Marx & Engels on the German elections
At the start of the Cold War, in 1952, a book came out in the USA and Britain entitled “The Russian Menace to Europe”. The authors were listed as Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. A…
Review: The Frozen People, by Elly Griffiths
Elly Griffiths is the author of two very successful series of novels, knocking off dozens of titles. She apparently has a huge fanbase. This book promises the be the first of a series featuring Ali…
Munich 2025: Return of the “Guilty Men”
As Karl Marx famously wrote in 1852, “Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as…
Review: Freud for Historians, by Peter Gay
“Both history and psychoanalysis are sciences of memory, both are professionally committed to skepticism, both trace causes in the past, both seek to penetrate behind pioues professions and subtle evasions.” So concludes historian Peter Gay…
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…
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…