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War and Peace in Stalin’s Russia
“Vasili Grossman’s massive novel has rightly been compared with War and Peace. The author himself makes it obvious that Tolstoy’s masterpiece not only inspired him but served as a model for his saga of a great country fighting against enormous odds for its very existence. Both artists chose . . .” read more
A Jew in Wartime Belgium
“The death of Marcel Liebman in March of this year has deprived us of a major twentieth-century historian whose roots lay in classical Marxism untainted by leaden orthodoxies or passing fashions. Born in 1929 in Brussels, Liebman was educated in the Belgian capital and at the London School . . .” read more
In Memoriam: Proletariat Party, 1882-1886
“Men who stood on such a high intellectual plane as those four—Kunicki, Bardowski, Ossowski and Pietrusinski—who met death for an idea with heads held high, and who in dying encouraged and inflamed the living, are clearly not the exclusive property of any particular party, group or sect. They . . .” read more
E.H.Carr--A Personal Memoir
“In valedictory speeches, and in one or two obituaries of E. H. Carr, the authors—independently of each other—described him as enigmatic. This struck me, and I asked myself why this very English historian seemed so enigmatic to some of his close professional colleagues. In Britain he became, towards . . .” read more
China Notebook
“I had no illusions—I was well aware that during an eighteen-day stay in China I would not gather enough material to write even a journalistic article, let alone a more serious analysis or essay. I had adopted a somewhat self-righteous attitude towards those who after their first short . . .” read more
USSR: Democratic Alternatives
“The Soviet dissidents arriving in growing numbers in Western Europe give us a fascinating glimpse into the thoughts, concerns and aspirations of a section of the Soviet intelligentsia. Of course, it would be wrong to draw sweeping conclusions from these exiles regarding the state of mind of all . . .” read more
Intellectual Opposition in the USSR
“In ‘The Autocracy is Wavering’, written in 1903, Lenin observed that ‘there is no more precarious moment for a government in a revolutionary period than the beginning of concessions, the beginning of vacillation.’ The Soviet hierarchy is, of course, perfectly well aware of the dangers of ‘vacillation’. Yet, . . .” read more
The Maximov Phenomenon
“It is a truism that Russian literature has been traditionally political: but it is still one that cannot be overlooked by any literary critic, or for that matter, any reader of Russian belles lettres. Both writer and bureaucrat in Russia, from opposite sides of the gulf that separates . . .” read more
'The Memory that works backwards only...'
“Osip Mandelstam was one of the most original and powerful Russian poets of the pre-revolutionary and revolutionary period, who might have left an even deeper mark on modern Soviet literature if in the last years of his life he had not been cruelly hounded by Stalin and driven . . .” read more
Letter from Ceylon
“Addressing himself in 1923 to the students of the Communist University of the Toilers of the East in Moscow, Trotsky tried to make them aware of the dangers that Marxism ran in the colonial and semicolonial countries. National movements for independence, argued Trotsky, constitute a highly progressive phenomenon . . .” read more
Soviet Fabians and Others
“Reading the clandestine political literature which percolates from the ussr to the West through ever-widening channels, it is evident that two Russias exist side by side: le pays légal and le pays réel. We become familiar with more and more names of Soviet dissenters and protesters, with . . .” read more
The Purges Recalled
“For quarter of a century I. S. Poretsky (or Ludwik or Eberhard or Ignace Reiss) was one of the most prominent secret agents of the ussr. Now, after more than 30 years of ‘withdrawal and reflection’—according to the preface—his widow writes the tragic story of his life . . .” read more
On Krasso’s Reply to Mandel
“This fiftieth issue of New Left Review opens with a critique, by Perry Anderson, of the structures of bourgeois culture in Britain. The task of forging a revolutionary and internationalist political culture in this country has always been a central preoccupation of the Review. This involves attacking the . . .” read more