A Communist Odyssey

Author : Thomas Sakmyster
Publisher : Central European University Press
Page : 265 pages
File Size : 48,9 Mb
Release : 2012-09-15
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9786155225529

Get Book

A Communist Odyssey by Thomas Sakmyster Pdf

A group of Central European communists, most of them Hungarians, in the interwar period served the world communist movement as international cadres of the Comintern, the Moscow-based Communist International. As an important member of this cohort, József Pogány played a major role in the Hungarian Soviet Republic of 1919, the "March Action" in Germany in 1921, and, under the name of John Pepper, in the development of the American Communist Party of the 1920s. During the 1920s he was an important official in the Comintern apparatus and undertook missions on three continents. A prolific writer and effective organizer, he was one of the most flamboyant and controversial communists of his era. Some of his comrades praised him as "the Hungarian Christopher Columbus." Others, like Trotsky, called him a "political parasite."This study is based on newly available primary sources from Hungary, Russia, and the United States; it is the first ever written about this colorful and well-travelled Hungarian communist. Examines Pogány's development as a socialist and communist, the influence of his Jewish origins on his career, the reasons for his remarkable success in the United States, and the circumstances that led to his arrest and execution in the Stalinist terror.

Author : Michaela Praisler,Oana-Celia Gheorghiu
Publisher : Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Page : 270 pages
File Size : 50,9 Mb
Release : 2021-05-14
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 9781527569591

Get Book

The Odyssey of Communism by Michaela Praisler,Oana-Celia Gheorghiu Pdf

This volume looks into the ways in which film has contaminated and re-shaped culture(s) and the collective unconscious, at both local and global levels, arguing that our lives have been impacted by the ‘then’ that we keep revisiting, lest we forget. It takes the reader from the Berlin Wall to China, and from the terror of communist political prisons and labour camps to the rosy image promoted by propaganda. A key point throughout the text is its interdisciplinary nature, as it brings together literature and film scholars, directors, sociologists and philosophers, whose overall conclusion is that communism, lingering in mentalities, still needs interrogation. Structured along four parts which trace a Homeric (or rather Joycean) journey to a home metonymysed by the long-awaited freedom, this book sets out from the gloomiest aspects of totalitarianism in the Romanian, Serbian and Soviet ‘Hades(es)’ of traumatic psychological and physical experiences and of imposed silencing. The second part gathers together case studies of films illustrating more optimistic views of communism as ‘spring’ (in the USSR) or as a ‘golden age’ (in Romania), thus narcotising the communist ‘subjects’ and preventing them from seeing the actual inferno. The third section offers filmic accounts of the aftermaths of communism, engaging the readers in a nostalgic process that revisits, questions, reflects on and remembers communism on a larger, world stage. The coda rounds up the volume (and the journey therein) by crossing genre frontiers to written narratives with a cinematic component.

Author : Thomas Sakmyster
Publisher : Central European University Press
Page : 267 pages
File Size : 41,9 Mb
Release : 2012-11-30
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9786155225086

Get Book

A communist odyssey by Thomas Sakmyster Pdf

A group of Central European communists, most of them Hungarians, in the interwar period served the world communist movement as international cadres of the Comintern, the Moscow-based Communist International. As an important member of this cohort, J¢zsef Pog ny played a major role in the Hungarian Soviet Republic of 1919, the ?March Action? in Germany in 1921, and, under the name of John Pepper, in the development of the American Communist Party of the 1920s. During the 1920s he was an important official in the Comintern apparatus and undertook missions on three continents. A prolific writer and effective organizer, he was one of the most flamboyant and controversial communists of his era. Some of his comrades praised him as ?the Hungarian Christopher Columbus.? Others, like Trotsky, called him a ?political parasite.? This study is based on newly available primary sources from Hungary, Russia, and the United States; it is the first ever written about this colorful and well-travelled Hungarian communist. Examines Pog ny?s development as a socialist and communist, the influence of his Jewish origins on his career, the reasons for his remarkable success in the United States, and the circumstances that led to his arrest and execution in the Stalinist terror. ÿ

Author : Robert Hessen
Publisher : Hoover Press
Page : 332 pages
File Size : 49,8 Mb
Release : 1990-03
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 0817988831

Get Book

Breaking with Communism by Robert Hessen Pdf

This volume, chiefly Wolfe's letters from 1939 with unpublished speeches and writings from the Hoover Archives, illuminates his struggle to uncover the truth about the history of Soviet Russia and his anguish over his earlier allegiances not only to Lenin but to Karl Marx as well. When intellectuals in Eastern Europe and China are going through the same soul-searching process, this book is especially timely.

