“A work of considerable delicacy and nuance….Brown has crafted a readable and judicious account of Communist history…that is both controversial and commonsensical.” —Salon.com “Ranging wisely and lucidly across the decades and around the world, this is a splendid book.” —William Taubman, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Khrushchev: The Man and His Era The Rise and Fall of Communism is the definitive history from the internationally renowned Oxford authority on the subject. Emeritus Professor of Politics at Oxford University, Archie Brown examines the origins of the most important political ideology of the 20th century, its development in different nations, its collapse in the Soviet Union following perestroika, and its current incarnations around the globe. Fans of John Lewis Gaddis, Samuel Huntington, and avid students of history will appreciate the sweep and insight of this epic and astonishing work.

Chronicles the Czarist Russian Empire in the 1800s, the birth of Bolshevism, events leading to the Russian Revolution of 1917, and the development of new political structures in its aftermath.

A concise, readable, and novel interpretation of the history of communist states. Sixteen states came to be ruled by communist parties during the 20th century. One, the Soviet Union, was geographically the largest nation in the world and a superpower. Another, China, had the world's largest population. At communism's high point, its adherents envisioned global triumph. Today, however, only five communist regimes remain in power. Why? In The Rise and Demise of World Communism, George Breslauer, a specialist who has spent decades observing the evolution of communist states, provides a sweeping history of the world communist movement, focusing in particular on what communist states shared in common and why they began to differ from each other over time. Throughout, Breslauer explores the relations among communist states as well as the relations between those states and the world of increasingly affluent, and militarily formidable, democratic-capitalist powers. He finds that these regimes all came to power in the context of warfare or its aftermath, followed by the consolidation of power by a revolutionary elite that valued "revolutionary violence" as the preferred means to an end, based upon Marx's vision of apocalyptic revolution and Lenin's conception of party organization. As Breslauer shows, all these regimes went on to "build socialism" according to a Stalinist template and were initially dedicated to "anti-imperialist struggle" as members of a world communist movement. But their common features gave way to diversity, difference, and defiance after the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953. For many reasons, and in many ways, those differences soon blew apart the world communist movement and eventually led to the collapse of European communism. Even though a few communist regimes still remain in power, the dream of world communism is dead. But the future of the remaining communist regimes is uncertain. An accessible history of one of the most important political phenomena of the past 150 years, The Rise and Demise of World Communism provides readers with a crisp account of the entire movement--from the theories of Marx and Lenin to the on-the-ground policies of Stalin, Mao, Gorbachev, Deng, and other communist leaders-that culminates in our own era.

This book is a valuable resource for understanding the character, development, and consequences of fascist dictatorships. Approximately 60 million lives were taken during World War II. This book serves to explore the ultimate cause of it-fascism-and to educate readers on the history and motivation behind this complex political movement. This historical exploration includes many helpful educational tools, including a timeline, an encyclopedia, and excerpts from primary source documents. Using primary document sources, the author provides a direct account of the origin and evolution of fascism. This text analyzes the rise of fascism in Austria, Germany, Italy, Portugal, and Spain from 1919 through 1945. Readers in high school and college will not only learn the facts surrounding World War II but also understand the cultural environment and events that led up to the devastation of the Holocaust. This text is crucial for educating students about the beginnings and extension of the fascist movement in Europe in the early 20th century.

Suppression of the truth and the rise of propaganda. Refugees, killing squads, and gulags. Intentionally created chaos, destruction, famine, persecution -- and mass death. These are the dark fruits of communism. This masterful study of international communism reveals the whole mighty drama of global socialism and Marxism from its pre-Bolshevik origins through the establishment of a communist empire that dominated one- third of the world's population until the stunning defeat of the Soviet Union in 1991. In these cautionary pages, the Red Terror and its horrors are exposed -- through the words and actions of the revolutionaries themselves. It is juxtaposed with the prophetic messages of Our Lady of Fátima and the witness of heroic Christian leaders, including thousands of priests, religious, and laity who were persecuted, tortured, and martyred for the "crime" of fidelity to the truths of the natural law. Although narrated like a novel, this landmark work is exhaustively documented and unveils the diabolical intent behind communist ideals. You will take a deep dive into the minds and hearts of key players from Rasputin, Lenin, and Trotsky to Mao Tse-tung, Stalin, and Ho Chi Minh. Also highlighted are those who sounded the alarm against communism, including Winston Churchill, Ngo Dinh Diem, and St. John Paul II. This comprehensive work takes you through pivotal places and events from the Paris Commune to "Blood Sunday," from the Peasants' Revolt to the "anti-religion five-year plan." You will be shocked by the forgotten "liquidation" of those who opposed the communist regime in Russia and the deliberate genocidal starvation of millions of Ukrainian peasants. Moreover, you will be amazed by movements from the Long March in China to Freedom Fighters in Nicaragua. In these timely, eye-opening pages, you will learn: Which Christian persecution was the bloodiest since Diocletian in Rome (Do you know?) What apostasy led to the rise of communism The three total revolutions in history (Can you name them?) The man-made apocalypse that was the precursor to the Bolshevik revolution The weapon that toppled the Wall and communism in Eastern Europe (Remember it!) Amid seemingly hopeless situations, the light of truth and victory overcame the darkness. You will be profoundly moved as you perceive how swiftly freedom can be lost and what we must do to preserve it as communism rises again in our time.

