Title Highlight: A Dictionary of 20th-Century Communism

A Dictionary of 20th-Century Communism

1 volume: List of entries, Acronyms and abbreviations, Index

More of an encyclopedia than a dictionary, this volume contains numerous longer articles on different topics related to communist political ideology in the 20th century, the period of its greatest impact. The topics covered range from short biographies of communists both well-known (i.e., Mao Tse Dung, Ernesto “Che” Guevara) and unknown (i.e., Enver Hoxha, Mikhail Tukachevskii) to descriptions of types of communism (among them: Trotskyism, Stalinism, Bonapatism)

Today, with only 4 countries still espousing communist ideologies (China, North Korea, Vietnam and Cuba) it is hard to imagine the great impact that communist thought and ideology had on 20th century life and politics. Reading the entries in this book will introduce you to the ideas and people behind one of the defining political forces of the 20th century, beginning with the Russian revolution in 1917, continuing through the period of the Cold War and the fading out of communism as a political system after the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989.

An interesting observation found in the introduction to the book notes that when communists were not in power they participated in struggles for liberation and social emancipation of peoples, but, when in power uniformly established repressive and tyrannical regimes. There is a short bibliography at the end of entries containing suggestions for further reading.