Socialist Europe and Revolutionary Russia

Socialist Europe and Revolutionary Russia PDF Author: Bruno Naarden
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521892834
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 608

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book analyses perceptions and images of Russia held by European socialists from 1848 to the 1920s.

Socialist Europe and Revolutionary Russia

Socialist Europe and Revolutionary Russia PDF Author: Bruno Naarden
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521892834
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 608

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book analyses perceptions and images of Russia held by European socialists from 1848 to the 1920s.

Captives of Revolution

Captives of Revolution PDF Author: Scott B. Smith
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Pre
ISBN: 0822977796
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 401

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs) were the largest political party in Russia in the crucial revolutionary year of 1917. Heirs to the legacy of the People's Will movement, the SRs were unabashed proponents of peasant rebellion and revolutionary terror, emphasizing the socialist transformation of the countryside and a democratic system of government as their political goals. They offered a compelling, but still socialist, alternative to the Bolsheviks, yet by the early 1920s their party was shattered and its members were branded as enemies of the revolution. In 1922, the SR leaders became the first fellow socialists to be condemned by the Bolsheviks as "counter-revolutionaries" in the prototypical Soviet show trial. In Captives of the Revolution, Scott B. Smith presents both a convincing account of the defeat of the SRs and a deeper analysis of the significance of the political dynamics of the Civil War for subsequent Soviet history. Once the SRs decided to openly fight the Bolsheviks in 1918, they faced a series of nearly impossible political dilemmas. At the same time, the Bolsheviks fatally undermined the revolutionary credentials of the SRs by successfully appropriating the rhetoric of class struggle, painting a simplistic picture of Reds versus Whites in the Civil War, a rhetorical dominance that they converted into victory over the SRs and any left-wing alternative to Bolshevik dictatorship. In this narrative, the SRs became a bona fide threat to national security and enemies of the people—a characterization that proved so successful that it became an archetype to be used repeatedly by the Soviet leadership against any political opponents, even those from within the Bolshevik party itself. In this groundbreaking study, Smith reveals a more complex and nuanced picture of the postrevolutionary struggle for power in Russia than we have ever seen before and demonstrates that the Civil War—and in particular the struggle with the SRs—was the formative experience of the Bolshevik party and the Soviet state.

The Socialist Alternative to Bolshevik Russia

The Socialist Alternative to Bolshevik Russia PDF Author: Elizabeth White
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136905723
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 415

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Socialist Revolutionary party, which had been the largest and most popular party in Russia in 1917, did not after the October Revolution just disappear into the "dustbin of history", as Trotsky hoped, but – led by its leadership in exile in the 1920s and 1930s – continued to observe and comment on developments in Russia. In emigration, the Socialist Revolutionary (SR) party often put forward policy proposals on a wide range of topics: policies which, based on a shrewd understanding of the real situation in Russia, offered realistic alternatives to the policies being pursued by the Marxist Bolshevik regime. This book fills a gap in examining one of the most significant Russian political parties, and is based on extensive original analysis of SR party materials, shows how it operated; how it formulated and disseminated its ideas; what these ideas were, and how the party's ideas developed in response to changing circumstances in Russia and Europe more widely. Far from being the agrarian Slavophile romantics as they are often portrayed, this book shows the SRs were energetic European modernisers who contributed vigorously to the leading debates of their day; it also shows how the SR vision of a populist, socialist regime failed to materialise as state control, dictatorship and the collectivisation of agriculture took hold.

Russia and the Long Transition from Capitalism to Socialism

Russia and the Long Transition from Capitalism to Socialism PDF Author: Samir Amin
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1583676031
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 142

Get Book Here

Book Description
Out of early twentieth-century Russia came the world’s first significant effort to build a modern revolutionary society. According to Marxist economist Samir Amin, the great upheaval that once produced the Soviet Union has also produced a movement away from capitalism – a long transition that continues even today. In seven concise, provocative chapters, Amin deftly examines the trajectory of Russian capitalism, the Bolshevik Revolution, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the possible future of Russia – and, by extension, the future of socialism itself. Amin manages to combine an analysis of class struggle with geopolitics – each crucial to understanding Russia’s singular and complex political history. He first looks at the development (or lack thereof) of Russian capitalism. He sees Russia’s geopolitical isolation as the reason its capitalist empire developed so differently from Western Europe, and the reason for Russia’s perceived “backwardness.” Yet Russia’s unique capitalism proved to be the rich soil in which the Bolsheviks were able to take power, and Amin covers the rise and fall of the revolutionary Soviet system. Finally, in a powerful chapter on Ukraine and the rise of global fascism, Amin lays out the conditions necessary for Russia to recreate itself, and perhaps again move down the long road to socialism. Samir Amin’s great achievement in this book is not only to explain Russia’s historical tragedies and triumphs, but also to temper our hopes for a quick end to an increasingly insufferable capitalism. This book offers a cornucopia of food for thought, as well as an enlightening means to transcend reductionist arguments about “revolution” so common on the left. Samir Amin’s book – and the actions that could spring from it – are more necessary than ever, if the world is to avoid the barbarism toward which capitalism is hurling humanity.