The material effects of World War II, in combination with Eastern Europe's disappointingly undemocratic interwar history, placed radical social change on the postwar agenda across the region and shaped the debates that took place in immediate postwar Czech society. These debates adopted both a cultural form, in struggles over the meaning of the recent past and the nation's position on the East-West continuum, and a directly political form, in battles over the meaning of socialism. The Struggle for the Soul of the Nation examines the most important and politically resonant fields of historical and cultural debate in Czech society immediately after World War II. Bradley Abrams finds that communist public figures were largely successful in controlling debate over the nation's recent past--the interwar First Republic and the experiences of Munich and World War II--and over its location on the East-West continuum. This success preceded and was mirrored in the struggles over the political issue of the times: socialism. The communists engaged their political foes in the democratic socialist and Roman Catholic camps, and, surprisingly, found significant support from a major Protestant church. Abrams's careful reading of major publications re-creates a postwar mood sympathetic to radical social change, questioning the standard view of the communists' rise to power. This book not only contributes to the specific literature on Czech history, but also raises questions about the relationship between war and radical social change, about the communist takeover of the region, and about the role of intellectuals in public life.

Communist parties came to power in a variety of ways, usually by force, often with the acquiescence of people who hoped for a better future. Then came the imposition of Stalinism. The book examines this, and subsequent crises in Hungary, Poland and Czechoslovakia.

"In the 20th and 21st century revolutions have become more urban, often less violent, but also more frequent and more transformative of the international order. Whether it is the revolutions against Communism in Eastern Europe and the USSR; the "color revolutions" across Asia, Europe and North Africa; or the religious revolutions in Iran, Afghanistan, and Syria; today's revolutions are quite different from those of the past. Modern theories of revolution have therefore replaced the older class-based theories with more varied, dynamic, and contingent models of social and political change. This new edition updates the history of revolutions, from Classical Greece and Rome to the Revolution of Dignity in the Ukraine, with attention to the changing types and outcomes of revolutionary struggles. It also presents the latest advances in the theory of revolutions, including the issues of revolutionary waves, revolutionary leadership, international influences, and the likelihood of revolutions to come. This volume provides a brief but comprehensive introduction to the nature of revolutions and their role in global history"--

Today global communism seems just a terrible memory, an expressionist nightmare as horrific as Nazism and the Holocaust, or the slaughter in the First World War. Was it only just over a decade ago that stone-faced old men were still presiding over "workers" paradises in the name of "the people" while hundreds of millions endured grinding poverty under a system of mind-controlling servitude which did not hesitate to murder and imprison whole populations in the cause of "progress"? Or that the world seemed under threat from revolutionary hordes engulfing one country after another, backed by a vast military machine and the threat of nuclear annihilation? In the 1970s, with the fall of South Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, the march of Marxism-Leninism across the world seemed irresistible. Less than two decades later the experiment had collapsed, leaving perhaps 100 million dead, as well as economic devastation spanning continents. Even China now increasingly embraces free market economics. Only in a few backwaters does communism endure, as obsolete as rust-belt industry. This book is the first global narrative history of that defining human experience. It weighs up the balance sheet: why did communism occur largely in countries wrenched from feudalism or colonialism to twentieth-century modernism, rather than--as Marx had predicted--in developed countries groaning under the weight of a parasitic middle class? Were coercion and state planning in fact the only way forward for backward countries? What was the explanation for its appeal -- not least among many highly intelligent observers in the West? Why did it grow so fast, and collapse with such startling suddenness? A Short History of Communism sets out the whole epic story for the first time, a panorama of human idealism, cruelty, suffering and courage, and provides an intriguing new analysis.