ABSTRACT The Red Army, created by the Bolsheviks in 1918, relied on knowledge transferred from the Russian Imperial Army. This knowledge travelled along different routes, including special institutions established to produce manuals and guidance for the new army, staffed by former Imperial military specialists. This article examines the fate of one such institution: the Commission for the Study and Use of the War Experience, created at the Headquarters of the Red Army by Leon Trotsky in July 1918. The Commission proved highly productive, with its works being used by historians of the First World War in Russia even today. Yet, despite its influence, the Commission was reorganized in June 1921, with all of its personnel replaced and former tsarist military specialists dismissed. This article argues that the reorganization of the Commission was not simply a result of the Bolsheviks’ hatred of former Imperial officers, but a clash between two different visions of military knowledge. It assesses these differences using a concept of ‘intellectual virtue’, usually used by historians of science and knowledge. While the tsarist military specialists saw the ‘virtuous’ military scientist as someone striving for objectivity, a powerful group of Bolsheviks in the army called for the creation of a class-driven ‘Marxist military science’ based on the experiences of the Red Army. This clash of ‘virtues’ manifested most evidently in the debate surrounding the study of the Russian Civil War. The conflict proved to be irreconcilable using the instruments of political control available to the Bolsheviks, such as political commissars and censorship; as a result, the Commission had to be rebuilt entirely.

ABSTRACT In this article, the authors argue that housing as a welfare benefit in Yugoslavia extended beyond the mere provision of physical apartment space, encompassing a system of knowledge they term ‘domestic literacy’. Domestic literacy was produced and disseminated by individuals and institutions that the authors identify as ‘dwelling agents’ – experts in fields such as architecture, urban planning, interior design and home economics. Alongside these experts, the authors also examine the growing presence and authority of dwellers as dwelling agents who actively shaped their environments. By focusing on the concept of domestic literacy and the dwelling agents responsible for its production and application, the authors aim to map a range of practices that transcend the changing system of housing provision policies, thereby advancing a broader understanding of the welfare system. Following a general discussion of welfare and housing in Yugoslavia, with an emphasis on the various groups of dwelling agents, the article is structured around three different scales of dissemination of knowledge on modern housing. Situated on a spectrum between the public provision of the decentralized, self-managed state and the commercial sphere of market socialism, these three scales encompass different agents and genres, but share similar content and aims in advancing housing welfare for self-managing socialist citizens.

ABSTRACT This article examines the British Labour Party’s response to Thatcherism in the 1980s and 1990s. It discusses the changes in global economics and politics during the last years of the Cold War and the first decade of the post-Cold War world, as neoliberalism and globalization reshaped both capitalism and socialism. This was the world that Labour had to navigate while rethinking its ideology and its relationship with the British working class. The article explores the reforms Neil Kinnock introduced at a time of growing consumerism, deindustrialization, electoral defeats and significant changes in international socialism. It shows how Labour accepted that market forces would become more prevalent in its programme, but also how they would be used to benefit society, not to promote Thatcherite individualism. The article then discusses Tony Blair’s reforms, which took Kinnock’s modernization further as New Labour sought a ‘Third Way’ between state and market. Overall, this article argues that Labour’s reaction to Thatcherism was shaped mainly by the economic and political changes that developed in the United Kingdom, but also by the changes in the global environment during the early phase of neoliberalism and globalization and the conclusion of the Cold War. It shows that its continued belief in society and the importance of community ensured it did not become a Thatcherite party during the global ‘Great Moving Right Show’.

ABSTRACT This article examines the issue of housing provision in late-socialist Yugoslavia when the reforms of the mid-1970s transformed the socialist system of self-management by promoting the Marxist principle of the ‘withering away of the state’. This new turn was intended to reduce state intervention and favour direct workers’ participation in decision-making to give birth to a more democratic socialist society. Housing policy was central to this model, as this responsibility was placed in the hands of the self-managed companies, which were in charge of drafting a rule book to organize the funding and the distribution of dwellings and housing credits. The transformations of Yugoslav late socialism thus made citizens place the fate of their domestic space under the control of their productive space. Indeed, the managers in the companies were enabled to define the housing needs of their workers and the criteria of priority for the distributions. This article aims to re-evaluate the state’s role in self-managed Yugoslavia by questioning the notion of ‘mixed economy of welfare’. This paper thus addresses the dynamic interactions between the public actors of the socialist state, the companies that implemented their housing policies, and the workers’ participation in the self-management system. The author will mainly rely on sources from two medium-sized cities in Serbia and Croatia, including the documents from the municipal actors, and the ones from the main factories in the region. By confronting them, the author will give an account of the companies’ action in the making of self-managed housing provision, and will elaborate on the redefinition of public intervention in a country where the state was supposed to wither away.