October

October PDF Author: China Miéville
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1784782785
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 384

Get Book Here

Book Description
Multi-award-winning author China Miéville captures the drama of the Russian Revolution in this “engaging retelling of the events that rocked the foundations of the twentieth century” (Village Voice) In February of 1917 Russia was a backwards, autocratic monarchy, mired in an unpopular war; by October, after not one but two revolutions, it had become the world’s first workers’ state, straining to be at the vanguard of global revolution. How did this unimaginable transformation take place? In a panoramic sweep, stretching from St. Petersburg and Moscow to the remotest villages of a sprawling empire, Miéville uncovers the catastrophes, intrigues and inspirations of 1917, in all their passion, drama and strangeness. Intervening in long-standing historical debates, but told with the reader new to the topic especially in mind, here is a breathtaking story of humanity at its greatest and most desperate; of a turning point for civilization that still resonates loudly today.

Reconstructing Lenin

Reconstructing Lenin PDF Author: Tamás Krausz
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1583674616
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 564

Get Book Here

Book Description
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin is among the most enigmatic and influential figures of the twentieth century. While his life and work are crucial to any understanding of modern history and the socialist movement, generations of writers on the left and the right have seen fit to embalm him endlessly with superficial analysis or dreary dogma. Now, after the fall of the Soviet Union and “actually-existing” socialism, it is possible to consider Lenin afresh, with sober senses trained on his historical context and how it shaped his theoretical and political contributions. Reconstructing Lenin, four decades in the making and now available in English for the first time, is an attempt to do just that. Tamás Krausz, an esteemed Hungarian scholar writing in the tradition of György Lukács, Ferenc Tokei, and István Mészáros, makes a major contribution to a growing field of contemporary Lenin studies. This rich and penetrating account reveals Lenin busy at the work of revolution, his thought shaped by immediate political events but never straying far from a coherent theoretical perspective. Krausz balances detailed descriptions of Lenin’s time and place with lucid explications of his intellectual development, covering a range of topics like war and revolution, dictatorship and democracy, socialism and utopianism.Reconstructing Lenin will change the way you look at a man and a movement; it will also introduce the English-speaking world to a profound radical scholar.

Youth in Revolutionary Russia

Youth in Revolutionary Russia PDF Author: Anne E. Gorsuch
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 9780253337665
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 298

Get Book Here

Book Description
What were the consequences if prerevolutionary and "bourgeois" culture and social relations could not be transformed into new socialist forms of behavior and belief?".

Revolutionary Social Democracy: Working-Class Politics Across the Russian Empire (1882-1917)

Revolutionary Social Democracy: Working-Class Politics Across the Russian Empire (1882-1917) PDF Author: Eric Blanc
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004449930
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 469

Get Book Here

Book Description
This groundbreaking comparative study rediscovers the socialists of Russia’s borderlands, upending conventional interpretations of working-class politics and the Russian Revolution. Researched in eight languages, Revolutionary Social Democracy challenges long-held assumptions by scholars and activists about the dynamics of revolutionary change.

The Socialist Way of Life in Siberia

The Socialist Way of Life in Siberia PDF Author: Melissa Chakars
Publisher: Central European University Press
ISBN: 9633860148
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 324

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Buryats are a Mongolian population in Siberian Russia, the largest indigenous minority. The Socialist Way of Life in Siberia presents the dramatic transformation in their everyday lives during the late twentieth century. The book challenges the common notion that the process of modernization during the later Soviet period created a Buryat national assertiveness rather than assimilation or support for the state.

Everyday Life in Early Soviet Russia

Everyday Life in Early Soviet Russia PDF Author: Christina Kiaer
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 9780253217929
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 324

Get Book Here

Book Description
How Soviet citizens in the 1920s and 1930s internalized Soviet ways of looking at the world and living their everyday lives.