The revolutionary movements in late tsarist Russia inspired a reaction by groups on the right. Although these groups were ostensibly defending the status quo, they were in fact, as this book argues, very radical in many ways. This book discusses these radical rightist groups, showing how they developed considerable popular appeal across the whole Russian Empire, securing support from a wide cross-section of society. The book considers the nature and organisation of the groups, their ideologies and polices on particular issues and how they changed over time. The book concludes by examining how and why the groups lost momentum and support in the years immediately before the First World War, and briefly explores how far present day rightist groups in Russia are connected to this earlier movement.

With unprecedented access to the Cuban Government's archives and total co-operation from Che's widow, Aleida March, as well as access to hitherto unpublished documents, including several of Che's personal diaries, this biography of one of history's most fascinating figures by critically-acclaimed New York Times journalist Jon Lee Anderson is truly definitive and monumental - not least because its creation solved a twenty-eight-year-old mystery: the whereabouts of Che Guevara's body... 'Masterly and absorbing' -- The Sunday Times 'Brilliantly evoked... The portrait is now as complete as it will ever be' -- The Times Literary Supplement 'Absorbing and convincing... an indispensable work of contemporary history' ? Guardian 'Probably the best biography I have read' -- ***** Reader review 'It's hard to imagine that this work can be bettered' -- ***** Reader review 'Simply outstanding' -- ***** Reader review 'A terrific read and genuinely the type of book you can't put down after you start reading......' -- ***** Reader review *************************************************************** A myth in his own lifetime; an international martyr-figure upon his death; a revolutionary fighter; a military strategist; a social philosopher; an economist; a medical doctor; a friend and confidant of Fidel Castro. Che Guevara's dream was an epic one - to unite Latin America and the rest of the developing world through armed revolution, and to end once and for all the poverty, injustice and petty nationalisms that had bled it for centuries. In the end Che failed in his quest but he is recognized as that one-in-a-million personality who just might have pulled it off. Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life shuttles between the revolutionary capitals of Havana and Algiers to the battlegrounds of Bolivia and the Congo; from the halls of power in Moscow and Washington to the exile havens of Miami, Mexico and Guatemala, in a gripping tale of revolution, international intrigue and covert operations. It has an epic sweep as it evokes an era of tumultuous change, describing major events like the Bay of Pigs invasion, the October Missile crisis and Kennedy's assassination, weaving in a cast of historic personalities including Castro, Kennedy, Kruschev, Mao Tse-tung, Jean Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. With its painstaking research, never-before-seen documentation and compelling narrative, this is really the ultimate biography of a unique man.

In Sex, Class and the Theatrical Archive: Erotic Economies, Alan Sikes explores the intersection of struggles over sex and class identities in politicized performances during key revolutionary moments in modern European history. The book includes discussions of sodomitical closet dramas from the decades surrounding the English Glorious Revolution of 1688; the performances of 'Tribades and Amazons', public women of the French Revolution; the 'homophilic elitism' in the early plays of Brecht and Hasenclever from the years just before and after the German Revolution that marked the founding of the short-lived Weimar Republic; and the utopian conception of a Soviet 'New Woman' set to take the stage after the Russian Revolution of 1917. Throughout, Sikes invokes the differences between past and present politicized performances in order to cast our own political imaginings into sharper and more critical relief.

Between 2000 and 2005, colour revolutions swept away authoritarian and semi-authoritarian regimes in Serbia, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan and Ukraine. Yet, after these initial successes, attempts to replicate the strategies failed to produce regime change elsewhere in the region. The book argues that students of democratization and democracy promotion should study not only the successful colour revolutions, but also the colour revolution prevention strategies adopted by authoritarian elites. Based on a series of qualitative, country-focused studies the book explores the whole spectrum of anti-democratization policies, adopted by autocratic rulers and demonstrates that authoritarian regimes studied democracy promotion techniques, used in various colour revolutions, and focused their prevention strategies on combatting these techniques. The book proposes a new typology of authoritarian reactions to the challenge of democratization and argues that the specific mix of policies and rhetoric, adopted by each authoritarian regime, depended on the perceived intensity of threat to regime survival and the regime's perceived strength vis-a-vis the democratic opposition. This book was published as a special issue of Democratization.

An accessible, concise study of the Russian Revolution.

