Routledge History of Communism

Melissa Feinberg is Professor of History at Rutgers University, USA. She is the author of Elusive Equality: Gender, Citizenship and the Limits of Democracy in Czechoslovakia, 1918–1950 (2006), Curtain of Lies: The Battle over Truth in Stalinist Eastern Europe (2017), and Communism in Eastern Europe (Routledge, 2022).Lisa A. Kirschenbaum is Professor Emerita of History at West Chester University, USA. Her research explores how ordinary people navigated the traumas of the twentieth century. Her most recent book is Soviet Adventures in the Land of the Capitalists: Ilf and Petrov’s American Road Trip (2024).

“Nearly two centuries after Marx and Engels first articulated its promise, communism continues to shape global politics and public debates. This rich edited volume offers a fresh, global history of communism that moves beyond elite perspectives to examine everyday life, revealing how ordinary people engaged with, adapted, and contested revolutionary ideals. A vital reference for historians and social scientists.”Professor Kristen Ghodsee, Russian and East European Studies, University of Pennsylvania“An excellent collection of essays that analyzes the achievements and failures of global communism in a balanced and thoughtful manner. The editors have made a wise decision to foreground the lived experiences of individuals and societies under communism rather than reprise the ideologies and biographies of individual leaders.”Choi Chatterjee, Author of Russia in World History: A Transnational Approach“Feinberg and Kirschenbaum’s goal was to showcase new approaches to the history of their topic by bringing together the work of a diverse range of contributors who share an interest in the lived experience of Communism … The result is an impressively wide-ranging volume that will provide much food for thought to readers interested in specific settings ranging from the former Soviet Union and Cold War era Hungary to twenty-first century China and Cuba, as well as in a broad array of comparative and transnational issues.”Jeffrey Wasserstrom, Editor of The Oxford History of Modern China

• Introduction, 1. Utopian Empiricism: The Logics of Marxism and Communism, 2. Communism, Anticolonialism and Antiracism: The Comintern, Communists, and the Roots of a Global Revolutionary Campaign, 1919–1943, 3. Communism and Feminism: From Red Love to Maternal Welfare in Korea and Beyond, 4. Communism and Nationalism: Living with Ethnic Diversity under Communism, 5. The Bolshevik Revolution at Home and Abroad: Spanish Anarchists and the Russian Revolution, 6. The Chinese Revolution at Home and Abroad: Travel, Intimacy, and the Fragile Networks of Revolutionary Development, 7. The Cuban Revolution at Home and Abroad: Difference and Deception, 8. Socialist Industrialization: Marxist Legacies, the Working Class, and the Revolutionary State in Russia and China, 9. Urbanization: The City as a Site of Radicalization, Revolution, and Reimagination, 10. Remaking the Countryside: Collectivization of Agriculture, 11. Marriage, Sex, and Family: From Equality and Collective Ideals to Individual Responsibilities in Socialist East Central Europe, 12. Revolutionizing Childhood: Childrearing and Education in Maoist China, 13. Public Health: Socialist Approaches to Vaccination, State, and Society, 14. Popular Music and Socialism: The Travels of Anna German, 15. Religion and Atheism: The Bureaucratic Turn in Soviet Antireligious Policies, 16. Policing and Terror: Imagining a Workers' Police in Interwar Europe, 17. Communist Networks: Love and Work in the Global Networks of the Communist International, 18. Antifascism and War: The Spanish Civil War as a Turning Point in International Communism, 19. Communist Experts Abroad: Balkan Experts in Africa—Solidarity and Development, 20. Anti-imperialism, Neocolonialism, and the Global Cold War: African Discourses, 21. Eurasian Communism in the Global History of Race: From Berlin to Beijing, 22. Espionage: The Chekist Model and the Creation of the Global National Security State, 23. Marketization and Consumerism: How Planned Economies Failed to Transition to Intensive Growth, 24. Communism and 1968: Youth Rebellions in Eastern Europe in the Global Sixties, 25. Dissent: The 1980s Elections and the Boundaries Between Disagreement and Opposition in China, 26. The Environment: Pollution and Protest in a Central European Borderland, 27. Communism and 1989: Variegated Protests, Communist Repression, and Resilience in China, 28. World War II in Post-Soviet Space: Theater and Memory in Ukraine, 29. Communist Nostalgia and Its Discontents: The Hungarian Case, 30. Communism, Populism, and Ethnonationalism: The Road from Communism to Illiberalism in Eastern Europe, 31. Capitalism versus Communism: Reassessing the Conventional Historical Frame