Comrades: The Rise and Fall of World Communism

by Robert Harvey

Today global communism seems just a terrible historical memory, an expressionist nightmare as horrific as Nazism and the Holocaust, or the slaughter in World War I. 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...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0719561477
• ISBN13: 9780719561474
• Release Date: January 2003
• Publisher: John Murray Publishers
• Length: 422 Pages
• Weight: 1.85 lbs.

Customer Reviews

A wonderful account

This wonderful tour de force of communism traces the rise and fall of what amounted to a `religion' in the 20th century, namely international Communism. From its early beginnings in Marx's study to the fall of the Berlin wall and the remaining `mastodons' of N. Korea and Cuba. This book tells the amazing story of Mao's long march, the fall of Portugals empire in Africa, the rise of Eurocommunism and may other fascinating stories. With the typical whit and insght, and unbiased touch of an Englishman, this book storms through communisms many victories, following it through a time when over half the worlds populaton was under the communist ethos and looked like Marx's dialectic might actually be the new way. But as this wonderful popular study points out, Communism was rotten from the core. Every country where Communism succeeded, it suppressed civil liberties, stymied the economy and used nationalism to whip up support. Missing slightly from this eminently readable account are the most unstudied communist movements in Africa and S. America. Although dealt with, these movements are brushed over, with frequently but a page being donated to the communist victories in Ethiopia and the rebel movements like the `Shining Path' in Peru. With the exception of these minor issues this book is a wonderful history of Communism. Not an academic work, it doesn't bore one with the details of analytical thinking, rater it tells he true history, with special honesty given to Allende's regime in Chili. A must read for anyone interested in the 20th century. Seth J. Frantzman