Nadia Comaneci is the Romanian child prodigy and global gymnastics star who ultimately fled her homeland and the brutal oppression of a communist regime. At the age of just 14, Nadia became the first gymnast to be awarded a perfect score of 10.0 at the 1976 Montreal Olympic Games and went on to collect three gold medals in performances which influenced the sport for generations to come, cementing Nadia's place as a sporting legend. However, as the communist authorities in Romania sought an iron grip over its highest-profile athletes, Nadia and her trainers were subjected to surveillance from the Securitate, the Romanian secret police. Drawing on 25,000 secret police archive pages, countless secret service intelligence documents, and numerous wiretap recordings, this book tells the compelling story of Nadia's life and career using unique insights from the communist dictatorship which monitored her. Nadia Comaneci and the Secret Police explores Nadia's complex and combustible relationship with her sometimes abusive coaches, Bela and Marta Karolyi, figures who would later become embroiled in the USA Gymnastics scandal. The book addresses Nadia's mental struggles and 1978 suicide attempt, and her remarkable resurgence to gold at the Moscow Olympics in 1980. It explores the impact of Nadia's subsequent withdrawal from international activity and reflects on burning questions surrounding the heart-stopping, border-hopping defection to the United States that she successfully undertook in November 1989. Was the defection organised by CIA agents? Was it arranged on the orders of President George Bush himself? Or was Nadia aided and abetted by some of the very Securitate officers who were meant to be watching the communist world's most lauded sporting icon? What is revealed is a thrilling tale of endurance and escape, in which one of the world's greatest gymnasts risked everything for freedom.

A noted literary scholar traverses the Russian canon, exploring how realists, idealists, and revolutionaries debated good and evil, moral responsibility, and freedom. Since the age of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Chekhov, Russian literature has posed questions about good and evil, moral responsibility, and human freedom with a clarity and intensity found nowhere else. In this wide-ranging meditation, Gary Saul Morson delineates intellectual debates that have coursed through two centuries of Russian writing, as the greatest thinkers of the empire and then the Soviet Union enchanted readers with their idealism, philosophical insight, and revolutionary fervor. Morson describes the Russian literary tradition as an argument between a radical intelligentsia that uncompromisingly followed ideology down the paths of revolution and violence, and writers who probed ever more deeply into the human condition. The debate concerned what Russians called "the accursed questions": If there is no God, are good and evil merely human constructs? Should we look for life's essence in ordinary or extreme conditions? Are individual minds best understood in terms of an overarching theory or, as Tolstoy thought, by tracing the "tiny alternations of consciousness"? Exploring apologia for bloodshed, Morson adapts Mikhail Bakhtin's concept of the non-alibi-the idea that one cannot escape or displace responsibility for one's actions. And, throughout, Morson isolates a characteristic theme of Russian culture: how the aspiration to relieve profound suffering can lead to either heartfelt empathy or bloodthirsty tyranny. What emerges is a contest between unyielding dogmatism and open-minded dialogue, between heady certainty and a humble sense of wonder at the world's elusive complexity-a thought-provoking journey into inescapable questions.

In September 2012, UNESCO held its first ever consultation with member states on the subject of Holocaust and genocide education, recognising the importance of teaching the history of genocide. The aim was to find approaches to raise awareness about the recurrence of mass atrocities and genocide in different environments. It is in this context that Mohamed Adhikari has put together this title, giving perspective to historical European overseas conquests which included many instances of the extermination of indigenous peoples. In cases where invading commercial stock farmers clashed with hunter-gatherers - in southern Africa, Australia and the Americas - the conflict was particularly destructive, often resulting in a degree of dispossession and slaughter that destroyed the ability of these societies to reproduce themselves biologically or culturally. The question of whether this form of colonial conflict was inherently genocidal has not in any systematic way been addressed by scholars until now. Through chapters written by leading academics, this volume explores the nature of conflict between hunter-gatherers and market-oriented stock farmers in geographically and historically diverse instances, using a wide range of theoretical approaches and comparative studies, which also consider exceptions to the pattern of extermination.

