Russian History

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Connexions Library

The Accumulation of Capital
Luxemburg, Rosa
Book
1913
Rosa Luxemburg's analysis of the inherent contradictions of capitalist accumulation.
The Age of Permanent Revolution: A Trotsky Anthology
Deutscher, Isaac
Book
1964
A collection of writings by Leon Trotsky.
Back in Time My Life, My Fate, My Epoch: The Memoirs of Nadezhda A. Joffe
Joffe, Nadezhda A.; Translated from the Russian by Frederick S. Choate
Book
The author of these memoirs is the daughter of the well-known Bolshevik, Adolf Abramovich Joffe, a good friend of both Lenin and Trotsky.
The Bolsheviks Come to Power: The Revolution of 1917 in Petrograd
Rabinowitch, Alexander
Book
2009
An account of how the Bolshevik revolution triumphed.
Building Working-Cass Opposition to Stalin's Dictatorship?: The Trotskyist Opposition, 1927-1940
Marot, John
Article
1996
A review of Tony Cliff's book Trotsky, 1927-1940. In Cliff's view, the Trotskyist movement in the USSR was not so much destroyed by Stalin as much as it collapsed under the weight of its own fundament...
The Complete Works of Rosa Luxemburg, Volume I: Economic Writings 1
Luxemburg, Rosa (Edited by Peter Hudis
Book
2013
This first volume in Rosa Luxemburg's Complete Works, entitled Economic Writings 1, contains some of Luxemburg's most important statements on the globalization of capital, wage labour, imperialism, an...
Connexions Library: Russia Focus
Website
2009
Selected articles, books, websites and other resources on Russia.
The Destiny of A Revolution: Review of Victor Serge, Russia Twenty Years After
Filtzer, Donald
Article
1998
Victor Serge's more impassioned account based on his eyewitness observations of everyday life and the detailed realities of Stalinist political repression.
A Dictionary of Marxist Thought
Bottomore, Tom
Book
1983
Evidence from the Archives
Marot, John
Article
1996
The Trotskyists' reformist course, their legalism, their "conscious refusal to seek support in the growing workers' movement" significantly "weakened the effectiveness of the 'bolshevik-leninists' and...
Five Years’ Struggle
Serge, Victor
Article
1923
Heretics and Renegades
Deutscher, Isaac
Book
1955
Essasy on the Soviet Union and the Soviet bloc.
In Russian and French Prisons
Kropotkin, Peter
Book
1906
Kropotkin's criticism of the penal system, and an inside look into the horrors and realities of what life in prison entails.
Interactive map of workers' councils (1917-1927)
Article
2017
This article charts the spread of the workers' council movement in the ten-year period after the 1917 revolution in Russia.
Karl Marx and the Iroquois: An essay on Marx's Ethnological Notebooks
Rosemont, Franklin
Article
Franklin Rosemont delves into Marx's Ethnological Notebooks and examines their significance and relevance towards today's communist movement.
Karl Marx's Theory of Revolution: Volume II: The Politics of Social Classes
Draper, Hal
Book
1978
Draper ranges through the development of the thought of Marx and Engels on the role of classes in society.
Lenin and the Tsarist Duma: A review of August H Nimtz, Lenin’s Electoral Strategy from Marx and Engels through the Revolution of 1905: The Ballot, the Streets—or Both
Donnelly, Richard
Article
2018
Donnelly reviews Nimtz's two volume account of Lenin's pre-revolution electoral strategy and summarises the thesis that Lenin's critique of reformism in parliamentary democracy was rooted in the concl...
Live Working or Die Fighting: How the Working Class Went Global
Mason, Paul
Book
2010
Mason realtes a series of struggles for worker and human rights over the past two hundred years and compares them to current struggles.
Marx and Engels Collected Works Volume 27: Engels 1890 - 1895
Engels, Friedrich
Book
1895
Includes The Foreign Policy of Russian Tsardom, and A Critique of the Draft Social-Democratic Program of 1891, and On the History of Early Christianity, and The Peasant Question in France and Germany
Marx at the Margins: On Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Non-Western Societies
Anderson, Kevin B.
Book
2010
Marx’s critique of capital was far broader than is usually supposed. To be sure, he concentrated on the labor-capital relation within Western Europe and North America. But at the same time, he expen...
A Marxist History of the World part 65: The 1905 Revolution: Russia's great dress rehearsal
Faulkner, Neil
Article
2012
Neil Faulkner looks at how the Russian Revolution of 1905 helped Leon Trotsky formulate an answer to the century-old riddle of Russian history: what form must the revolution take in order to be victor...
A Marxist History of the World part 68: 1914: descent into barbarism
Faulkner, Neil
Article
2012
In the summer of 1914 capitalism tipped humanity into an abyss of barbarism that would leave millions dead. Neil Faulkner looks at the First World War.
A Marxist History of the World part 71: Dual power: the mechanics of revolution
Faulkner, Neil
Article
2012
The centuries old Russian monarchy was overthrown in a matter of days in February 1917. Neil Faulkner looks at the months of turmoil that followed.
A Marxist History of the World part 72: February to October the rhythms of revolution
Faulkner, Neil
Article
2012
The situation of 'dual power' that emerged after the overthrow of the Tsar in February 1917 was marked by a series of major political crises.
A Marxist History of the World part 80: Stalinism: the bitter fruit of revolutionary defeat
Faulkner, Neil
Article
2012
Neil Faulkner looks at the time when the Bolshevik regime turned in on itself and morphed into a mockery of its socialist ideals.
The Mass Strike, the Political Party and the Trade Unions
Luxemburg, Rosa
Book
1906
Luxemburg writes that "the mass strike in Russia [in 1905] has been realised not as means of evading the political struggle of the working-class, and especially of parliamentarism, not as a means of j...
1905
Trotsky, Leon
Book
1922
For a number of years, when the reaction was triumphant, the year 1905 appeared to us as a completed whole, as the Russian revolution.
Other Voices: The Connexions Newsletter - May 28, 2017: Resisting Injustice
Diemer, Ulli (ed.)
Serial Publication (Periodical)
2017
In this issue, we look at the relentless persistence of people challenging injustice and entrenched power in places around the world, including Palestine, Korea, China, Canada, and the United States. ...
Prelude to Revolution: The Petrograd Bolsheviks and the July 1917 Uprising
Rabinowitch, Alexander
Book
1968
About the role of the Bolsheviks in the period between the February and October 1917 revolutions, concentrating on their role in the July uprising in Petrograd.
Report of the Siberian Delegation
Trotsky, Leon
Article
1903
Russia Twenty Years After
Serge, Victor
Book
1937
Serge's impassioned account based on his eyewitness observations of everyday life and the detailed realities of Stalinist political repression.
The Russian Revolution Ninety Years After: Against The Current vol. 131
Mandel, David
Article
2007
The October Revolution of 1917 in Russia was the most influential political event of the 20th century. But since history is written by the victors, it is not well known that October was the opening sh...
The Russian tragedy
Luxemburg, Rosa
Article
1918
There is only one solution to the tragedy in which Russia in caught up: an uprising at the rear of German imperialism, the German mass rising, which can signal the international revolution to put an e...
Seeds of Fire: A People's Chronology
Diemer, Ulli
Article
2012
Recalling events that happened on this day in history. Memories of struggle, resistance and persistence.
Six Red Months in Russia: An Observers Account of Russia Before and During the Proletarian Dictatorship
Bryant, Louise
Book
1918
Louise Bryant's account of her time in Russia during the revolution 1917-1918.
Socialist Register 1994: Volume 30: Between Globalism and Nationalism
Miliband, Ralph; Panitch, Leo (eds.)
Serial Publication (Periodical)
1994
The Study of a Russian Factory: Against The Current vol. 130
Mandel, David
Article
2007
This book is a study of the Moscow Hammer and Sickle metallurgical factory between 1905 to 1932, based largely on four factory-specific archives that became available to Western historians after the f...
Svyazhsk
Reissner, Larissa
Article
1922
Larissa Reissner's vivid description of the 1918 battle for Svyazhsk during the Russian Civil War.