Author : Patricia Kennedy Grimsted
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 148 pages
File Size : 45,6 Mb
Release : 1995
Category : Smolenskai͡a︡ oblastʹ (Russia)
ISBN : UOM:39015038566744

Get Book

The Odyssey of the Smolensk Archive by Patricia Kennedy Grimsted Pdf

Author : Marvin A. Goldberg
Publisher : Xlibris Corporation
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 40,6 Mb
Release : 2007
Category : Jewish socialists
ISBN : 1425747744

Get Book

ZHID by Marvin A. Goldberg Pdf

Zhid A Russian Odyssey by Marvin A. Goldberg (Copyright 2006) Zhid A Russian Odyssey first explores Jewish family life in pre-revolutionary Tsarist Russia. It then goes on to illustrate how one family's personal political values changed or intensified affecting their lives once they immigrated to the United States. In the United States each branch of the Zhidovetsky/Goldberg family reacted differently to their newly found freedoms. One embraced socialist and later communist values while others followed the democratic and capitalistic viewpoints of their new country. The most famous of these first generation Americans was Ella Goldberg Wolfe, wife of Bertram David Wolfe, the noted Russian historian and author. Bert and Ella's lives were closely knit with that of the New York socialist intelligentsia in the early 1900s. Their changing views on peace, socialism, communism and later anti-communism were part of their process of awakening to their "Americanism." Both were members of New York's Greenwich Village "Lyric Left" that included John (Jack) Reed, Jay Lovestone, Max Eastman, Emma Goldmann, and Eugene O'Neill, among others. Ella was interviewed for Warren Beatty's biopic about Jack Reed and Louise Bryant - "Reds" - and provided basic "first hand" information for the film. Active Peaceniks during World War I, the Wolfes were hounded by the seditionist police in the post-world-war era because of their pro-peace and socialist values. We follow their swing to communism, and then travel with them around the U.S. while they seek to avoid capture. Eventually they immigrate to Mexico where they become an important part of the Mexican communist movement that included artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, both of whom became their confidantes. In 1929, as delegates to the Comintern Congress in Moscow, Bert's views about the American Communist movement causes both to become targets of Joseph Stalin, and they are held under house arrest until Julius Hammer arranges for their release. Upon return to the U.S. both Bert and Ella become part of the Lovestone anti-Stalinist faction and later become virulent anti-communists. Bert Wolfe, his brother-in-law Harry Goldberg and Jay Lovestone were considered to be among the most valuable secret political assets of the U.S. during the cold war. Bert passed away in 1977 after have written numerous books about Russian Communism including the epic Three Who Made a Revolution. Ella outlived most of her generation and passed on at the age of one hundred and three in January of 2000. Their love story, matched against the background of the politics and upheavals of the 19th and 20th centuries, is both meaningful and poignant. We follow, in like fashion, other members of the family Zhidovetsky/Goldberg and their new lives, successes and failures in their adopted country. Finally, the moral issues confronting the United States today are explored and some interesting similarities vis-à-vis the past and present are discussed with regard to the views of the author and other members of this extraordinary family.

Author : Suzanne Rosenberg
Publisher : Penguin Group
Page : 232 pages
File Size : 44,5 Mb
Release : 1991
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : PSU:000016892620

Get Book

A Soviet Odyssey by Suzanne Rosenberg Pdf

Author : Belle Yang
Publisher : Houghton Mifflin
Page : 340 pages
File Size : 44,8 Mb
Release : 1996
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : UOM:39015038153964

Get Book

The Odyssey of a Manchurian by Belle Yang Pdf

After the defeat of Japan in World War II, China is plunged into a civil war between Communist and Nationalist forces. The old and respected Manchurian House of Yang is toppled in the chaos, and seventeen-year-old Baba, the Yangs' fourth and most audacious son, is forced to leave Manchuria and his family behind. He journeys south on blistered feet, plagued by constant hunger. As the Communists overrun the crumbling Nationalist army, suspicion and paranoia become the norm, and Baba must outrun the tide of silence and betrayal engulfing the countryside. From Beiping, the ancient capital, to the great Yellow and Yangtze Rivers, on to splendid, decadent Shanghai, he is swept up in a desperate exodus fleeing the Communist takeover, witnessing examples of rare courage and generosity as well as incidents of monstrous connivance and greed. When the southern provinces fall to the Communists, Baba is forced to abandon the mainland for the island of Taiwan.

