Communism
South Asia in a time of the breaking of nations
Avinash Paliwal’s gripping tale of espionage opens in 1949, with newly independent India, Pakistan and Burma racked by rivalries in one of the most intricately partitioned areas on Earth
The dark side of life in Cuba
The first scent of trouble came when Cuba’s government ordered all its non-essential workers home. By packing them off (and…
The journalist’s journalist: the irrepressible Claud Cockburn
After a distinguished spell on the Times, Cockburn launched The Week in 1933, whose scoops on Nazi Germany became essential reading for politicians, diplomats and journalists alike
What do we mean when we talk about freedom?
When the Yale historian and bestselling author Timothy Snyder was 14, his parents took him to Costa Rica, a country…
The Karakachan sheepdog is a match for any bear – but not for modern society
The fearless breed, descended from the Molossus of Epirus described by Aristotle, may soon disappear from Central Europe, along with the flocks it guards
China’s role in Soviet policy-making
Stalin and his successors’ struggle with the US and China reflected conflicting Soviet ambitions to be a superpower and to lead world revolution, says Sergey Radchenko
Four dangerous visionary writers
Simon Ings examines the lives of Maxim Gorky, Maurice Barrès, Gabriele D’Annunzio and Ding Ling, whose propagandism helped shape – and misshape – the 20th century
An insider’s account of the CCP’s stranglehold on China
A high-ranking intelligence officer leaves a cache of letters revealing his increasing disenchantment with the party after being purged numerous times
The travails of Britain’s first Labour government
Attacked in the press, by the right and even by its own supporters, Ramsay MacDonald’s short-lived government still managed to achieve a surprising amount
The freedom fighters who dared to take on a communist superpower
Shibani Mahtani and Timothy McLaughlin describe the courage of the youthful protest leaders in Hong Kong who sacrificed so much for the cause of democracy
Poland, 1968: the last pogrom
‘Are you Jewish?’ the officious-looking Dutch diplomat asked my dad. ‘Yes’, he said, realising at that very moment, everything had…
We love you, Uncle Xi!
Tom Miller on the cult of personality that China’s ‘core leader’ has so ruthlessly constructed
The humanity of Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Gorbachev, the final President of the Soviet Union who died last night, was remarkable both as an international politician…
Gorbachev was no saint. But he was a kind of hero
Mikhail Gorbachev is dead at the age of 91, and in a way I feel orphaned. I became fascinated by…
Is self-loathing the British disease?
Whatever one thinks of the government’s plans to send refugees to Rwanda, it was amusing to see this country’s left…
The sin of neutrality
Yet again, millions of civilians across the Horn of Africa are starving. The world blames the crisis on drought and…
Why Russians celebrate monsters
Nobody knows how long people live in Dzerzhinsk – life expectancy statistics for the Russian city, 250 miles east of…
Putin’s neo-communism is doomed to fail
It is responsible for inequality. For financial instability. And probably for poverty, racism and global warming as well. We have…
What the Russians thought of James Bond in the 1960s
Last year I wrote a piece about James Bond for the ‘Freelance’ column of the Times Literary Supplement. All true…
Was the US involved in neo-fascist Italian terrorism?
Last month, Italy’s Prime Minister Mario Draghi promised to declassify government documents involving two organisations: Gladio, an anti-communist paramilitary group…
Tales from the Gulag: why I’m helping survivors tell their stories
Why I’m helping survivors tell their stories
Why the far-right flourishes in East Germany
A spectre is haunting Germany — the spectre of the AfD. Having come to prominence on a wave of anti-migrant…
The truth about my father, Philip Guston
Musa Mayer talks to Hermione Eyre about her father Philip Guston’s cancellation and her fear that he will for ever be known as the artist who painted the Ku Klux Klan
Riveting: Dear Comrades! reviewed
Andrei Konchalovsky’s Dear Comrades! is based on a true event and set in 1962 in the Russian city of Novocherkassk…
The rotten legacy of communism in Albania
Our heavily laden taxi turned off the main highway from Tirana and started to negotiate the rough, one-track road. The…
