The Oxford Handbook of the History of Communism, ed. S. A. Smith

Abstract

The thirty-five essays in this collection were intended ‘to paint a broad canvas of the spread of communism across the globe and, in particular, to sketch the many different aspects of life under communist rule’ (p. 2). Each chapter stands alone, though the collection seeks to be a unified whole, introducing us to the entire field and providing an overview of the current state of scholarship. Authors were invited to think comparatively, to focus on the similarities and differences between states, to consider the constraints and structures which the communists inherited and those which they faced in the wider world (pp. 2–3). The Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China receive most attention, and most chapters focus on communism in power. Detailed accounts of the inner life of particular communist parties, and their relations with the wider societies of which they were part, are absent. That said, the six sections of the book cover a broad canvas—ideology, global moments, global communism, communist polities and economies, communism and social relations and communism and culture. There are chapters on Marx and Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, 1919, 1936, 1956, 1968, 1989 and the Comintern—plenty for those not especially interested in communist regimes. The chapters on communism in Latin America and Africa largely fall into the same category, as do those dealing with the communist peace movement and ‘the life of a communist militant’.