Stalin's Sausage Machine. British Students at the International Lenin School, 1926-37

Between 1926 and 1937 at least 160 British communists attendedthe Communist International's International Lenin School (ILS)in Moscow. The aims of the school were to produce a new stratumof leading communist party cadres, young, proletarian, disciplined,and free of the taint of reformism. Using materials from theComintem archives in Moscow, this article assesses the degreeto which the school was successful in meeting these objectives.It shows that among the difficulties it encountered were thereluctance of the British Communist Party (CPGB) to lose theservices of large numbers of its best activists and the uncertainapplication of the lessons inculcated by the school when studentsreturned to Britain. In the short term, ILS alumni played acrucial role in the leadership of the CPGB at both nationaland district levels, and some were also drawn into work forthe Comintern or Soviet state organs. However, by the late 1930sattendance at the school played a reduced role in appointmentsto key party positions, and as early as 1943 there was onlyone former student on the CPGB's executive committee. Set ina comparative context, it is argued that the school's significancein Britain was largely confined to the ‘long’ ThirdPeriod of 1927–35 and rapidly diminished thereafter.     

十年内战期间中国红色革命信息的几种传播途径

二十世纪三十年代,由于存在共产国际这个信息传播中枢,中国的红色革命信息,不仅在国内、而且在国际上得到了持续传播。《共产国际》、《中国论坛》、《今日中国》等英文刊物,是传播中国苏维埃运动信息的主要途径。此外,中国红色革命信息也曾通过一些公开出版的著述、共产国际和中国党之间的联络人员的报告、公开播音的广播电台等途径得到了传播。     

从俄藏档案看周达文生平事迹研究中的几个问题

周达文是贵州镇远出生的中共早期重要人物。先后在莫斯科东方大学、中山大学、列宁学院学习和工作,受到中共中央和共产国际的器重,《斯大林全集》中的《给丘贡诺夫的信》就是写给他的。由于他的后半生是在苏联度过,为研究他的生平事迹带来很大困难。俄罗斯新解密的档案材料,可以帮助我们考察清楚他的生卒年月、他在北京的革命活动、在留苏中共党员中的作用和地位、他坚持反对王明的宗派主义和左倾冒险主义并因此而被陷害致死,以及后来苏联最高法院为他平反等重要问题。     

Sharing a similar fate: the historical process of the Korean Communists’ merger with the Chinese Communist Party (1919–1936)

In their early history, the Chinese and Korean Communists had little contact with one another. However, similar fates brought them together, and some Korean revolutionaries in China voluntarily joined the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). After a futile effort to establish a Communist party in Korea, the Korean Communists shifted their attention to Chinese Manchuria. Under extremely difficult circumstances, different factions of the Korean Communist organizations either willingly or under force disbanded. However, after winning support from the Comintern, the CCP recruited a substantial number of Korean Communists. Thus, within a short period of time, the CCP expanded its strength in Manchuria. It also shouldered responsibility for assisting the Korean Communists in their efforts to establish their own party. In the aftermath of the September 18th Incident in 1931 the CCP Central Committee called for an armed struggle against the Japanese invaders. The Korean Communists in Manchuria became a force to be reckoned with. After the CCP gradually shifted the focus of its policy toward the War of Resistance against Japan, the Korean Communists in China became integrated into the CCP army.     

20世纪30年代自由主义者对中国共产党的批评与指责--以《独立评论》为例

《独立评论》周围的一些自由知识分子,在严重外患的背景下,站在民族主义立场上,逐渐认同国民党而反对共产党;同时本来根深蒂固的自由主义立场,自然也使他们对中共进行了许多批评;此外。在国民党统治区的言论环境中,他们对中共的认识还很难摆脱偏见和错误。具体把握30年代这些自由知识分子对中共的态度,对认识这一群体在中国现代史上的政治特征及政治走向具有重要意义。     

《中国共产党历史》第二卷对中华人民共和国史研究的意义

2011年出版的《中国共产党历史》第二卷记载了中国共产党自1949年10月中华人民共和国成立至1978年12月中共十一届三中全会召开这段历史,该书不仅是党史研究的一项重大成果,而且对国史研究也具有重要意义:为正确把握新中国前29年历史的重大问题提供了基本参照;披露了140多件文献档案,整理了一系列统计数据,为深入研究新中国前29年的历史提供了有价值的新史料;其编写方法为研究编纂新中国前29年的历史提供了有益的借鉴和启示。     

共产国际、陈独秀与中国共产党的创建

中国共产党的建立是中国革命史上开天辟地的大事变.自从有了中国共产党,中国革命的面目就为之一新了.本文主要根据俄罗斯国家社会政治历史档案馆的俄文馆藏档案、最新公布的共产国际档案以及其它相关材料,详细解析了共产国际、陈独秀在中国共产党创建过程中的作用.     

