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A Slow Reckoning examines the Soviet Union's and the Afghan communists' views of and policies toward Islam and Islamism during the Soviet-Afghan War (1979-1989). As Vassily Klimentov demonstrates, the Soviet and communist Afghan disregard for Islam was telling of the overall communist approach to reforming Afghanistan and helps explain the failure of their modernization project. A Slow Reckoning reveals how during most of the conflict Babrak Karmal, the ruler installed by the Soviets, instrumentalized Islam in support of his rule while retaining a Marxist-Leninist platform. Similarly, the Soviets at all levels failed to give Islam its due importance as communist ideology and military considerations dominated their decision making. This approach to Islam only changed after Mikhail Gorbachev replaced Karmal by Mohammad Najibullah and prepared to withdraw Soviet forces. Discarding Marxism-Leninism for Islam proved the correct approach, but it came too late to salvage the Soviet nation-building project. A Slow Reckoning also shows how Soviet leaders only started seriously paying attention to an Islamist threat from Afghanistan to Central Asia after 1986. While the Soviets had concerns related to Islamism in 1979, only the KGB believed the threat to be potent. The Soviet elites never fully conceptualized Islamism, continuing to see it as an ideology the United States, Iran, or Pakistan could instrumentalize at will. They believed the Islamists had little agency and that their retrograde ideology could not find massive appeal among progressive Soviet Muslims. In this, they were only partly right.

This study, based on an extensive program of interviewing former American, British, French, and Italian Communists, provides many answers to these questions and gives a convincing insight into the motivations, tensions, and loyalties of Party members. First, the book examines Communist literature (the Lenin and Stalin classics and current Party media) to see what the Communists themselves expect of their movement. Then it shows whether this ideal is realized by the people who have \"been through it.\" The final sections, which follow the interviews closely, reveal what actually happens to people when they join, while they are in the Party, and after they leave. Originally published in 1954. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

The study deals with the confrontation of two texts: Jan Mukařovský’s “Stalin’s ‘Economic Problems of Socialism’ and Literary Theory” and Stefan Żółkiewski’s “Stalin’s Thesis about Language and Methodology of Literary Research”. Both texts have the character of a scientific program and represent the Stalinist version of Marxist though (so-called Marxism-Leninism), which was characterized inter alia by the construction of ‘ontological continuity’ between natural and social objects (Dominique Lecourt). Mukařovský’s thesis that literature fulfills its social function by fulfilling its immanent ‘development law’ was never theoretically developer further. On the contrary, Żółkiewski’s Marxist conception of literary romanticism led to an analysis of the relationship between literature and society, specifically between literary style and the socio-cultural context.

In this paper, we discuss how existentialism was criticized, disseminated, and gradually autochthonized in the main philosophical journals of Socialist Romania. We show that the early critique of existentialism was both a statement against contemporary bourgeois philosophy in general and a condemnation of the local philosophical production of the interwar period. In the 1950s, this kind of critique was attuned to the growing fame of several Romanian authors who had emigrated to the West (e.g., Emil Cioran, Mircea Eliade) and targeted both past and contemporary irrationalism. Following a period of critique of existentialism without existentialists (i.e., without reference to individual authors), the 1960s discussions of existentialism were mainly driven by interest in a small number of existentialist authors. In particular, the evolution of Jean-Paul Sartre’s work and politics was analyzed as it straddled existentialism and Marxism. The 1970s saw the integration of selected existentialist concepts and themes, in an attempt to offer a Marxist alternative to existentialism in the form of philosophical anthropology. This led to a period of engagement with existentialists without existentialism across an increasing number of separate disciplines within the humanities and social sciences. In the 1980s, following the failure of Marxist philosophical anthropology and at the height of national communism, existentialism could also be autochthonized through the recovery of selected philosophers from the interwar period whose work had been previously criticized as irrationalist.

This article* is dedicated to the regional studies movement in Soviet Lithuania, primarily to ethnography, and argues that Lithuanian ethnographers conducted ethnographic research in different ways. The focus is on the Ramuva movement, founded in 1970 at Vilnius University and continuing until 1994. The activities of the Lithuanian regional studies movement were characterised by diverse education and ethnographic practices. I assert that the key to the success of Ramuva’s activity was a creative circumventing of Soviet ideology and practice. Through a discussion of theoretical issues and the results of fieldwork, I analyse the following questions: How did Marxism–Leninism change ethnography in Soviet Lithuania? What were the activities, methods and theory of regional research? Was Ramuva’s policy of knowledge production in opposition to the Soviet regime?

