Title: A short history of communism /
Authors: Harvey, Robert, 1953-
Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books,
Year: 2004
Subjects: Communism History
Abstract: "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." "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 now China 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 a new analysis."--Jacket.
Contents: pt. I. Explosion -- 1. The deity -- Marx and Marxism -- The six commandments -- Pre-revolutionary Russia : towards the First World War -- Russia : westernizers and Slavophiles -- 2. The prophet -- Lenin -- From war to revolution -- The revolution : international repercussions -- 3. The butcher -- The rise of Stalin -- The real Russian revolution -- The Second World War and after -- Stalin's legacy : Russia and Eastern Europe -- Yugoslavia -- Berlin -- 4. The dreamer -- The young Mao -- Peasant power -- The long march -- Perpetual renewal -- The fall and rise of Mao -- 5. Global conflagration -- Ho Chi Minh -- Year zero : Cambodia -- Africa -- Portugal : the end of empire -- Fidel Castro and Latin America -- pt. II. The communist universe -- 6. Middle age -- Khrushchev and reform -- Levers of power : Brezhnev and his successors -- In the Soviet state -- 7. Perpetual revolution -- The Sino-Soviet divide -- The cultural revolution -- Deng Xiaoping -- In the Chinese state -- The death of Chinese communism -- 8. Enforced revolution -- The great oppressions : Hungary and Czechoslovakia -- 'It all started in Gdansk ... ' : Poland -- 9. Schisms -- The Eurocommunist heresy -- Southeast Asia : the victors fall out -- Arab socialism -- Afghanistan -- Latin America : exporting revolution -- pt. III. The collapse -- 10. The redeemer -- The last of the Behemoths : Andropov and Chernenko -- The Soviet crisis -- Gorbachev takes the reins -- 11. Whirlwind -- The unravelling -- Easter Europe : all fall down -- The return of Yeltsin -- 12. The kill -- The Soviet Union unravels : the fall of Gorbachev -- Conclusion.