How, why and when capitalism was restored in China
Part 8 of China in the age of American decrepitude The overthrow of capitalism in China in the early 1950s took place under very unfavourable circumstances. From nearby Korea, US […]
Category Archives: Soviet Union
Chernobyl, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and truth in fiction
A review of Chernobyl, written by Craig Mazin and directed by Johan Renck, a 2019 mini-series in five parts on HBO/Sky. In an early scene of Chernobyl, a young pregnant […]
Harry Holland, Leon Trotsky, and ‘Undesirable Immigrants’
The New Zealand Labour Party formed in 1916 encompassed a wide range of tendencies in the labour movement, from revolutionaries to obdurate class-collaborationists. But initially at least, it was led […]
Ukraine’s “History Wars” and the political descendants of Stalin and Walter Duranty
A friend has drawn my attention to a criticism of my review of the film Mr Jones. (See here for the review – this post will make more sense if […]
The Holodomor in Ukraine and the obfuscations of “Mr Jones”
Few countries in the world suffered more than Ukraine in the twentieth century. One of the nations of the Soviet Union favoured with fertile soils and bountiful agriculture, geography made […]
A city built on the bones of prisoners
Komsomolsk-na-Amur is an industrial city in the Russian Far East. Founded in 1932, it was from 1937 unmarked on maps and off limits to foreigners – not just in Soviet […]
A worker at large 