(Ebook) The Red Flag: A History of Communism by David Priestland ISBN 9780802119247, 0802119247

(Ebook) The Red Flag: A History of Communism by David Priestland ISBN 9780802119247, 0802119247

Communism was one of the most powerful political and intellectual movements the world has ever seen. At the height of their influence, Communists ruled a third of the world’s population. But perhaps more astonishing than Communism’s rapid rise and extraordinary reach was its collapse in November of 1989.In The Red Flag, Oxford professor David Priestland tells the epic story of a movement that has taken root in dozens of countries across two hundred years, from its birth after the French Revolution to its ideological maturity in nineteenth-century Germany to its rise to dominance (and subsequent fall) in the twentieth century. Beginning with the first modern Communists in the age of Robespierre, Priestland examines the motives of thinkers and leaders including Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Castro, Che Guevara, Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Gorbachev, and many others. He also asks what it was about Communism that inspired its rank and file—whether the militants of 1920s Russia, the guerrilla fighters of China, the Marxist students of Ethiopia, or the urban terrorists of Europe in the 1970s—and explores the experience of what it meant to live under Communism for its millions of subjects.Priestland shows how Communism, in all its varieties, appealed to different societies for different reasons, in some as a response to inequalities and in others more out of a desire to catch up with the West. Communists may have promised to build just and modern societies, but just as they destroyed old structures of privilege, they simultaneously built new ones. It was this fundamental paradox, together with widespread economic failure, horrifying violence, and an escalating loss of faith in the system, that ultimately left the Communist project in tatters. Even so, Communist parties are still in power in Asia and Latin America and, as Priestland emphasizes, Communism has played a central role in the history of the modern world—not only through its militaristic political systems but also its broader influence on ideas and culture.At a time when the post-Cold War order is itself in crisis and we enter a new phase of global political and economic uncertainty, The Red Flag is essential reading.