ABSTRACT The Greek Civil War (1946–49) witnessed the introduction of the institution of the political commissar in the Democratic Army of Greece (DSE). The new reality of US intervention forced the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) to seek and establish total political control of its troops in order to transform its guerrilla force into a regular revolutionary army. The KKE understood that such a transition would benefit the DSE, its training procedures and its military capabilities, and would limit desertion by producing conscious and willing fighters. They hoped that the deployment of political commissars within the army’s ranks would allow this. Simultaneously, the KKE and the DSE set about importing Soviet war experience and war culture into Greece in order to achieve the intended politicization, militarization and centralization of the army. They undertook a huge translation and publication project that allowed them to circulate Greek translations of Soviet war literature among their troops. The goal was to galvanize and train them, as the Soviets had with their own troops during the Second World War, emphasizing the decisive role of the human factor in the revolutionary struggle. War novels were used as educational material for both DSE political commissars and fighters, and their simple and relatable plots made them accessible to the men and women of the DSE, facilitating the transfer of a communist class consciousness, culture and sense of comradeship, as well as an anti-reactionary and anti-fascist culture of war. Many DSE commissars and fighters viewed the novels’ fictional and non-fictional heroes as examples to follow.

ABSTRACT The political commissars active in the armed forces of the twentieth century’s socialist states emerged during the Russian Revolution and civil war and spread throughout the world with the growth of the communist movement. Depending on the country and time period, the functions and institutional power of commissars ranged from that of a parallel hierarchy of officers with operational powers, to an integrated part of the officer corps specializing in matters regarding personnel management and education. The commissars’ subsequent development into an essential part of military organization resulted in a distinct system of civil-military relations that differed significantly from that of non-socialist contemporary states. This article provides a condensed overview of commissar-led political instruction as a transnational phenomenon during the first half of the twentieth century. It begins with a brief conceptual discussion of the problem of civil–military relations in the Marxist theory of the state held by the Bolshevik Party. It goes on to argue that the commissar system was an institutional innovation intended to provide a politically acceptable solution to this problem within the context of the Russian Civil War. The article then traces the export of the commissar system through the Communist International, discussing the development of analogous positions among the anti-fascist armed forces of Republican Spain and the Balkan resistance movements. It argues that the commissar form was sufficiently flexible to accommodate a variety of civil–military dynamics reflecting the concrete conditions of each conflict.

ABSTRACT By the end of the nineteenth century, the (European) urban lifestyle had become the role model for a modern way of life. In East Central Europe, in the multi-ethnic borderlands of the continental empires, the urban life and lifestyle also became a precondition and pattern for modern national life, defining and sharpening ways of mobilizing ethnic groups. Indeed, some of the components of urban life and lifestyle became a medium for spreading national consciousness. Vice versa, the urban lifestyle acquired national features. Using the particularly vivid example of multi-ethnic Lviv, this article discusses the emergence of urban lifestyles with a national character under the ‘umbrella’ of the Habsburg monarchy. In doing so, it shows that provisions of administrative organization provided tools for centrifugal ambitions.

ABSTRACT This study shows that under the communist dictatorship, with the restrictions on the circulation of ideas caused by censorship and the effect of the Iron Curtain, the postulates for changing the economic (and political) system were focused on reinventing socialism, and transforming it into ‘socialism with a human face’ rather than restoring capitalism. Until the late 1980s, virtually none of the participants in the debate saw capitalism as a valid alternative to socialism. The discussion focused on how to reform the existing socialist system so that it would achieve the real goals of socialism, including fair distribution of the value produced and equitable participation. The issue of democratizing the system was as important as improving its efficiency.