Goma and Global Capitalism
“More than 100 female prisoners were raped and then burned alive during a jailbreak in the Congolese city of Goma, according to the UN.” That’s from a BBC report a few days ago. This horrific…
Articles by admin
Review: All You Need to Know … Stalin, by Claire Shaw
This attractive, well-illustrated short biography of Stalin is part of a new series featuring prominent historians including Max Hastings and focussing on some of the biggest issues, including the Third Reich, the British Empire and…
Review: Roman Malinovsky: A Life Without a Cause, by Ralph Carter Elwood
This is not the first time I have read this short book and that’s probably because it is proving to be so useful to me in my understanding of how the tsarist police (the Okhrana)…
Trump’s Favourite President
Last Monday was Donald Trump’s first day in office as President and he raced to issue a series of “executive orders”. One would imagine that these reflected his highest priorities as well as those of…
Review: The Mind of Stalin: A Psychoanalytic Study, by Daniel Rancour-Laferriere
This is a surprisingly interesting book. In just 143 pages (including extensive footnotes), the author examines many aspects of the Soviet dictator’s life through the prism of Freudian psychoanalysis. And many of his conclusions are…
“A Complete Unknown”: Bob Dylan and the Stalinists
The new film about the early years of Bob Dylan’s career, “A Complete Unknown,” is a brilliant, must-see film. Timothée Chalamet is outstanding as the young Dylan — not only as an actor, but as…
Review: I Knew Stalin, by Anatole V. Baikaloff
No, he didn’t. The author of this short book, a former Bolshevik, apparently met Stalin briefly before the 1917 revolution, and says that the man didn’t make much of an impression. The remaining 90% of…
Review: Stalin: Czar of all the Russias, by Eugene Lyons
This is how history books used to look: no index, no footnotes, no bibliography. Life for historians was easier in 1940. Eugene Lyons, a journalist, was the first Western newspaperman to interview Josef Stalin in…
Review: The 8-week Blood Sugar Diet: Lose Weight Fast and Reprogramme your Body, by Dr Michael Mosley
Dr Michael Mosley, who sadly died last year, was one of the great communicators about science and medicine. His radio shows and podcasts taught millions of us about things we could do to improve our…
Georgia at a crossroads – and what Britain can do.
My first article to appear in Progressive Britain – click here to read it.