Iran's Revolutionary Guards are one of the most important forces in the Middle East today. As the appointed defender of Iran's revolution, the Guards have evolved into a pillar of the Islamic Republic and the spearhead of its influence. Their sway has spread across the Middle East, where the Guards have overseen loyalist support to Bashar al-Assad in Syria and been a staunch backer in Iraq's war against ISIS-bringing its own troops, Lebanon's Hezbollah, and Shiite militias to the fight. Links to terrorism, human rights abuses, and the suppression of popular democracy have shrouded the Revolutionary Guards in controversy. In spite of their prominence, the Guards remain poorly understood to outside observers. In Vanguard of the Imam, Afshon Ostovar has written the first comprehensive history of the organization. Situating the rise of the Guards in the larger contexts of Shiite Islam, modern Iranian history, and international affairs, Ostovar takes a multifaceted approach in demystifying the organization and detailing its evolution since 1979. Politics, power, and religion collide in this story, wherein the Revolutionary Guards transform from a rag-tag militia established in the midst of revolutionary upheaval into a military and covert force with a global reach. The Guards have been fundamental to the success of the Islamic revolution. The symbiotic relationship between them and Iran's clerical rulers underpins the regime's nearly unshakeable system of power. The Guards have used their privileged position at home to export Iran's revolution beyond its borders, establishing client armies in their image and extending Iran's strategic footprint in the process. Ostovar tenaciously documents the Guards' transformation into a power-player and explores why the group matters now more than ever to regional and global affairs. The book simultaneously serves as a history of modern Iran, and provides a crucial and engrossing entryway into the complex world of war, politics, and identity in the Middle East.

"Kevin Murphy has written an important book. It steers a course between the prevailing historical orthodoxy that dismisses the Russian Revolution of October 1917 as a disastrous aberration and the so-called 'revisionists' who have portrayed Stalinism as a phenomenon with strong popular roots." --Alex Callinicos, Professor of European Studies, King's College London and member of Isaac and Tamara Deutscher Memorial Prize Committee "Kevin Murphy has produced an outstanding and original work that is a must-read for all those interested in Soviet history.The judges of the annual Isaac and Tamara Deutscher Memorial Prize have fittingly chosen this book as their winner for 2005, for which they deserve congratulations." --Capital and Class "Murphy draws on an abundant, varied, and multilayered documentary evidence.a tremendous contribution.we all stand in his debt." --New Politics "The workers of the Hammer and Sickle factory come alive here in an exciting story of struggle, victory, and defeat. Their voices ring out to us across the years, as we join them in their meetings and on the shop floor, at the height of revolutionary hopes and the defeats of the Stalin years. Murphy offers an unprecedented view of dissent and accommodation at the grassroots level." --Wendy Goldman, Carnegie Mellon University "Murphy has given us an impeccably researched case study of the vicissitudes of workers politics on the shop floor, which charts the rise and fall of worker activism....This is not a monolithic working class of revolutionary heroes or atomized victims, but a politically and ideologically diverse and contradictory group whose daily struggles and internal battles Murphy charts with subtlety and precision." --Donald Filtzer, University of East London, UK "Kevin Murphy's brilliant new study offers fresh insights into how the political struggle in Russia reverberated in the factories before, during, and after 1917. Significantly, it illuminates the many ways in which Stalinism was asserted on the shop floor." --Andrei Sokolov, The Institute of Russian History, Russian Academy of Sciences "The archives have been open now for fifteen years and few historians of revolutionary Russia have tested previously held assumptions and interpretations of the past through systematic studies of primary source material as Murphy has achieved in this study. --The Russian Review Why did the most unruly proletariat of the Twentieth Century come to tolerate the ascendancy of a political and economic system that, by every conceivable measure, proved antagonistic to working-class interests? Revolution and Counterrevolution is at the center of the ongoing discussion about class identities, the Russian Revolution, and early Soviet industrial relations. Based on exhaustive research in four factory-specific archives, it is unquestionably the most thorough investigation to date on working-class life during the revolutionary era. Focusing on class conflict and workers' frequently changing response to management and state labor policies, the study also meticulously reconstructs everyday life: from leisure activities to domestic issues, the changing role of women, and popular religious belief. Its unparalleled immersion in an exceptional variety of sources at the factory level and its direct engagement with the major interpretive questions about the formation of the Stalinist system will force scholars to re-evaluate long-held assumptions about early Soviet society. Kevin Murphy teaches history at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. His current writing projects include A People's History of the Russian Revolution and a study of the role of trade unions in Soviet society.

