A hundred years have passed since the death of Lenin, the name used by Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov since 1901. A hundred years is not a long period in historical sense, but a lot of water has flowed under the bridge in the meantime. The Russian Revolution, anti-colonial struggles, the rise […]
Tag: USSR
“Socialism Betrayed” revisited
It is nearly twenty years since the publication of Socialism Betrayed by Keeran and Kenny.¹ They offered an interpretation of the USSR’s collapse that was influential within the communist movement and the CPI. The book highlighted the disintegration of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union as derived from the […]
The first woman in space
On 16 June 1963, only two years after Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space, Valentina Tereshkova made world history and became the first woman in space. This was during the height of the Cold War and during the space race, in which the Soviet Union achieved tremendous feats, […]
Only socialism can save the planet
The Soviet Union put a massive emphasis on forest preservation and set up zapovedniki (nature reserves), set aside for scientific research. By the 1930s enough new forests had been created to cover an area the size of Mexico. The country was also home, by the 1980s, to one of the […]