How did communism collapse in East Germany at the end of the 1980s? For anybody growing up in the post-war era, the division of Germany into capitalist West Germany and communist East Germany seemed set in stone. But the Soviet-backed… Read More ›
History
The history of both Marxism and also movements in history that influenced Marxism
Stalinist purges – the top ten liquidations!
Stalin liked a good purge! Between 1929 and 1953, 777,975 people were executed after rigged show trials – and that’s just the official figure. Add to that number another half a million who received a bullet to the back of… Read More ›
Why was Stalin anti-semitic?
What lay behind the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin’s increasingly hostile attitude towards Jews? Was he always anti-semitic or did his anti-Jewish policies result from increasing paranoia? Let’s investigate why the head of the USSR victimised and murdered Jewish communists and… Read More ›
British communist hostility to Polish migrants
If you think the far Right is tough on migrants today, it’s worth looking back at how British communists talked about Polish exiles at the end of the Second World War. The language was hostile and uncompromising. But why were… Read More ›
Why the Prague Spring of 1968 was crushed
In the 1960s, Czechoslovakia attempted to create a more humane version of communism but ended up provoking a massive Soviet invasion. The Prague Spring began with hope and optimism and ended with arrests and foreign troops on the streets. What… Read More ›
Life and Death of Nicolae Ceaușescu – Romanian dictator
When communism collapsed, most of the former communist leaders from East Germany to Bulgaria slid into disgraced retirement or short spells in prison. Some went into the private sector, using their detailed knowledge to get rich. But one leader faced… Read More ›
The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 – what happened?
At the height of the Cold War between the Soviet Union and United States, in the 1950s, a communist state tried to throw off the Soviet yoke. Workers and students in Hungary began a revolution, hoping that the Kremlin would… Read More ›
The weird socialism of Albania under Hoxha
As a teenager in the late 1970s, who was very into politics, I met somebody who had been to Albania, then a communist country. What a strange place! Young people were forbidden to wear jeans and grow their hair long…. Read More ›
Should we call Donald Trump a fascist – or not?
During the 2024 American president election, Democrats and others on the left decried the Republican candidate, Donald Trump, as a fascist. However, some socialist theorists and commentators have criticised the loose use of this word – warning that when the… Read More ›
The British Lumpenproletariat in revolt
Increasingly in the United States, United Kingdom, and Europe, we have seen violent protests by predominantly white men from lower income backgrounds adopting racist and xenophobic views and manipulated by social media bots, often originating in the United States and… Read More ›
Marxism Explained 