What does revolution mean in the Middle East? Can the Middle East experience be compared with revolution in China, Latin America and East Europe? These questions are the focus of this book, first published in 1972, which examines the revolutionary significance of the major economic, social and political changes in the Middle East over the last fifty years. The special feature is the consideration of the changing connotation of the word 'revolution' and a recognition of a certain continuity in the political style of Middle Eastern societies which limits the use of the term in analysing the political change.

In 2011 the world watched as Egyptians rose up against a dictator. Observers marveled at this sudden rupture, and honed in on the heroes of Tahrir Square. Revolutionary Egypt analyzes this tumultuous period from multiple perspectives, bringing together experts on the Middle East from disciplines as diverse as political economy, comparative politics and social anthropology. Drawing on primary research conducted in Egypt and across the world, this book analyzes the foundations and future of Egypt's revolution. Considering the revolution as a process, it looks back over decades of popular resistance to state practices and predicts the waves still to come. It also confidently places Egypt's revolutionary process in its regional and international contexts, considering popular contestation of foreign policy trends as well as the reactions of external actors. It draws connections between Egyptians' struggles against domestic despotism and their reactions to regional and international processes such as economic liberalization, Euro-American interventionism and similar struggles further afield. Revolutionary Egypt is an essential resource for scholars and students of social movements and revolution, comparative politics, and Middle East politics, in particular Middle East foreign policy and international relations.

This book is a profound search for a theory of social change. Through clearing away the cobwebs of revolutionary socialism, it renews the fight for the ending of capitalism and the construction of a new, fairer world. After a century of failed attempts by radical projects, the concept of revolution itself is in crisis. By asking the deepest questions about the nature of humanity, work, capitalism, organisation and resistance, John Holloway looks sharply at modern protest movements and provides tools for creating new strategies. First published in 2002, this book marked a shift in the understanding of Autonomism, Anarchism and Marxism, addressing the doubts activists had in their own political history and work, and helped form the perspectives of a new generation who are today changing the world.

This book examines the post-ceasefire evolutions and histories of the main Irish republican terrorist factions, and the interconnected character of politics and militarism within them. Offering the first comparative study of the two leading Irish republican terrorist movements the Official IRA and the Provisional IRA (PIRA), this book presents the lesser-known Officials' political-military evolution and analyses whether they could have been role models for the Provisionals. Not only does it compare the terrorism and the politics of the Officials and Provisionals in the aftermath of their seminal ceasefires of 1972 and 1994, it also presents the Irish republican history in a new light and brings to the fore the understudied and disregarded Officials who called their seminal ceasefire twenty-two years before their rivals in 1972. In doing this, the work discusses whether the PIRA might have learned lessons from the bitter and ultimately unsuccessful experience of the Officials. This book goes beyond traditional interpretations of the rivalry and competition between the two factions with the Officials usually seen as non-violent but unsuccessful and the Provisionals less politically inclined and mostly concerned with their armed struggle. Simultaneously, it dispels the myth of the alleged Provisional republican copying of their Official republican counterparts who seemed ready for a political compromise in Northern Ireland more than twenty years before the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. Finally, it comprehensively compares the Officials and the Provisionals within the identified key areas and assesses the two factions' differences and similarities. . This book will be of much interest to students of Irish politics, terrorism studies, security studies and politics in general.

A popular concise guide - one of the clearest available on the Russian Revolution.

The years 2008 to 2013 saw a new generation of political protestors take to the streets. Riots disrupted many Western cities and new protest movements emerged, keen to address a bleak context of economic collapse and austerity politics. In this groundbreaking new study, Winlow, Hall, Briggs and Treadwell push past the unworldly optimism of the liberal left to offer an illuminating account of the enclosure and vacuity of contemporary politics. Focusing on the English riots of 2011, the ongoing crisis in Greece, the Indignados, 15M and Podemos in Spain, the Occupy movement in New York and London and the English Defence League in northern England, this book uses original empirical data to inform a strident theoretical critique of our post-political present. It asks: what are these protest groups fighting for, and what are the chances of success? Written by leading criminological theorists and researchers, this book makes a major contribution to contemporary debates on social order, politics and cultural capitalism. It illuminates the epochal problems we face today. Riots and Political Protest is essential reading for academics and students engaged in the study of political sociology, criminological theory, political theory, sociological theory and the sociology of deviance.