Ignazio Silone and the Fascist political police

Secondino Tranquilli (alias Ignazio Silone) was one of the founders of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) in January 1921. Esteemed by Moscow and the Comintern, Silone was given increasingly important functions in the clandestine PCI organization in the 1920s and was appointed to its Political Office. His political career, which ended with his expulsion from the party in summer 1931, was frequently recounted by Silone himself who, as a famous writer, felt obliged to come to terms with his political past. Recent studies by Mauro Canali and Dario Biocca of Silone's membership of the PCI have shown a rather different truth. The documents they have published show that ever since he was in the young socialist movement Silone was collaborating first with the Italian police and then with the Fascist police. Throughout, he was corresponding with a high-ranking official in the Italian police, Guido Bellone. Their relationship entered into a crisis that ended Silone's collaboration when in April 1928, following the explosion of a bomb in Milan that caused some twenty deaths, his brother Romolo Tranquilli was arrested and sentenced to twelve years' imprisonment. This clearly weighed on Silone's conscience and was probably the original cause of his eventual abondonment of politics and his own 'double' role, to become awriter instead. Thispainful journey involved frequent treatment in specialist clinics where Silone received intensive psychoanalytical treatment.     

East End immigrants and the battle for housing: a comparative study of political mobilisation in the Jewish and Bengali communities

Twice in the recent history of the East End of London, the fight for decent housing has become part of a bigger political battle. These two very different struggles are representative of two important periods in radical politics – the class politics, tempered by Popular Frontism, that operated in the 1930s, and the new social movement politics of the seventies. In the rent strikes of the 1930s the ultimate goal was Communism. Although the local Party was disproportionately Jewish, Communist theory required an outward looking orientation that embraced the whole of the working class. In the squatting movement of the 1970s political organisers attempted to steer the Bengalis onto the path of black radicalism, championing separate organisation and turning the community inwards. An examination of the implementation and consequences of these different movements can help us to understand the possibilities and problems for the transformation of grass-roots activism into a broader political force, and the processes of political mobilisation of ethnic minority groups.     

档案信息资源利用可持续发展探析

档案事业,是中国特色社会主义事业的重要组成部分。文章认为必须充分认识档案事业的重要性,深刻把握发展档案事业面临的新情况新问题,认真贯彻落实“科教兴档”的战略部署,努力培育和发展档案事业发展的新的生长点,力争实现档案信息资源可持续发展。     

中国共产党与中国电影文化运动

以成立中国电影文化协会为标志的中国电影文化运动,是20世纪30年代中国左翼文化运动的重要组成部分,这一运动从兴起到抗战全面爆发,始终得到中国共产党的积极支持和直接领导,无论是电影创作与生产,还是电影理论批评,都显示出中国电影发生了巨大转变.很多本身即为共产党人的左翼文艺工作者,通过与电影界的交往、合作,广泛吸纳电影界人士加入左翼阵营;而当时的电影演员也大多直接或间接参与了这一运动,他们通过发表电影评论,开展电影创作,使左翼电影深入社会各阶层,大大传播了中共的主张,发扬了进步电影艺术,推动了中国早期电影的发展,显示了中共夺取新的文化阵地的力量.     

A Rebel, not a Rabbi: Jewish Membership of the Communist Party of Great Britain

This paper explores the relationship between Jews and communismin the twentieth century through a case study of the Jewishmembership of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB). Itexplains in particular why large numbers of Jews were attractedto the CPGB. The dynamics of integration into British societyof second-generation Anglo-Jewry provides an answer and offersan insight into the issues of Jewish identity and its relationshipwith extreme left-wing politics. The study of the personal reflectswider changes in the historiography of communism as the endof the communist bloc has led to new avenues of research notleast due to the opening of previously closed archives. Indeed,the sources used here have only recently been made availablefollowing the demise of the CPGB. This article concentrateson the one of the most important parts of this archive: thebiographical collection, a unique source providing an unparalleledopportunity to examine the lives of party members. This articlerepresents one of the first to be based on this material, andwith additional supporting research it also represents probablythe largest and most detailed biographical study of Anglo-Jewryto date.     

