
Fellow-travellers and useful idiots
Western apologists for the Soviet Union believed they were in the vanguard of history.
ByWestern apologists for the Soviet Union believed they were in the vanguard of history.
ByTo grow up in the Communist Party of Great Britain was to be on the side of the future .…
ByThe Soviet state was born in violence and shaped with merciless determination. Lenin played a central role in its…
ByA century and a half ago, Das Kapital, the bible of 20th-century revolutionaries, predicted the overthrow of capitalism – but also the…
ByThe cat-and-mouse game between the poet Osip Mandelstam and the Soviet dictator could only end in death.
ByAs Lenin led his overthrow of the old order, Russia’s artists engaged in one of their own
ByTrying to imagine such a thing is less than halfway to understanding it, but it’s a pretty good place…
ByThe brilliance of Forever FM sounds like a response to all those who claimed that Kay was merely a…
ByBarratt usually plays the jumped-up buffoon who is never quite as classy, clever or hilarious as he believes himself…
ByPaul Mason’s new play about Michel is admirably far from a hagiography.
ByThree new “swimoirs” plumb the depths of the question.
ByAt 19, he was fitted with an electronic tag. At 27, he is the world’s top heavyweight boxer.
ByDon’t feel guilty if you’d rather read a Fifty Shades of Grey sequel than Proust.
ByMayor Joe inspires gratitude and loathing in almost equal measure. Can he stay on brotherly terms with the new…
ByStaff mean no offence to Sarah Olney, but they’d like Zac Goldsmith back as MP for Richmond Park. Here's…
ByFormer miners plan to vote for the leader of the far-right Front National in the final round of the…
ByThe unions have secured Labour strongholds for their favoured candidates, which implies that they are deeply pessimistic about the…
BySmart, funny and mouthy, Jess Phillips is one of the most impressive MPs from Labour’s 2015 intake. Now she's…
ByFrom Gordon Brown to Theresa May, politicians' doorstep encounters are stage managed. But it’s hard to ensure that “ordinary…
ByWhat's in a name?
ByIt was difficult to assess his complexion because of the silver face paint blending his skin in with the metallic…
ByWho most deserves to wander lonely as a cloud, in this hopelessly overcrowded land of ours?
ByI sometimes wonder how the hell I’d cope nowadays.
ByThe rest of the weekend . . . well, I had better pass over some of it in silence
ByI like to see an ex-footballer doing well, but I don’t wish Mark Tucker luck at HSBC.
ByThe novelist and Pulitzer Prize-winning memoirist on travelling in time, living without TV and admiring Angela Merkel.
ByFirst published on 30 June 1956, a profile of the philosopher and the communist dilemma.
ByAngela Merkel has accused some politicians in Britain of living under the “illusion” that the UK would retain its rights…
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