A Socialist Realist History? Writing Art History in the Post-War Decades, edited by Krista Kodres, Kristina Jõekalda, and the late Michaela Marek, is of definitive interest to art historians and scholars of intellectual history of Europe for giving insight into the diverse ways in which art and architectural historians across socialist Central and Eastern Europe engaged with Marxism-Leninism. The wide-ranging contributions reveal that even during Stalinism the discourse on Socialist art history was never static. Slow to modernize during the ensuing Thaw, this discourse evolved in diverse ways within different academic environments. The book makes a highly valuable contribution to the study of art historiography in socialist Europe, deepening our understanding of the complexity and processuality of the discipline’s development, and underlining the need for further in-depth studies. Apart from its interest to art historians, the contributions clearly express the need for a thorough revision of how deeply contemporary art historical research has been shaped by the socialist legacy, particularly with regard to less obvious path dependencies such as methodological approaches.

During the 1960s, the Cuban government attempted to play a leadership role within the Latin American Left. In the process Cuban leaders departed from Marxist−Leninist orthodoxy, garnering harsh criticism from their Soviet and Chinese allies. Yet Cuba found a steadfast supporter of its controversial positions in North Korea. This support can in large part be explained by the parallels between Cuban and North Korean ideas about revolution in the developing nations of the Global South. Most significantly, both parties embraced a radical reconceptualisation of the role of the Marxist−Leninist vanguard party. This new doctrine appealed primarily to younger Latin American militants frustrated with the established leftist parties and party politics in general. The Cuban/North Korean theory of the party had a tangible influence in Colombia, Peru, Brazil, Puerto Rico, El Salvador, Mexico, Bolivia and Nicaragua, as revolutionary groups in these societies took up arms in the 1960s and 1970s.

Many dismiss Marxism-Leninism as an obsolete and discredited doctrine, one that died with the collapse of Soviet communism. Nevertheless, Marxism-Leninism lives on in Cuba, where the Communist Party is using it to guide the Revolution and construction of socialism. This raises the question: why has Marxism-Leninism succeeded in Cuba? This article identifies four reasons. First, and most importantly, Marxism is compatible with the Cuban revolutionary tradition, as exemplified in the legacy of José Martí. Second, Marxism is a scientific theory, one that offers a truthful insight into the causes and solutions to Cuba’s social problems. Third, Marxism has remained compatible with Cuba’s national conditions, even as they have changed over time. Fourth, Cuba’s communist leaders have developed and enriched Marxism, thereby achieving its successful Cubanisation. Together, the success of the Cuban Revolution and the development of Cuban socialism demonstrate the contemporary vitality, achievements, and significance of Marxism-Leninism.

This study explores the North Korean initiative to translate Korean writing into foreign languages from the mid-1940s to the early 1970s. Between 1945 and the mid-1960s, the North Korean government focused on the translation of Soviet texts, such as Lenin’s Collected Works, into Korean. The North Korean elite attempted to learn about Soviet culture and Marxism-Leninism by translating books and magazines from Russian into Korean. They accepted, rejected, or transformed elements of Soviet culture and Marxism-Leninism and applied them to their own context. At the same time, the North Korean leadership launched a Korean-to-foreign language translation project to introduce North Korean texts such as Kim Il Sung’s writings to Third World countries. When Kim Il Sung promulgated the Juche idea while visiting Indonesia in 1965, the focus of the North Korean leadership moved from Russian-to-Korean translation to Korean-to-foreign language translation. Previous studies have seen translation in North Korea as a way of importing written texts from the outside world, particularly the Soviet Union. However, this study sheds light on translation as a practice of exporting culture, ideas, and knowledge to the world, notably to the Third World.

Scholars have long tracked how the USSR, a laboratory of social engineering, was deeply informed by local readings of Marxist social theory. Why, then, in recent years, have so many historical and anthropological studies of Russia excluded “Marxist” from the list of main descriptors, or optics, through which they view their material? In this essay, I argue that in much contemporary scholarship Marxism and its many afterlives have evidenced a kind of blind spot, reducing Marxism to “just” an ideology. I assert that rediscovering the presence of Marxism in Russia as a Gramscian hegemonic process and a vernacular that emerged among “laymen” can help us understand how a wide range of Russians continue to make sense of their worlds today. Drawing on several years of research in the city of Perm, I interpret everyday conversations among middle-age urbanites about morality, and demonstrate how this rediscovery of Marxism can elucidate what things matter for Russians today, and how. If social scientists proceed by acknowledging that “professional” and “lay” social knowledge increasingly share sources of “theoretical” inspiration, then we face a range of narrative challenges.