Communism

The violence at the heart of the CCP

Frank Dikötter charts the rise of Chinese communism through its brutality. But does he undervalue the role of ideas?

How the Soviet Union got over Stalin – or thought it did

His successors proclaimed a more liberal socialism. But was it ever real?

Britain’s young communists are ready for revolution

Among the radicals at Revolution Festival

February 1978: Clive James reviews the official biography of Leonid Brezhnev.

The thwarted Marxist of Balliol

Christopher Hill was much better at analysing the revolution than he was at fomenting one.

Mario Tronti’s divine comedy

How the Italian philosopher, who died last month aged 92, turned to theology in his war with the world.

The delusions that bind communism and liberalism

The self-deception that fuelled Bolshevism did not die with the end of the Cold War: it persists in Western liberals…

China Miéville: “If you don’t feel despair, you’re not opening your eyes”

The fantasy novelist and left activist on why Marx’s Communist Manifesto speaks to the crisis-ridden politics of the present.

Jodi Dean: “Identity tells us nothing about politics”

The political theorist Jodi Dean wants to revive “comradeship” and class struggle as an antidote to divisive arguments about race…

Moscow, my family and me

To grow up in the Communist Party of Great Britain was to be on the side of the future . .…

De Tocqueville, in explaining the origin of the French Revolution, lays emphasis on the equality of condition, education and manners…

On 15 March 1917, after months of strikes and unrest, Tsar Nicholas II stepped down as supreme ruler of the Russian…

Julius West’s reports for the New Statesman offer a first hand account of the uneasy beginnings of Bolshevik rule.

This New Statesman report by the historian Julius West gives an eye-witness account of the start of Bolshevik rule in…

What caused the Russian revolution? Look to the powder keg of Petrograd

How unrest exploded in 1917 – with help from Russia’s Terrible Twins.