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"Seidman, Michael (Michael M.), author"
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Transatlantic antifascisms : from the Spanish Civil War to the end of World War II
\"Antifascism has received little attention compared to its enemy. No historian or social scientist has previously attempted to define its nature and history -- yet antifascism became perhaps the most powerful ideology of the twentieth century. Michael Seidman fills this gap by providing the first comprehensive study of antifascisms in Spain, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States with new interpretations of the Spanish Civil War, French Popular Front, and Second World War. He shows how two types of antifascism -- revolutionary and counterrevolutionary -- developed from 1936 to 1945. Revolutionary antifascism dominated the Spanish Republic during its civil war and re-emerged in Eastern Europe at the end of World War II. By contrast, counterrevolutionary antifascists were hegemonic in France, Britain, and the United States. In Western Europe, they restored conservative republics or constitutional monarchies based on Enlightenment principles. This innovative examination of antifascism will interest a wide range of scholars and students of twentieth-century history.\"--Back cover.
Book
The imaginary revolution
The events of 1968 have been seen as a decisive turning point in the Western world of even mythical significance. The author takes a critical look at \"May 1968\" and questions whether the events were in fact as \"revolutionary\" as French and foreign commentators have indicated. His conclusions are rather more ambivalent: culturally, he argues, the student movement changed little that had not already been challenged and altered in the late fifties and early sixties. The workers' strikes led to fewer working hours and higher wages, but these reforms reflected the secular demands of the French labor movement. \"May 1968\" was remarkable not because of the actual transformations it wrought but rather by virtue of the revolutionary power that much of the media and most scholars have attributed to it and which turned it into a symbol of a youthful, renewed, and freer society in France and beyond.
eBook
The Victorious Counterrevolution
This groundbreaking history of the Spanish Civil War (1936–39) examines, for the first time in any language, how General Francisco Franco and his Nationalist forces managed state finance and economic production, and mobilized support from elites and middle-class Spaniards, to achieve their eventual victory over Spanish Republicans and the revolutionary left. The Spanish Nationalists are exceptional among counter-revolutionary movements of the twentieth century, Michael Seidman demonstrates, because they avoided the inflation and shortages of food and military supplies that stymied not only their Republican adversaries but also their counter-revolutionary counterparts—the Russian Whites and Chinese Nationalists. He documents how Franco’s highly repressive and tightly controlled regime produced food for troops and civilians; regular pay for soldiers, farmers, and factory workers; and protection of property rights for both large and small landowners. These factors, combined with the Nationalists’ pro-Catholic and anti-Jewish propaganda, reinforced solidarity in the Nationalist zone. Seidman concludes that, unlike the victorious Spanish Nationalists, the Russian and Chinese bourgeoisie were weakened by the economic and social upheaval of the two world wars and succumbed in each case to the surging revolutionary left.
eBook
Republic of Egos
Most histories of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) have examined major leaders or well-established political and social groups to explore class, gender, and ideological struggles. The war in Spain was marked by momentous conflicts between democracy and dictatorship, Communism and fascism, anarchism and authoritarianism, and Catholicism and anticlericalism that still provoke our fascination. In Republic of Egos, Michael Seidman focuses instead on the personal and individual experiences of the common men and women who were actors in a struggle that defined a generation and helped to shape our world. By examining the roles of anonymous individuals, families, and small groups who fought for their own interests and survival—and not necessarily for an abstract or revolutionary cause—Seidman reveals a powerful but rarely considered pressure on the outcome of history. He shows how price controls and inflation in the Republican zone encouraged peasant hoarding, black marketing, and unrest among urban workers. Soldiers of the Republican Army responded to material shortages by looting, deserting, and fraternizing with the enemy. Seidman’s focus on average, seemingly nonpolitical individuals provides a new vision of both the experience and outcome of the war.
eBook