* Shortlisted for the Academy of British Cover Design Awards, 2015* Greece's recent political turmoil captured the imagination of the left across Europe. Elected in January 2015 under the leadership of Alexis Tsipras, the radical Syriza party sought to challenge the European economic status-quo and secure a better future for the Greek people. The fierce confrontation with Greece's creditors which followed reverberated around the world. Kevin Ovenden tells the rocky story of Syriza's first six months in office. Despite the party's many defeats, the rise (and fall) of Syriza is a symbolic and important story to tell. The twists and turns of the bailout negotiations with the Troika, the brief reign of iconoclastic Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, and the worrying rise of Golden Dawn and the extreme right all converge to create a pivotal moment in Europe's recent history. Published in partnership with the Left Book Club.

Routledge Library Editions: Slavery is a collection of previously out-of-print titles that examine various aspects of international slavery. Books analyse the Atlantic slave trade, and its effects on Africa; modern slavery around the world; slave rebellions and resistance; the Abolitionist movements; the suppression of the slave trade; slavery in the ancient world; and more besides. These writings form part of the vital research into slavery through the ages, and together form a succinct overview.

This timely book offers an in-depth exploration of state partitions and the history of nationalism in Europe from the Enlightenment onwards. Stefano Bianchini compares traditional national democratic development to the growing transnational demands of representation with a focus on transnational mobility and empathy versus national localism against the EU project. In an era of multilevel identity, global economic and asylum seeker crises, nationalism is becoming more liquid which in turn strengthens the attractiveness of 'ethnic purity' and partitions, affects state stability, and the nature of national democracy in Europe. The result may be exposure to the risk of new wars, rather than enhanced guarantees of peace. Included is a rare and insightful comparative assessment of the lessons not learned from the Yugoslav demise, the Czechoslovak partition, the Baltic trajectory from USSR incorporation to EU integration, and the impact of ethnicity in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Beyond their peculiarities, these examples are used to critically assess the growing liquidity of national identities and their relationship with democracy. Those seeking a deeper understanding of the European partition experience will find this an immensely valuable resource.

The foremost collection of essays from one of Britain's most important 20th century Marxist writers Considered by many to be the most innovative British Marxist writer of the twentieth century, Christopher Caudwell was killed in the Spanish Civil War at the age of 29. Although already a published writer of aeronautic texts and crime fiction, he was practically unknown to the public until reviews appeared of Illusion and Reality: A Study of the Sources of Poetry, which was published just after his death. A strikingly original study of poetry's role, it explained in clear language how the organizing of emotion in society plays a part in social change and development. Caudwell had a powerful interest in how things worked - aeronautics, physics, human psychology, language, and society. In the anti-fascist struggles of the 1930s he saw that capitalism was a system that could not work properly and distorted the thinking of the age. Self-educated from the age of 15, he wrote with a directness that is alien to most cultural theory. Culture as Politics introduces Caudwell's work through his most accessible and relevant writing. Material will be drawn from Illusion and Reality, Studies in a Dying Culture and his essay, "Heredity and Development."

Under Narendra Modi, India has changed dramatically. As the world attempts to grapple with its trajectory towards authoritarianism and a 'Hindu Rashtra' (Hindu State), little attention has been paid to the linkages between Modi's India and the governments from which it has drawn inspiration, as well as military and technical support.

India once called Zionism racism, but, as Azad Essa argues, the state of Israel has increasingly become a cornerstone of India’s foreign policy. Looking to replicate the 'ethnic state' in the image of Israel in policy and practice, the annexation of Kashmir increasingly resembles Israel's settler colonial project of the occupied West Bank. The ideological and political linkages between the two states are alarming; their brands of ethnonationalism deeply intertwined.

