Communism A History

Name: Communism A History
Availability: InStock
ISBN: 9780812968644

ISBN-10: 0812968646

ISBN-13: 9780812968644

Edition: 2003

Authors: Richard Pipes

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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.

Book details

List price: $18.00
Copyright year: 2003
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Publication date: 8/5/2003
Binding: Paperback
Pages: 192
Size: 5.17" wide x 7.99" long x 0.42" tall
Weight: 0.286
Language: English

Richard Pipes, Baird Research Professor of History at Harvard University, is the author of numerous books and essays. In 1981-82 he served as President Reagan's National Security Council adviser on Soviet and East European affairs. He has twice received a Guggenheim Fellowship. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Chesham, New Hampshire.



Preface



Communist Theory and Program


Historical antecedents


Marx and Engels


Failed expectations of Marxists


The Second International and its collapse



Leninism


Russia's revolutionary tradition


Lenin


1917


Lenin's dictatorship


Failure of "War Communism"


Exporting revolution



Stalin and After


Stalin takes charge


Industrialization and collectivization


The Great Terror


Stalin exploits Russian nationalism


Stalin as Lenin's natural heir


World War II


Khrushchev


Decay and collapse



Reception in the West


The Comintern


Western Communists and fellow travelers


Communism and Nazism


Stalin's dual foreign policy


The Cold War


Post--World War II Communism in the West



The Third World


Common features


Comintern promotes alliances with nationalists


Mao and Maoism


Post-Stalinist Soviet policy in the Third World


China's "Great Leap Forward" and "Cultural Revolution"


Pol Pot's Cambodia


Allende's Chile


Castro's Cuba


Mengistu's Ethiopia


Terrorism


Conclusions



Looking Back


Inherent contradictions of Communism as cause of its repeated failures


Role of ideology


The costs of Communism


Notes


Suggestions for Further Reading


Index