Wars from Within brings together an international and multidisciplinary group of academics and practitioner-researchers specializing in the study of insurgent movements in order to provide a deeper understanding of the violent manifestations of insurgencies in different parts of the world. In doing so, the book adopts both a functional and regional approach. Firstly, thematic chapters discuss the typology of insurgencies (ethnopolitical, religious and ideological), past and potential responses to them, as well as the impact of advance communication technology on insurgent activity. The book then presents a series of case studies assessing the successes and failures of managing contemporary insurgencies. These are drawn from European, Asian and Middle Eastern insurgencies, as well as the global al-Qaeda network that typifies the post-9/11 challenge posed by internationally operating terrorist organizations. The case studies highlight factors and conditions that trigger, escalate, de-escalate and ultimately end insurgent campaigns. The book concludes with an assessment of how the international community at large has responded and should respond to insurgencies in the future.

" the book] offers a meticulouos and appropriately dispassionate account of the French events of May 1968. Contributing to a more complete picture of what occurred, the book would be worthwhile reading in courses on comparative experiences of the 1960s." . Journal of Modern History "All and all, this is a terrific book written in a lively narrative. Seidman provides us with a breadth and depth of knowledge and a balanced analysis that make his version of May 1968 usable for scholarly study as well as for the classroom." . H-France Review The events of 1968 have been seen as a decisive turning point in the Western world of even mythical significance. The author takes a critical look at "May 1968" and questions whether the events were in fact as "revolutionary" as French and foreign commentators have indicated. His conclusions are rather more ambivalent: culturally, he argues, the student movement changed little that had not already been challenged and altered in the late fifties and early sixties. The workers' strikes led to fewer working hours and higher wages, but these reforms reflected the secular demands of the French labor movement. "May 1968" was remarkable not because of the actual transformations it wrought but rather by virtue of the revolutionary power that much of the media and most scholars have attributed to it and which turned it into a symbol of a youthful, renewed, and freer society in France and beyond. Michael Seidman received his Ph.D. from the University of Amsterdam. He is the author of Workers against Work: Labor in Barcelona and Paris during the Popular Fronts, (1991) (Japanese translation, 1998) and of Republic of Egos: A Social History of the Spanish Civil War, (2002) (Spanish translation, 2003. He currently teaches at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington.

This concise account of the life and career of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk (1881--1938), the formidable "founder of modern Turkey", offers a substantial revaluation of a key figure in modern history, and also an introduction to the Turkish republic itself. It is a timely study with Turkey again at the centre of international attention, as Islamic fundamentalists challenge many of Ataturk's westernising and secularizing reforms, and as the regional aftershocks of the Soviet collapse reopen profound questions about Turkey's nature, role and relationships Ataturk had sought to settle for good.

In 1848 revolutions broke out all over Europe - in France, the Habsburg and German lands and the Italian peninsular. This Seminar Study considers why the revolutions occurred and why they were so widespread. The book offers a broad ranging investigation of the social, economic and political circumstances which led to the revolutions of 1848 as well as an account of the revolutions themselves. First published in 1981, and fully revised in 1991, the study has long established itself as one of the most accessible and valuable introductions to this complex subject.

Concentrating on the turbulent months from February 1917 to November 1918, Geoffrey Swain explores the origins of the Civil War against the wider background of revolutionary Russia. He examines the aims of the anti-Bolshevik insurgents themselves; but he also shows how far the fear of civil war governed the action of the Provisional Government, and even the plans of the Bolsheviks. If the war itself can seem a fairly straightforward line-up of revolutionaries and counter-revolutionaries, this study reveals how complex were the motives of the people who precipitated it.

A timely analysis that provides a pre-history to current debates on decolonisation, the politics of the moving image, and artistic engagements with anti-colonial archives. In one of the first cultural acts to follow independence in 1975, Frelimo's new socialist government of Mozambique set up a National Institute of Cinema (the INC). In a country where many people had little previous experience of cinema, the INC was tasked to "deliver to the people an image of the people". This book explores how this unique culture of revolutionary filmmaking began during the armed struggle against Portuguese colonialism. Following independence, the INC began the task of decolonising the film industry, building on networks of solidarity with other socialist and non-aligned struggles. Mozambique became an epicentre for militant filmmakers from around the world and cinema played an essential role in building the new nation. Crucially, the book examines how filmmaking became a resource for resistance against Apartheid as the Cold War played out across Southern Africa during the late 1970s and 1980s. Drawing on detailed film analysis, production histories and testimonies of key participants, Cinemas of the Mozambican Revolution provides a compelling account of this radical experiment in harnessing cinema to social change.