Hostile Homelands puts India's relationship with Israel in its historical context, looking at the origins of Zionism and Hindutva; India’s changing position on Palestine; and the countries' growing military-industrial relationship from the 1990s. Lucid and persuasive, Essa demonstrates that the India-Israel alliance spells significant consequences for democracy, the rule of law and justice worldwide.

The shift in the U.S. global role precipitated by the events of September 11, 2001although the events were unexpectedwas a long time in the making. In this challenging work, Gilbert Achcar analyzes how this shift came about and examines its fateful consequences.

Achcar'sClash of Barbarismstraces the rise of militant and anti-Western Islamic fundamentalism to its roots in U.S. policies aimed at control of the oil reserves of the Middle East, and above all, Saudi Arabiathe "Muslim Texas." Achcar examines the political premises of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda and show how these led to the massive miscalculation of the September 11 attacks, with results both politically counterproductive and morally reprehensible.

The major result of this miscalculation has been to complete a shift from the vision of a world order based on international law and respecting the rights of strong and weak nations alike, announced by George Bush, Sr., in 1991, to the world order being created by the administration of George W. Bush today, in which the United States asserts its own power and pursues its interests without regard for law or rights. In this context, we are living through a "clash of barbarisms" indeed.

This important and timely work is already scheduled for publication in French, English, German, Turkish, and Korean. It draws on first-hand knowledge of the Middle East, but looks beyond immediate events to clarify their geopolitical bases.

With the summer of 2012 marking half a century of independence for Algeria, the Algerian War has been brought into discussions in France once more, where parallels between the past and present are revealed. This analysis takes an in-depth look at the war from 1954 to 1962 and the response from the French left. Drawing from documents and interviews, it offers a full account of not only the role of the revolutionary left in giving political and practical solidarity to the Algerian liberation struggle, but also that of the Trotskyists during that period. Including a section on how the war has been reflected in fiction, this volume is sure to interest academics across various fields.

The best-selling radical diary and weekly planner is back for the new year! The 2024 Verso Radical Diary and Weekly Planner is a beautifully designed week-to-view planner where you can keep track of your coming year.   Alongside illustrations, it features significant dates in radical history, drawn from events such as the English Civil War and Black Panther movement, through to the protests of 1968 and feminist emancipation, touching on the lives of revolutionaries such as Angela Davis, Rosa Luxemburg and Martin Luther King Jr., and includes movements such as Black Lives Matter and the Suffragettes.

What are you willing to do to survive? What are you willing to endure if it means you might live? 'Achingly moving, gives much-needed hope . . . Deserves the status both as a valuable historical source and as a stand-out memoir' Daily Express 'A story that needs to be heard' 5***** Reader Review Entering Terezin, a Nazi concentration camp, Franci was expected to die. She refused. In the summer of 1942, twenty-two-year-old Franci Rabinek - designated a Jew by the Nazi racial laws - arrived at Terezin, a concentration camp and ghetto forty miles north of her home in Prague. It would be the beginning of her three-year journey from Terezin to the Czech family camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau, to the slave labour camps in Hamburg, and finally to Bergen Belsen. Franci, a spirited and glamorous young woman, was known among her fellow inmates as the Prague dress designer. Having endured the transportation of her parents, she never forgot her mother's parting words: 'Your only duty to us is to stay alive'. During an Auschwitz selection, Franci would spontaneously lie to Nazi officer Dr Josef Mengele, and claim to be an electrician. A split-second decision that would go on to endanger - and save - her life. Unpublished for 50 years, Franci's War is an astonishing account of one woman's attempt to survive. Heartbreaking and candid, Franci finds the light in her darkest years and the horrors she faces instill in her, strength and resilience to survive and to live again. She gives a voice to the women prisoners in her tight-knit circle of friends. Her testimony sheds new light on the alliances, love affairs, and sexual barter that took place during the Holocaust, offering a compelling insight into the resilience and courage of ordinary people in an extraordinary situation. Above all, Franci's War asks us to explore what it takes to survive, and what it means to truly live. 'A candid account of shocking events. Franci is someone many women today will be able to identify with' 5***** Reader Review 'First-hand accounts of life in Nazi death camps never lose their terrible power but few are as extraordinary as Franci's War' Mail on Sunday 'Fascinating and traumatic. Well worth a read' 5***** Reader Review