Sources Library

Black Hundreds
Sources Select Resources Encyclopedia
An ultra-nationalist bloc in Russia in the early 20th century noted for their direct action methods, including pogroms and terrorist attacks against liberals and leftists.
Black Repartition
Wikipedia article
Black Repartition (Chyornyi peredel; also known as Black Partition), Party of Socialists-Federalists, a revolutionary populist organization in Russia in the early 1880s.
The fruits of protest
Russia has shelved plans to break up the historic Pavlovsk seed bank
Jego, Marie
2010
The Pavlovsk open air seedbank in St. Petersburg maintains 12,000 species of fruit trees, berries, and flowers. Plans to auction off the land have been placed on hold after protests.
A Marxist History of the World part 84: State Capitalism in Russia
Faulkner, Neil
2012
By the end of the 1920s, Stalin's party-state apparatus had become the dominant force in Russian society. A bureaucratic ruling class was formed, and all forms of dissent and resistance were treated a...
Rooms with a View of Russian Artistic History
Kennicott, Phillip
2012
Discussing the challenges for the small historic museums seeking to establish themselves in St. Petersburg.
Western Narrative of Crimea a Pack of Lies Born of Failed Policy and Historical Ignorance
Vogt, Jay
2015
The Western line on Crimea is so absurd that it actually requires mass historical ignorance to be believed.