A Dictionary of 20th-Century Communism
Edited by Silvio Pons & Robert Service

Cloth | May 2010 | $99.50 / £69.95
792 pp. | 8 x 10

Shopping Cart | Endorsements

The first book of its kind to appear since the end of the Cold War, this indispensable reference provides encyclopedic coverage of communism and its impact throughout the world in the twentieth century. With the opening of archives in former communist states over the past twenty years, scholars have found new material that has expanded and sometimes altered their understanding of communism as an ideological and political force. A Dictionary of 20th-Century Communism brings this scholarship to students, teachers, and scholars in related fields. In more than 400 concise entries, this book explains what communism was, the forms it took, and the enormous role it played in world history from the Russian Revolution through the collapse of the Soviet Union and beyond.

• Examines the political, intellectual, and social influences of communism around the globe
• Features contributions from an international team of 160 scholars
• Includes more than 400 entries on major topics, such as:
  • Figures: Lenin, Mao, Stalin, Ho Chi Minh, Pol Pot, Castro, Gorbachev
  • Events: Cold War, Prague Spring, Cultural Revolution, Sandinista Revolution
  • Ideas and concepts: Marxism-Leninism, cult of personality, labor
  • Organizations and movements: KGB, Comintern, Gulag, Khmer Rouge
  • Related topics: totalitarianism, nationalism, antifascism, anticommunism, McCarthyism
• Guides readers to further research through bibliographies, cross-references, and an index

Silvio Pons is professor of eastern European history at the University of Rome Tor Vergata and director of the Gramsci Institute Foundation in Rome. His books include The Soviet Union and Europe in the Cold War, 1943-1953 and Stalin and the Inevitable War, 1936-1941. Robert Service teaches Russian history at the University of Oxford. He is the author of Comrades!: A History of World Communism and A History of Twentieth-Century Russia, as well as biographies of Lenin, Stalin, and Trotsky.

Endorsements:

"This important work helps bridge the gap between specialists' knowledge about communism and the general public's understanding--a gap that has only widened since the revolutions of 1989-1991. The dictionary's entries are informative and reasonable, everything one wants in a work such as this."--Eric D. Weitz, University of Minnesota

"A valuable and comprehensive research asset that provides a useful place for students to start their investigations. Among the articles are some masterful reviews by major scholars."--Ronald Grigor Suny, University of Michigan

Subject Areas:

• Reference Works and Anthologies
• Political Science and International Relations
• World History / Comparative History
• Political Philosophy
• European History

Shopping Cart:

For customers in the U.S., Canada, Latin America, Asia, and Australia
Cloth: $99.50 ISBN13: 978-0-691-13585-4

For customers in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and India
Cloth: £69.95 ISBN13: 978-0-691-13585-4

Prices subject to change without notice

File created: 11/4/2009

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