William Wilberforce is best remembered as the parliamentary leader for the British campaign to abolish the slave trade. He took on the financial system of his day and fought an incredible twenty-year battle in order to bring about justice and freedom for the marginalized and the vulnerable. But this rarest of politicians was motivated by a radical faith in Jesus that also led him to spearhead a number of other causes. Read the full story of Wilberforce and his friends in the Clapham Sect: how they not only abolished the transatlantic slave trade that was destroying Africa, but also began a missionary movement in India, sent Bibles across the world, were at the forefront of improving education for the poor of Britain, and finally succeeded in bringing emancipation for all slaves throughout the British Empire. "Inspiring, challenging, encouraging and hard to put down. William Wilberforce encapsulates the breadth of Wilberforce's life, his political wranglings and personal musings, and has fuelled my personal journey in the modern-day battle against human trafficking." Antoinette Daniel, Director of Merton Against Trafficking

Neither a work concerned only with her Marxist writings nor a personal biography concerned with her private life, this book examines Rosa Luxemburg's ideas on revolution and democracy and how the two are bound together by her views on the importance of political action. Stretching, historically, from 1863 to the present, this book covers in great detail the history and developments within the German SPD during her time, the 1905 and 1917 Russian Revolutions, the German Revolution, the outbreak of World War I and the imperialism that fuelled it. It then moves on to consider political and historical developments after her death and examines her arguments on revolution and democracy in the light of the post-revolutionary government in Nicaragua: the one violent revolution that sought to establish social democracy (but failed). Also covered are aspects of Rosa Luxemburg's life, her important writings and actions, the relevant Marxist debates in which she was involved, including, for example Bernstein's arguments on social democracy through reform and, with Lenin, on revolutionary organization. A welcomed and timely collection presenting an important examination of the political and social context in which Luxemburg developed her activities and views and a complete understanding of the history of social democracy, the revolutionary times of a century ago and the relevance of their events and ideas for more recent revolutions for democracy in the twenty-first century.

The Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 introduced new military technologies, transformed the organization of armies, and upset the continental balance of power, promulgating new regimented ideas of nationhood and conflict resolution more widely. However, the mass armies that became a new standard required mass mobilization and the arming of working people, who exercised a new power through both a German social democracy and popular insurgent French movements. As in the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Paris Commune of 1871 grew directly from the discontent among radicalized soldiers and civilians pressed into armed service on behalf of institutions they learned to mistrust. If this militarized class conflict, the brutality of the Commune's subsequent repression not only butchered the tens of thousands of Parisians but slaughtered an old utopian faith that appeals to reason and morality could resolve social tensions. War among nations became linked to revolution and revolution to armed struggle.

With its fiery crosses and nightriders in pointed hoods and flowing robes, the Ku Klux Klan remains a recurring nightmare in American life. What began in the earliest post-Civil War days as a social group engaging in drunken hijinks at the expense of perceived inferiors soon turned into a murderous paramilitary organization determined to resist the ""evils"" of radical Reconstruction. For six generations and counting, the Klan has inflicted misery and death on countless victims nationwide and since the early 1920s, has expanded into distant corners of the globe. From the Klan's post-Civil War lynchings in support of Jim Crow laws, to its bloody stand against desegregation during the 1960s, to its continued violence in the militia movement at the turn of the 21st century, this revealing volume chronicles the complete history of the world's oldest surviving terrorist organization from 1866 to the present. The story is told without embellishment because, as this work demonstrates, the truth about the Ku Klux Klan is grim enough.

They came in the dead of night, marking the homes and businesses of their enemies with crude symbols and dire warnings. They plotted against those of other religious faiths and circulated secret lists of alleged traitors to the community and nation. They mailed anonymous threats to those who refused to be intimidated into silence, all the while claiming that they were the true champions of American justice and freedom. The above may seem an accurate description of the sinister activities that distinguished the Ku Klux Klan in the early twentieth century, but in Buffalo, New York, and, in fact, throughout much of the northeastern United States, such activities were as characteristic of the Klan's opponents as of the hooded order itself. While the revived Klan of the 1920s-- the largest and most influential manifestation of organized intolerance in American history--proceeded with relative impunity in many locales, it encountered a very different situation in Buffalo where powerful enemies opposed the organization at every turn.

Shawn Lay here provides a riveting portrayal of how the Klan established itself in Buffalo. Most chillingly, he explains how otherwise ordinary, well-established citizens, caught up in a complex set of circumstances, were persuaded to join a notorious secret society that pandered to the darkest impulses in American society.