism and Development (Routledge Revivals)

Communism and Development (Routledge Revivals) PDF Author: Robert Bideleux
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317703065
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 329

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Book Description
First published in 1985, this book provides a comprehensive reappraisal of the diverse Communist development strategies that shaped the twentieth century. Robert Bideleux emphasises the appalling human and economic costs of the most widely adopted ‘Stalinist’ strategies of forced industrialisation and rural collectivisation. He also reconsiders the powerful arguments in favour of the most feasible and cost-effective alternatives to Stalinism, including ‘village communisms’ and ‘market socialisms’. A highly readable and challenging study, this reissue will be of particular value to students with research interests in Development Studies, East European History and Politics.

Communism and Development (Routledge Revivals)

Communism and Development (Routledge Revivals) PDF Author: Robert Bideleux
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317703065
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 329

Get Book

Book Description
First published in 1985, this book provides a comprehensive reappraisal of the diverse Communist development strategies that shaped the twentieth century. Robert Bideleux emphasises the appalling human and economic costs of the most widely adopted ‘Stalinist’ strategies of forced industrialisation and rural collectivisation. He also reconsiders the powerful arguments in favour of the most feasible and cost-effective alternatives to Stalinism, including ‘village communisms’ and ‘market socialisms’. A highly readable and challenging study, this reissue will be of particular value to students with research interests in Development Studies, East European History and Politics.

A Short History of Communism

A Short History of Communism PDF Author: Robert Harvey
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 1466888075
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 596

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Book Description
Today global communism seems just a terrible memory, an expressionist nightmare as horrific as Nazism and the Holocaust, or the slaughter in the First World War. Was it only just over a decade ago that stone-faced old men were still presiding over "workers" paradises in the name of "the people" while hundreds of millions endured grinding poverty under a system of mind-controlling servitude which did not hesitate to murder and imprison whole populations in the cause of "progress"? Or that the world seemed under threat from revolutionary hordes engulfing one country after another, backed by a vast military machine and the threat of nuclear annihilation? In the 1970s, with the fall of South Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, the march of Marxism-Leninism across the world seemed irresistible. Less than two decades later the experiment had collapsed, leaving perhaps 100 million dead, as well as economic devastation spanning continents. Even China now increasingly embraces free market economics. Only in a few backwaters does communism endure, as obsolete as rust-belt industry. This book is the first global narrative history of that defining human experience. It weighs up the balance sheet: why did communism occur largely in countries wrenched from feudalism or colonialism to twentieth-century modernism, rather than--as Marx had predicted--in developed countries groaning under the weight of a parasitic middle class? Were coercion and state planning in fact the only way forward for backward countries? What was the explanation for its appeal -- not least among many highly intelligent observers in the West? Why did it grow so fast, and collapse with such startling suddenness? A Short History of Communism sets out the whole epic story for the first time, a panorama of human idealism, cruelty, suffering and courage, and provides an intriguing new analysis.

Communism

Communism PDF Author: Richard Pipes
Publisher: Modern Library
ISBN: 0812968646
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 194

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Book Description
With astonishing authority and clarity, Richard Pipes has fused a lifetime’s scholarship into a single focused history of Communism, from its hopeful birth as a theory to its miserable death as a practice. At its heart, the book is a history of the Soviet Union, the most comprehensive reorganization of human society ever attempted by a nation-state. This is the story of how the agitation of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, two mid-nineteenth-century European thinkers and writers, led to a great and terrible world religion that brought down a mighty empire, consumed the world in conflict, and left in its wake a devastation whose full costs can only now be tabulated.

The Oxford Handbook of the History of Communism

The Oxford Handbook of the History of Communism PDF Author: S. A. Smith
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191667528
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 672

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Book Description
The impact of Communism on the twentieth century was massive, equal to that of the two world wars. Until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, historians knew relatively little about the secretive world of communist states and parties. Since then, the opening of state, party, and diplomatic archives of the former Eastern Bloc has released a flood of new documentation. The thirty-five essays in this Handbook, written by an international team of scholars, draw on this new material to offer a global history of communism in the twentieth century. In contrast to many histories that concentrate on the Soviet Union, The Oxford Handbook of the History of Communism is genuinely global in its coverage, paying particular attention to the Chinese Revolution. It is 'global', too, in the sense that the essays seek to integrate history 'from above' and 'from below', to trace the complex mediations between state and society, and to explore the social and cultural as well as the political and economic realities that shaped the lives of citizens fated to live under communist rule. The essays reflect on the similarities and differences between communist states in order to situate them in their socio-political and cultural contexts and to capture their changing nature over time. Where appropriate, they also reflect on how the fortunes of international communism were shaped by the wider economic, political, and cultural forces of the capitalist world. The Handbook provides an informative introduction for those new to the field and a comprehensive overview of the current state of scholarship for those seeking to deepen their understanding.

