R. Craig Nation – författare

R. Craig Nation provides the first post-Cold War history of the Soviets' seventy-five-year struggle to maintain an effective national security policy in a hostile world without altogether abandoning the commitment to their original internationalist ideals.

R. Craig Nation provides the first post-Cold War history of the Soviets' seventy-five-year struggle to maintain an effective national security policy in a hostile world without altogether abandoning the commitment to their original internationalist ideals.

The outbreak of World War I precipitated a schism in the international socialist movement that endures today. Heeding calls for "rational defense," the leading European socialist democratic parties abandoned their vision of peace and internationalism as an integral part of the struggle for social justice and set aside their view of interstate war as the clearest example of the irrational essence of competitive capitalism. Only the Zimmerwald Left, led by Lenin, continued to speak out for internationalism. R. Craig Nation utilizes sources in Dutch, French, German, Italian, Russian, and Swedish to provide the first comprehensive history of the Zimmerwald Left as an international political tendency.

WWI represented a tragic crossroads for the international Left. The pressing decision of the hour - whether to collaborate with or to resist imperialist war - was answered overwhelmingly with the former choice by almost every party of the Second International. However, Nation argues that those who chose the latter held the legacy for renewing socialism after the cataclysm of war. This is a crucial and defining chapter in the history of the socialist movement.