'A fascinating journey into our relationship with the physical book...I lost count of the times I exclaimed with delight when I read a nugget of information I hadn't encountered before' Val McDermid, The Times Most of what we say about books is really about the words inside them: the rosy nostalgic glow for childhood reading, the lifetime companionship of a much-loved novel. But books are things as well as words, objects in our lives as well as worlds in our heads. And just as we crack their spines, loosen their leaves and write in their margins, so they disrupt and disorder us in turn. All books are, as Stephen King put it, 'a uniquely portable magic'. Here, Emma Smith shows us why. Portable Magic unfurls an exciting and iconoclastic new story of the book in human hands, exploring when, why and how it acquired its particular hold over us. Gathering together a millennium's worth of pivotal encounters with volumes big and small, Smith reveals that, as much as their contents, it is books' physical form - their 'bookhood' - that lends them their distinctive and sometimes dangerous magic. From the Diamond Sutra to Jilly Cooper's Riders, to a book made of wrapped slices of cheese, this composite artisanal object has, for centuries, embodied and extended relationships between readers, nations, ideologies and cultures, in significant and unpredictable ways. Exploring the unexpected and unseen consequences of our love affair with books, Portable Magic hails the rise of the mass-market paperback, and dismantles the myth that print began with Gutenberg; it reveals how our reading habits have been shaped by American soldiers, and proposes new definitions of a 'classic'-and even of the book itself. Ultimately, it illuminates the ways in which our relationship with the written word is more reciprocal - and more turbulent - than we tend to imagine.

The long eighteenth century was a period of major transformation for Europe and India as imperialism heralded a new global order. Eschewing the reductive perspectives of nation-state histories and postcolonial 'east vs west' oppositions, contributors to India and Europe in the global eighteenth century put forward a more nuanced and interdisciplinary analysis. Using eastern as well as western sources, authors present fresh insights into European and Indian relations and highlight: how anxieties over war and piracy shaped commercial activity; how French, British and Persian histories of India reveal the different geo-political issues at stake; the material legacy of India in European cultural life; how novels parodied popular views of the Orient and provided counter-narratives to images of India as the site of corruption; how social transformations, traditionally characterised as 'Mughal decline', in effect forged new global connections that informed political culture into the nineteenth century.

This ambitious work provides a history and critique of neoliberalism, both as a body of ideas and as a political practice. It is an original and compelling contribution to the neoliberalism debate. The Neoliberal Paradox challenges the standard interpretations of neoliberalism that focus on limited government and free markets. Instead, Ray Kiely reveals the ways in which the neoliberal project is reliant on state power. The history and application of neoliberalism is discussed from the Austrian and ordo-liberal schools in the 1930s and the Chicago School after 1945, through to developments such as the New Right and the third way, before finally considering the impacts of the financial crisis of 2008, the rise of Trump and Brexit. By exploring the full breadth of neoliberal theory and practice, in addition to the arguments of key thinkers, Kiely explores how neoliberalism has renewed itself in times of crises and turns his gaze towards the future. This book will provide a stimulating read for academics and advanced students in the fields of politics, human geography and sociology, in addition to those working in the public sector.

