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The Atlantic Ocean not only connected North and South America with
Europe through trade but also provided the means for an exchange of
knowledge and ideas, including political radicalism. Socialists and
anarchists would use this "radical ocean" to escape state
prosecution in their home countries and establish radical milieus
abroad. However, this was often a rather unorganized development
and therefore the connections that existed were quite diverse. The
movement of individuals led to the establishment of organizational
ties and the import and exchange of political publications between
Europe and the Americas. The main aim of this book is to show how
the transatlantic networks of political radicalism evolved with
regard to socialist and anarchist milieus and in particular to look
at the actors within the relevant processes-topics that have so far
been neglected in the major histories of transnational political
radicalism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Individual case studies are examined within a wider context to show
how networks were actually created, how they functioned and their
impact on the broader history of the radical Atlantic.
In October 1918, war-weary German sailors mutinied when the
Imperial Naval Command ordered their engagement in one final,
fruitless battle with the British Royal Navy. This revolt, in the
dying embers of the First World War, quickly erupted into a full
scale revolution that toppled the monarchy and inaugurated a period
of radical popular democracy. The establishment of the Weimar
Republic in 1919 ended the revolution, relegating all but its most
prominent leaders to a historical footnote. In A People's History
of the German Revolution, William A. Pelz cuts against the grain of
mainstream accounts that tend to present the revolution as more of
a 'collapse', or just a chaotic interregnum that preceded the
country's natural progression into a republic. Going beyond the
familiar names of Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg or Clara Zetkins,
Pelz explores the revolution from the bottom up, focusing on the
active role that women, rank-and-file activists, and ordinary
workers played in its events. Rejecting the depiction of agency as
exclusively in the hands of international actors like Woodrow
Wilson or in those of German elites, he makes the compelling case
that, for a brief period, the actions of the common people shaped a
truly revolutionary society.
German Scholars in Exiledeals with intellectuals who fled Nazi
Germany and found refuge in either the United States or in American
Services in Great Britain and post-WWII Germany. The volume focuses
on scholars who were outside the commonly known Max
Horkheimer-Hannah Arendt circles, who are less well-known but not
less important. Their experiences ranged from an outstanding career
at an Ivy-League university to a return to the German Democratic
Republic and a position as an economic advisor to East Berlin's
party leadership. None had actual political power, but many
asserted some degree of influence. Their intellecutal legacies can
still be seen in today's political culture.
This book is a political biography of Arkadij Maksimovich Maslow
(1891-1941), a German Communist politician and later a dissident
and opponent to Stalin. Together with his political and common-law
marriage partner, Ruth Fischer, Maslow briefly led the Communist
Party of Germany, the KPD, and brought about its submission to
Moscow. Afterwards Fischer and Maslow were removed from the KPD
leadership in the fall of 1925 and expelled from the party a year
later. Henceforth they both lived as communist outsiders-persecuted
by both Hitler and Stalin. Maslow escaped to Cuba via France and
Portugal and was murdered under dubious circumstances in Havana in
November 1941. He died as a communist dissident committed to the
cause of a radical-socialist labor movement that lay in ruins.
Kessler considers Maslow's role in pivotal events such as the
Bolshevik Revolution, in Soviet revolutionary parties and
organizations, through to the rise of Stalinism and Cold War
anti-communism. What results is a deep dive into the life of a key
yet understudied figure in dissident communism.
In October 1918, war-weary German sailors mutinied when the
Imperial Naval Command ordered their engagement in one final,
fruitless battle with the British Royal Navy. This revolt, in the
dying embers of the First World War, quickly erupted into a full
scale revolution that toppled the monarchy and inaugurated a period
of radical popular democracy. The establishment of the Weimar
Republic in 1919 ended the revolution, relegating all but its most
prominent leaders to a historical footnote. In A People's History
of the German Revolution, William A. Pelz cuts against the grain of
mainstream accounts that tend to present the revolution as more of
a 'collapse', or just a chaotic interregnum that preceded the
country's natural progression into a republic. Going beyond the
familiar names of Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg or Clara Zetkins,
Pelz explores the revolution from the bottom up, focusing on the
active role that women, rank-and-file activists, and ordinary
workers played in its events. Rejecting the depiction of agency as
exclusively in the hands of international actors like Woodrow
Wilson or in those of German elites, he makes the compelling case
that, for a brief period, the actions of the common people shaped a
truly revolutionary society.
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