Author : Stephane Groueff
Publisher : iUniverse
Page : 698 pages
File Size : 43,5 Mb
Release : 2003
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9780595257096

Get Book

My Odyssey by Stephane Groueff Pdf

In 1944, when Communism devastated Eastern Europe, it uprooted millions, setting the new "Displaced Persons" adrift, most often to a tragic fate. By unusual luck, young Stephane Groueff, a Bulgarian, landed on more hospitable shores. Spared from the destruction of his family and home after a happy, privileged childhood in a small Balkan kingdom, his eventful Odyssey threw him into the fascinating life of a "Paris-Match" foreign correspondent, led him to romantic experiences lived against the backdrop of Montmartre nightclubs, Egyptian pyramids, opulent Irish castles or Alpine ski resorts and involved him in anti-Communist exile activities. The reader of his candid narrative finds the budding historian of the Manhattan Project at the side of general Groves, the maker of the atomic bomb, follows him as a chronicler of science research at oceanography expeditions in the Pacific, at the Mt.Palomar telescope or on the South Pole, and meets him again in Mexico and at the service of the Sultan of Oman. His reportages bring him to Cape Canaveral and Saigon, to refugee camps in Thailand, and glamorous Hollywood. The bittersweet tale abounds with celebrities, famous friends, and amusing anecdotes, but is also filled with incurable nostalgia and heartbreaking details of the author's family's sufferings. Unexpectedly, a miracle interrupts the "Displaced Person's" voyage: the Communist regime collapses and Groueff can finally return to his native land. The circle is completed. The red carpet awaits him, but 46 years had passed and most people he loved are no longer there to welcome him.

Author : Daiyun Yue,Carolyn Wakeman
Publisher : Univ of California Press
Page : 448 pages
File Size : 51,7 Mb
Release : 1987-03-16
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 0520908384

Get Book

To The Storm by Daiyun Yue,Carolyn Wakeman Pdf

To the Storm by Yue Daiyun and Carolyn Wakeman is the fascinating story of Yue Daiyun, a faculty member at Beijing University. Yue Daiyun was a revolutionary from her early school days. She had been a child during the anti-Japanese war and hated the Guomundang. Accepted as a student at Beida in 1948, she joined the Communist Party's underground Democratic youth League and became a Party member the following year and helped with the Liberation of Beijing. While a student at Beida, she served as a delegate at the Prague 2nd World Student Congress in 1950 and worked in the countryside on land reform in 1951-52. Then she graduated from Beida and became a faculty member in the literature department. She married her husband, Lao Tang, the day after their graduation. He obtained a faculty position in the philosophy department. Both were loyal to Chairman Mao and the goals of the Revolution. Their lives went smoothly for several years until 1958. Yue Daiyun taught Chinese literature and took part in many activities on campus. She read many Western books and supported the formation of a new literary magazine on campus. This eventually brought her into conflict with the authorities and the beginning of two decades of problems and persecution for her and her family. The Party had encouraged openness and criticism of its mistakes and deficiencies in the system. Yue Daiyun had taken part in the discussions, believing that she was helping to build a better China. Summoned to a meeting at her department one day, she was denounced as a rightist. She did not understand what she did wrong, but she was quickly relieved of her teaching duties and sent to the countryside to work and live with the peasants for two years. This was the first of her suspensions from teaching. Both Yue Daiyun and her husband, Lao Tang, were caught up in the persecution and violence of the Cultural Revolution. They had spent two years at a cadre school in Liyouhoz and when they returned to Beijing, Lao Tang was selected to work on a special task force called Liang Xaio. This brought Lao Tang and the group into close association with Jiang Qing and the Gang of Four. When the Gang of Four was arrested, Lao Tang suffered through a year long investigation before being cleared. Throughout this time their family suffered from the persecution of others. In the end, the authorities admitted that they were wrong in their case against her and reinstated her Party membership. In this interesting autobiography, Yue Daiyun tells her story of the life she and her family lived during these somewhat violent and terror-filled years in China.