The Cambridge History of Communism

The Cambridge History of Communism PDF Author: Norman Naimark
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9781107133549
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 700

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Book Description
The second volume of The Cambridge History of Communism explores the rise of Communist states and movements after World War II. Leading experts analyze archival sources from formerly Communist states to re-examine the limits to Moscow's control of its satellites; the de-Stalinization of 1956; Communist reform movements; the rise and fall of the Sino-Soviet alliance; the growth of Communism in Asia, Africa and Latin America; and the effects of the Sino-Soviet split on world Communism. Chapters explore the cultures of Communism in the United States, Western Europe and China, and the conflicts engendered by nationalism and the continued need for support from Moscow. With the danger of a new Cold War developing between former and current Communist states and the West, this account of the roots, development and dissolution of the socialist bloc is essential reading.

Stalinism for All Seasons

Stalinism for All Seasons PDF Author: Vladimir Tismaneanu
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520237471
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 412

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Book Description
This history of the Romanian Communist Party (RCP) traces its origins as a tiny, clandestine revolutionary organization in the 1920s, to its years in national power from 1944 to 1989, and to the post-1989 metamorphoses.

The Red Flag

The Red Flag PDF Author: David Priestland
Publisher: Open Road + Grove/Atlantic
ISBN: 0802189792
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 567

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Book Description
“The best and the most accessible one-volume history of communism now available . . . A far-reaching, vividly written account.” —Foreign Affairs In The Red Flag, Oxford professor David Priestland tells the epic story of a movement that has taken root in dozens of countries across two hundred years, from its birth after the French Revolution to its ideological maturity in nineteenth-century Germany to its rise to dominance (and subsequent fall) in the twentieth century. Beginning with the first modern Communists in the age of Robespierre, Priestland examines the motives of thinkers and leaders including Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Castro, Che Guevara, Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Gorbachev, and many others. Priestland also shows how Communism, in all its varieties, appealed to different societies for different reasons, in some as a response to inequalities and in others more out of a desire to catch up with the West. But paradoxically, while destroying one web of inequality, Communist leaders were simultaneously weaving another. It was this dynamic, together with widespread economic failure and an escalating loss of faith in the system, that ultimately destroyed Soviet Communism itself. At a time when global capitalism is in crisis and powerful new political forces have arisen to confront Western democracy, The Red Flag is essential reading if we are to apply the lessons of the past to navigating the future. “Detailed and scholarly but written in lively prose, this is a rich, satisfying account of the most successful utopian political movement in history.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review

Communism and Development

Communism and Development PDF Author: Robert Bideleux
Publisher: Methuen Publishing
ISBN: 9780416734201
Category : Communism
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description


The Development of Socialism, Social Democracy and Communism

The Development of Socialism, Social Democracy and Communism PDF Author: Mohamed Ismail Sabry
Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing
ISBN: 1787433730
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
This book examines how socioeconomic and institutional factors shaped the development of Socialism and its two contending variants of Social Democracy and Communism, investigating why each of these factions enjoyed varying levels of popularity in different societies between 1840 and 1945.

The Devil in History

The Devil in History PDF Author: Vladimir Tismaneanu
Publisher: University of California Press
ISBN: 0520282205
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 334

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Book Description
The Devil in History is a provocative analysis of the relationship between communism and fascism. Reflecting the author’s personal experiences within communist totalitarianism, this is a book about political passions, radicalism, utopian ideals, and their catastrophic consequences in the twentieth century’s experiments in social engineering. Vladimir Tismaneanu brilliantly compares communism and fascism as competing, sometimes overlapping, and occasionally strikingly similar systems of political totalitarianism. He examines the inherent ideological appeal of these radical, revolutionary political movements, the visions of salvation and revolution they pursued, the value and types of charisma of leaders within these political movements, the place of violence within these systems, and their legacies in contemporary politics. The author discusses thinkers who have shaped contemporary understanding of totalitarian movements—people such as Hannah Arendt, Raymond Aron, Isaiah Berlin, Albert Camus, François Furet, Tony Judt, Ian Kershaw, Leszek Kolakowski, Richard Pipes, and Robert C. Tucker. As much a theoretical analysis of the practical philosophies of Marxism-Leninism and Fascism as it is a political biography of particular figures, this book deals with the incarnation of diabolically nihilistic principles of human subjugation and conditioning in the name of presumably pure and purifying goals. Ultimately, the author claims that no ideological commitment, no matter how absorbing, should ever prevail over the sanctity of human life. He comes to the conclusion that no party, movement, or leader holds the right to dictate to the followers to renounce their critical faculties and to embrace a pseudo-miraculous, a mystically self-centered, delusional vision of mandatory happiness.