Communism: A HistoryRandom House Publishing Group, 2003 M08 5 - 192 pages 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. |
Contents
Russias revolutionary tradition 23 Lenin 28 1917 | 28 |
Lenins dictatorship 39 Failure of War Communism | 42 |
Exporting revolution | 49 |
RECEPTION IN THE WEST | 89 |
THE THIRD WORLD | 115 |
Inherent contradictions of Communism as cause | 158 |
SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING | 166 |
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS | 176 |
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Common terms and phrases
activity Army attempt authority become believed Bolsheviks called capitalism capitalist cause central century China citizens civil claim collapse Communism Communist Party Communist regimes created death dictatorship doctrine economy effect emerged enemy Engels entire equality Europe European experience fact failed famine forces foreign freedom gained German give hands human ideal ideas industrial intellectuals interests International labor land leaders leading Lenin less liberal living majority March Marx Marxist mass means Menshevik military million Moscow movement nature needed never objective officials once organized peasants percent political population practice production radical reality reason regime result revolution revolutionary rule Russia social socialist society Soviet Union Stalin suffered terror theory Third tion took turned United USSR viewed West Western workers York