How the Soviet Union got over Stalin – or thought it did
His successors proclaimed a more liberal socialism. But was it ever real?
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Britain’s young communists are ready for revolution
Among the radicals at Revolution Festival
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From the archive: A state of boredom
February 1978: Clive James reviews the official biography of Leonid Brezhnev.
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The thwarted Marxist of Balliol
Christopher Hill was much better at analysing the revolution than he was at fomenting one.
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Mario Tronti’s divine comedy
How the Italian philosopher, who died last month aged 92, turned to theology in his war with the world.
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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…
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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.
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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…
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Moscow, my family and me
To grow up in the Communist Party of Great Britain was to be on the side of the future . .…
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From the archive: Russia and the Bolsheviks
De Tocqueville, in explaining the origin of the French Revolution, lays emphasis on the equality of condition, education and manners…
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From the 1917 Revolution archive: Russia’s New Holy Alliance
On 15 March 1917, after months of strikes and unrest, Tsar Nicholas II stepped down as supreme ruler of the Russian…
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From the 1917 Revolution archive: A Petrograd Diary
Julius West’s reports for the New Statesman offer a first hand account of the uneasy beginnings of Bolshevik rule.
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From the 1917 Revolution archive: The Bolshevik Revolution
This New Statesman report by the historian Julius West gives an eye-witness account of the start of Bolshevik rule in…
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What caused the Russian revolution? Look to the powder keg of Petrograd
How unrest exploded in 1917 – with help from Russia’s Terrible Twins.
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