While South Africa has many stories about the struggle years, yet many more remain untold. For the Fallen; honouring the unsung heroes and heroines of the liberation struggle was inspired by a radio interview with the late Govan Mbeki. In that interview Mbeki emphasised the need for South Africans to tell their stories and spread knowledge. It took a while for Ndlela to heed those words and tell his story in this book. This book is as much about the author’s concerns that a generation who have only known freedom will forget or never even understand the great price it took to gain that freedom, as it is about the often forgotten heroes and heroines who showed their ultimate commitment to their ideals. The book chronicles the author’s journey from Bedford in the Eastern Cape as a young boy, fearful and yet defiant of the police who harassed him and his friends, to the young militant who became an MK soldier whose exile took him to Lesotho, Zambia, Angola and Swaziland. He describes the inspiration he gained from the heroes and heroines he encountered on this journey. These heroes and heroines included the primary school teacher who encouraged parents to broaden their thinking and who stressed the importance of education; the radical high school teacher who defied the “system “and the school curriculum to teach real, “current” history and the man of God who was required to save souls in more ways than one. As the reader accompanies Ndlela on this retrospective journey, one will encounter individuals who would later play a pivotal role in the establishment and concretisation of the democratic South Africa, people such as Thenjiwe Mtintso, Chris Hani, Jeff Radebe, Rev Makhenkesi Stofile, Mvuyo Tom and many others. For the Fallen is above all, a reminder that our freedom was not lightly gained and that we should keep telling these stories, lest we forget.

Ghosts of Archive draws on the discourses of deconstruction, intersectionality and archetypal psychology to mount an argument that archive is fundamentally and structurally spectral and that the work of archive is justice. Drawing on more than 20 years of the author's research on deconstruction and archive, the book posits archive as an essential resource for social justice activism and as a source, or location, of soul for individuals and communities. Through explorations of what Jacques Derrida termed 'hauntology', Harris invites a listening to the call for justice in conceptual spaces that are non-disciplinary. He argues that archive is both constructed in relation to and beset by ghosts - ghosts of the living, of the dead and of those not yet born - and that attention should be paid to them. Establishing a unique nexus between a deconstructive intersectionality and traditions of 'memory for justice' in struggles against oppression from South Africa and elsewhere, the book makes a case for a deconstructive praxis in today's archive. Offering new ideas about spectrality, banditry and archival activism, Ghosts of Archive should appeal to those working in the disciplines of archival science, information studies and psychology. It should also be essential reading for those with an interest in social justice issues, transitional justice, history, philosophy, memory studies and postcolonial studies.

Women and Empire, 1750-1939: Primary Sources on Gender and Anglo-Imperialism functions to extend significantly the range of the History of Feminism series (co-published by Routledge and Edition Synapse), bringing together the histories of British and American women's emancipation, represented in earlier sets, into juxtaposition with histories produced by different kinds of imperial and colonial governments. The alignment of writings from a range of Anglo-imperial contexts reveals the overlapping histories and problems, while foregrounding cultural specificities and contextual inflections of imperialism. The volumes focus on countries, regions, or continents formerly colonized (in part) by Britain: Volume I: Australia Volume II: New Zealand Volume III: Africa Volume IV: India Volume V: Canada Perhaps the most novel aspect of this collection is its capacity to highlight the common aspects of the functions of empire in their impact on women and their production of gender, and conversely, to demonstrate the actual specificity of particular regional manifestations. Concerning questions of power, gender, class and race, this new Routledge-Edition Synapse Major Work will be of particular interest to scholars and students of imperialism, colonization, women's history, and women's writing.

6 million Jews were murdered by the Nazis, but this is only half the story. Doris Bergen reveals how the Holocaust extended beyond the Jews to engulf millions of other victims in related programmes of mas-murder. The Nazi killing machine began with the disabled, and went on to target Afro-Germans, Gypsies, non-Jewish Poles, French African soldiers, Soviet prisoners of war, homosexual men and Jehovah's Witnesses. As Nazi Germany conquered more territories and peoples, Hitler's war turned soldiers, police officers and doctors into trained killers, creating a veneer of legitimacy around vicious acts of ethnic cleansing and genocide. Using the testimonies of both survivors and eyewitnesses, as well as a wealth of rarely seen photographs, Doris Bergen shows the true extent of the catastrophe that overwhelmed Europe during the Second World War, in a gripping story of the lives and deaths of real people.