Communism: A HistoryRandom House Publishing Group, 2001 M11 6 - 192 pages From one of our greatest historians, a magnificent reckoning with the modern world's most fateful idea. 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. Drawing on much new information, Richard Pipes explains the countryís evolution from the 1917 revolution to the Great Terror and World War II, global expansion and the Cold War chess match with the United States, and the regime's decline and ultimate collapse. There is no more dramatic story in modern history, nor one more crucial to master, than that of how the writing and agitation of two mid-nineteenth-century European thinkers named Marx and Engels 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. |
Contents
Leninism | |
Stalin and After | |
Reception in the West | |
The Third World | |
Looking Back | |
Endnotes | |
About the Author | |
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activity Army attempt authority become believed Bolsheviks called capitalism capitalist cause central century China citizens civil claim collapse Communism Communist Party Communist regimes Congress created death democracy dictatorship doctrine economy effect emerged enemy Engels entire equality Europe European experience exploitation fact failed famine forces foreign freedom gained German give hands human ideal ideas industrial intellectuals interests International Italy labor land leaders leading Lenin liberal living majority March Marx Marxist means Menshevik military million Moscow movement nature needed objective officials once organized peasants percent political population practice production radical reality reason regime result Return revolution revolutionary rule Russia social Social Democrats socialist society Soviet Union Stalin suffered terror theory took turned United USSR viewed West Western workers York