墨西哥革命:从官方史学到修正派史学

墨西哥革命史学思潮的发展趋势与革命后墨西哥经济、政治、思想和学术潮流的变化密不可分。革命期间到20世纪30年代,各革命派系皆站在自身的立场上评价墨西哥革命;30年代后,为了促进国家的统一,在墨西哥政府和执政党的直接倡导和参与下,创立了墨西哥革命的官方史学;四五十年代后,特别是1968年特拉特洛尔科事件后,随着墨西哥经济增长和政治稳定奇迹的终结,以及国内历史学科的发展和国际学术交流的影响,产生了修正派史学。然而,80年代以后,修正派史学在某些方面也受到一定的质疑。     

Landscapes as a symbol of nationhood: the Alps in the rhetoric of the Lega Nord

ABSTRACT. While the dominant discourse of the Lega Nord, the party that proposes the independence of ‘Padania’, i.e. northern Italy, emphasises the region's economic success, contributions in the party literature on the Padanian landscape focus on the Alps. The Alps symbolise both the rootedness of the nation in tradition and ethnic identity and the intrinsic link between these traditions and modernity. They embody self‐government of mountain communities and local traditions of political autonomy, but also appear as a protective bulwark against invasions of the Padanian lowlands. The focus on the Alps, an economically peripheral territory, is symptomatic of the reluctance to represent the environmental degradation caused by development in the lowlands. Contributions on the Alps, however, also reveal the tension between modernisation and the preservation of culture and territory and the need for new development models. Discussions on the Alps thus reveal the contradictions in the party's construction of a national identity based on modernity rooted in tradition.     

善治视野下的党政关系

善治作为一种新的治理,给政府管理改革带来了机遇,也给中国共产党的执政带来了新的要求。善治要求调整党政机构的设置,实现党政关系运转的有效性;要求理顺党政职能的定位,提高党政关系信息公开的透明性;要求规范党政运作的方式,实现党政关系规范的法制性。     

Constrained Labour Agency and the Changing Regulatory Regime in China

Using the concept of ‘constrained agency’ introduced by Neil Coe and David Jordhus‐Lier, this article attempts to evaluate the possibilities and constraints facing labour agency in the Pearl River Delta in China. By reviewing the social, economic and political background of the changing labour market and labour regulations in China, and through an intensive case study of a workers’ strike and its consequences, the author argues that Chinese migrant workers have begun to challenge the state's regulatory regime on labour, which is based on individual rights. However, the introduction of a regulatory framework based on collective rights is being impeded by the party‐state's manipulation of trade unions and the strong influence of global capital on local labour policy.     

From adversaries to allies: ethnic gerrymandering and ethnic party behaviour in local elections in Macedonia

Constitutional designers often construct political institutions to provide greater autonomy to ethnic minority groups. One tool available to constitutional designers is ‘ethnic gerrymandering’, where the boundaries of local government units are altered to provide greater representation to minority groups. This paper analyses the effects of changes in the ethnic composition of municipalities, which occur as a result of ethnic gerrymandering, on ethnic party behaviour. I compare ethnic party behaviour in local elections in the Republic of Macedonia from 2000 to 2013. I expand on a theory initially proposed by Sherrill Stroschein linking ethnic demography to ethnic party behaviour. I find that changes in the ethnic composition of municipalities influence whether rival ethnic parties engage in outbidding or whether ethnic communities unite behind a single ethnic party. My findings have important implications for those tasked with designing political institutions in ethnically divided societies.     

Re-examining a modern classic: does Putnam's Making Democracy Work suffer from spuriousness?

What makes democratic institutions work efficiently? Robert Putnam argued in Making Democracy Work that a mixture of political participation and immersion in associative and social networks in the community, conceptualised as ‘civic community’ or ‘social capital’, is the explanation. Ever since its publication, many questions have arisen about the validity of Putnam's theory. Among the most relevant concerns stands the influence of the Italian Communist Party on Putnam's empirical tests. This paper aims to fill the gap left in the literature by testing Putnam's hypothesis against the political party in the regional government and the PCI's electoral support. Supporting Putnam, this paper finds that variations in the quality of democratic governments in Italy's regions are a function of civic community even after adjusting for the presence of the Italian Communist Party.     

Zytoarchitektonik und Revolution ‐ Lenins Gehirn als Raum und Objekt

The investigation of Lenin's brain by the German neurobiologist Oskar Vogt from Berlin and his Russian collaborators in Moscow is one of the most exciting and simultaneously oddest chapters in the history of medicine. With the bizarre claim to be able to detect the material substrate of genius it provoked as much unrealistic expectations in the public as strong criticism by the scientific community of brain researchers. The present paper deals in a brief survey with the history of collecting and measuring the brains of famous persons in general and particularly with the historical, political and social circumstances of the performed investigation of Lenin's brain. In this connection the epistemological and technical prereqisites of architectonical brain research and its means of the topographical representation of complex histo‐anatomical and physiological differences in the brain cortex are shortly discussed. The opening of Russian archives after the socio‐economic turn of the year 1991 brought up new background facts in Lenin's pathobiography; together with the sources from German archives a rather extensive reconstruction of the historical events between Lenin's death in 1924 and the final report of the Moscow Brain Research Institute (Institute Mozga) to the Politburo of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviki) in 1936 is possible now.