Soviet Marxism

This page contains items in relation to the Russian Revolution, Soviet Marxism, and Eastern Europe. For published items, see the list of selected publications.

V. I. Lenin

Lenin the Hiker (2012) – download here.
Lenin on Freedom (2012) – download here.
On Lenin, Lice, Peasants and Freedom: Arthur Ransome on the Russian Revolution (2020) – download here.
What is a Successful Revolution? (2020) – download here.

I. V. Stalin

Stalin’s Tobacco Preferences (2014) – download here.
Stalin’s Reply to Churchill’s ‘Iron Curtain’ Speech (2015) – download here.
Losurdo on Stalin: A Review (2014) – download here.
Stalin’s Opposition to Anti-Semitism (2015) – download here.
Stalin’s Stories (2020) – download here.
Stalin: From Georgian Smuggling to Siberian Freedom (2020) – download here.
Stalin’s Theological Education (2018) – download here.

Soviet Union

Affirmative Action, Bolshevik Style (2015) – download here.
Soviet Affirmative Action: The Harvard Interview Project 1950-1951 (2015) – download here.
The New Soviet Woman, or, Soviet Feminism (2014) – download here.
The Soviet Domestic State (2017) – download here.
Liberating the Forces of Production, Soviet Style (2020) – download here.
Famine and Socialism (2020) – download here.

Eastern Europe

Were the Communist Revolutions in Eastern Europe Genuine? (2012) – download here.
From Division to De-Nazification: The History of East and West Germany (2012) – download here.

A Lenin Folktale

The tsar was informed by one of his leading generals that there was someone, ‘of unknown rank, without a passport, who goes by the name of Lenin’. This person was threatening to entice the tsar’s soldiers to his side with one word, and then grind into ashes the commanders, generals, officers, even the tsar himself, and throw them into the wind. The tsar grew afraid and decided to do anything he could to prevent Lenin saying the word. So he made contact with Lenin, offering to divide the country in half. Lenin agreed to the proposal, but with one condition: the tsar must take the ‘white’ half, that is, the generals and officers and wealthy people, while Lenin would take the ‘black’ half, the workers, peasants and soldiers. The tsar couldn’t believe his good fortune in keeping all that mattered to him, so he quickly agreed. But to his dismay, he realised soon enough that Lenin had tricked him. His officers had no soldiers to lead, the rich people had no workers, the tsar had no people to make the country run. So the white part under the tsar went to war with Lenin’s black part, in order to win the latter back. But the white was unable to survive for long. So it was that Lenin took the country away from the tsar. (Arthur Ransome, The Crisis in Russia, p. 36).

Bulgarian Joke

A woman wakes in the middle of the night and sits up in bed. She leaps out of bed and rushes to look in the medicine cabinet. She runs to the kitchen to open the refrigerator. She turns to the window, opens it and and looks out on the street. Breathing a sigh of relief, she returns to bed.

Wakened by her frantic activity, her husband asks, ‘what’s wrong?’

‘I had a dreadful nightmare’, she says. ‘I dreamed that we could once again afford to buy medicine, that the refrigerator was full of food and that the streets were safe and clean’.

‘How can that be a nightmare?’ Her husband asks.

‘I thought that communism was back’, she says, shaking her head.