Author : Anne F. Thurston
Publisher : Macmillan Reference USA
Page : 476 pages
File Size : 53,7 Mb
Release : 1991
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 0684192195

Get Book

A Chinese Odyssey by Anne F. Thurston Pdf

Thurston has written the extraordinary life of Ni Yuxian, one of the founders of China's democracy movement. Born in 1945, Ni's first memories are of the Communists taking over his village. Although subjected to humiliation, imprisonment and torture, Ni bravely waged repeated battles against corruption and hypocrisy within the Chinese system.

Author : Harold J. Bershady
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 282 pages
File Size : 53,6 Mb
Release : 2017-09-08
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781351296304

Get Book

When Marx Mattered by Harold J. Bershady Pdf

A beautifully written, trenchant, and moving memoir, When Marx Mattered follows Harold J. Bershady's odyssey from childhood through his coming of intellectual age. The wounds and pleasures of his childhood include fear of Nazis, poverty, the joys and constraints of Jewishness, his caring family and love of music, and the confusion surrounding World War II. In this book, Bershady describes his teenage encounter with Marxism and how it provided some understanding of the world and hope for peace. Bershady gives us a serious portrayal of the evolution of scholarly judgment, but also a social history of the second half of the twentieth century, refracted through the author's own experiences in which Jewish Americans played an important but under-appreciated part. Along the way, the author corrects the misapprehension that Jewish or non-Jewish American political radicals only evolve into conservatives. Through his own mistakes and hard-won lessons, Bershady shows the power, importance, and morality that intellectual standards play in enabling an intellectual to achieve sound and fair judgments. Bershady firmly believes that his achievements in the social sciences are grounded in the fact that he also studied philosophy, literature, and history—all of which immeasurably deepened his understanding of social life. The generational portrait in this book is both an homage to those who preceded him and a hope for educational broadening of social science in the generation to come.

Author : Michaela Praisler,Oana-Celia Gheorghiu
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 128 pages
File Size : 51,5 Mb
Release : 2021-07
Category : Electronic
ISBN : 1527569020

Get Book

The Odyssey of Communism by Michaela Praisler,Oana-Celia Gheorghiu Pdf

This volume looks into the ways in which film has contaminated and re-shaped culture(s) and the collective unconscious, at both local and global levels, arguing that our lives have been impacted by the 'then' that we keep revisiting, lest we forget. It takes the reader from the Berlin Wall to China, and from the terror of communist political prisons and labour camps to the rosy image promoted by propaganda. A key point throughout the text is its interdisciplinary nature, as it brings together literature and film scholars, directors, sociologists and philosophers, whose overall conclusion is that communism, lingering in mentalities, still needs interrogation. Structured along four parts which trace a Homeric (or rather Joycean) journey to a home metonymysed by the long-awaited freedom, this book sets out from the gloomiest aspects of totalitarianism in the Romanian, Serbian and Soviet 'Hades(es)' of traumatic psychological and physical experiences and of imposed silencing. The second part gathers together case studies of films illustrating more optimistic views of communism as 'spring' (in the USSR) or as a 'golden age' (in Romania), thus narcotising the communist 'subjects' and preventing them from seeing the actual inferno. The third section offers filmic accounts of the aftermaths of communism, engaging the readers in a nostalgic process that revisits, questions, reflects on and remembers communism on a larger, world stage. The coda rounds up the volume (and the journey therein) by crossing genre frontiers to written narratives with a cinematic component.

Author : Peter N. Carroll
Publisher : Stanford University Press
Page : 476 pages
File Size : 43,5 Mb
Release : 1994
Category : History
ISBN : 0804722773

Get Book

The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade by Peter N. Carroll Pdf

Looks at the role of the United States in the Spanish Civil War

Author : David Horowitz
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 480 pages
File Size : 48,6 Mb
Release : 2011-12-13
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9781439135198

Get Book

Radical Son by David Horowitz Pdf

Originally a radical socialist, the current driving force behind the rise of the Hollywood right recounts how he moved from one set of political convictions to another over the course of thirty years, and challenges readers to consider how they came by their own convictions.