Dmitry Pozhidaev reviews Capitalism in the Twenty-first Century Through the Prism of Value, by Guglielmo Carchedi and Michael Roberts, which aims to explain 21st-century capitalism through Karl Marx’s value theory.
Soviet Union (USSR)
John Tully reviews Boris Frankel's memoir, which recounts his family's eye-opening experience emigrating from Australia to the Soviet Union in 1956.
Chris Slee reviews Yuliya Yurchenko’s book, Ukraine and the Empire of Capital. Published in 2018, it traces Ukraine's evolution since 1991, when the Soviet Union was dissolved and Ukraine became independent.
Green Left's Alex Bainbridge speaks to Renfrey Clarke about former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev and his legacy.
Intense fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan has left scores of people dead and hundreds wounded, as the two neighbouring states teeter on the brink of all-out war, writes Walter Smolarek.
Of the many world-shaking events that took place in 1968, high on the list was the movement for reform in Czechoslovakia to create a democratic socialist alternative to the Stalinist bureaucratic dictatorships that ruled the Soviet bloc. Chris Slee takes a look at the movement, which was dramatically ended by a Soviet Union-led invasion.
On the night of August 20/21, 1968, tanks from the armies of the Soviet Union, Poland, Hungary and Bulgaria rolled into Czechoslovakia. The aim of the invaders was to crush a movement for reform.
A country that for more than 70 years maintained an amateur football (soccer) league is today hosting the biggest sporting event in the world, writes Javier Szlifman.
One hundred years ago, on May 7, 1917, the following declaration appeared on the front page of the Bolshevik newspaper Pravda under the title, “Draft of a mandate for use in electing delegates to the Soviet of Worker and Soldier Deputies”.
This “mandate” marked the first appearance of the slogan “All power to the Soviets” in an official party statement.
The Soviets emerged out of the February Revolution that year, which succeeded in overthrowing the Tsar. The Soviets were based on elected delegates of workers, soldiers and peasants.
Leon Trotsky
By Paul Le Blanc
Reaktion Books, 2015
224 pp, $39.99
Trotsky & the Problem of Soviet Bureaucracy
By Thomas M. Twiss
Brill, 2014
502 pp., $205.00
Leon Trotsky was one of the central leaders of the Russian Revolution. As the organiser and Commissar of the Red Army that saved the Soviet power and as the leading light of the struggle against Stalinism, he is surely one of the great heroic — and tragic — figures of the 20th century.
Robert Menzies achieved many things in his long political career. To remain prime minister as long as he did, Menzies kicked the communist can for as much as it was worth.
He also benefited from a split in the Australian Labor Party and the ALP’s remarkable talent for shooting itself in the foot. By choosing ineffectual leaders — Doc Evatt was brilliant but erratic, while Arthur Calwell was dour, dull and unelectable — the ALP was putty in Menzies’ clever political hands.
Leaders of Ukraine, Russia, Germany and France emerged from negotiations in Minsk, Belarus on the morning of February 12, after 16 hours of talks, and announced that agreement had been reached for a ceasefire in Ukraine's civil war.
The conflict has divided Ukraine since the overthrow of the unpopular, but democratically elected, president Viktor Yanukovich in February last year.
The Invisible Hand of Market
Cyclotimia
Released April 2014
www.cyclotimia.com
Russian electronic duo Cycloctimia's fascination for technology and sharemarkets has paid dividends – more than 10 satirical albums so far. Green Left Weekly's Mat Ward spoke to Max K, who describes his role as “keyboards, music, sampling and market rituals”.
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