136-467: Anne Elizabeth Applebaum (born July 25, 1964) is an American journalist and historian. She has written extensively about the history of Communism and the development of civil society in Central and Eastern Europe . Applebaum also holds Polish citizenship. She has worked at The Economist and The Spectator , and was a member of the editorial board of The Washington Post (2002–2006). Applebaum won
272-571: A National Book Award , shortlisted for the 2013 PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award . From 2011 to 2016, she created and ran the Transitions Forum ;at the Legatum Institute , an international think tank and educational charity based in London. Among other projects, she ran a two-year program examining the relationship between democracy and growth in Brazil, India and South Africa, created
408-509: A communiste , the French form of the word "communist", in a 1782 letter, the first recorded instance of that term. Restif himself wrote many novels centered around the idea of eliminating private property, first using the term "community of goods" in 1783 and then the term "communism" in 1793, rendered in French as communisme . These currents of thought in French philosophy proved influential during
544-609: A Bolshevik-style council republic, but the government put the rebellion down violently with the use of right-wing paramilitary groups, the Freikorps . The noted German communists Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were killed extrajudicially three days later. Within a few months, a group of communists seized power amongst public unrest in the German region of Bavaria , forming the Bavarian Soviet Republic , although once more this
680-505: A Marxist government, instead he believed that the state would gain in power and become authoritarian . Criticism also came from other sociologists such as the German Max Weber , who whilst admiring Marx disagreed with many of his assumptions on the nature of society. Some Marxists tried to adapt to these criticisms and the changing nature of capitalism and Eduard Bernstein emphasised the idea of Marxists bringing legal challenges against
816-614: A Yale alumnus, is senior counsel at Covington & Burling's Antitrust and International Trade Practices. Her mother was a program coordinator at the Corcoran Gallery of Art . According to Applebaum, her great-grandparents immigrated to America during the reign of Alexander III of Russia from what is now Belarus . After attending the Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C., Applebaum entered Yale University , where during
952-531: A communist society, creating a variant of communism known as Marxism–Leninism . As a part of this, he abandoned some of the capitalist, market policies that had been allowed to continue under Lenin such as the New Economic Policy . Stalinist policies radically altered much of the Soviet Union's agricultural production , modernising it by introducing tractors and other machinery, forced collectivisation of
1088-635: A dictatorship, believing instead that the chief focus should be on cultivating proletarian unity through propaganda and education. The works and teachings of these French writers, many now self identifying as communists, went on to inspire new communist groups such as the League of the Just , an organization founded in Paris in 1836 by the Christian communist German émigrés Wilhelm Weitling and Karl Schapper . A second group,
1224-571: A member of The Washington Post editorial board. She was a columnist at The Washington Post for seventeen years. Applebaum was an adjunct fellow at the American Enterprise Institute , a conservative think tank. Her second history book, Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1944–56 , was published in 2012 by Doubleday in the US and Allen Lane in the UK; it was nominated for
1360-580: A new line of quality paperbacks, under the imprint Anchor Books; founding mail-order subscription book clubs in its book club division; opening 30 new retail stores in 25 cities; and opening new editorial offices in San Francisco, London, and Paris. By 1947, Doubleday was the largest publisher in the United States, with annual sales of more than 30 million books. In 1954, Doubleday sold Blakiston to McGraw-Hill . Doubleday's son-in-law John Sargent
1496-505: A now lost egalitarian social order. Around the late 5th century BC in Ancient Greece , ideas similar to communism were becoming widespread to the extent that they were parodied by the dramatist Aristophanes in his comedy The Assemblywomen in which the women of Athens seize control of the Ecclesia or city government and abolish all private property while making the sharing of women and
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#17328761877481632-499: A number of clandestine activities". There were numerous communist front organizations in Asia, many oriented to students and youth. According to one historian, in the labor union movement of the 1920s in Japan , the " Hyogikai never called itself a communist front but in effect, this was what it was". He points out it was repressed by the government "along with other communist front groups". In
1768-584: A number of imprints and distributed them through its own stores. In 2009, Doubleday merged with Knopf Publishing Group to form the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group , which, as of 2018, is part of Penguin Random House . The firm was founded as Doubleday & McClure Company in 1897 by Frank Nelson Doubleday in partnership with Samuel Sidney McClure . McClure had founded the first U.S. newspaper syndicate in 1884 ( McClure Syndicate ) and
1904-763: A prison camp in Siberia by the Tsarist government for his beliefs. A Marxist group known as the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party was formed in the country, although it soon divided into two main factions, namely the Bolsheviks led by Lenin and the Mensheviks led by Julius Martov . In 1905, there was a revolution against the Tsar's rule in which workers' councils known as soviets were formed in many parts of
2040-552: A program examining 21st century propaganda and disinformation. Started in 2014, the program anticipated later debates about "fake news". In 2016, she left Legatum because of its stance on Brexit following the appointment of Euroskeptic Philippa Stroud as CEO and joined the London School of Economics as a Professor of Practice at the Institute for Global Affairs . At the LSE, she ran Arena,
2176-774: A program on disinformation and 21st century propaganda. In the autumn of 2019 she moved the project to the Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University . In October 2017, she published her third history book, Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine , a history of the Holodomor . The book won the Lionel Gelber Prize and the Duff Cooper Prize , making her the only author to ever win the Duff Cooper Prize twice. In November 2019, The Atlantic announced that Applebaum
2312-541: A review of Karen Dawisha 's Putin's Kleptocracy ) whether "the most important story of the past twenty years might not, in fact, have been the failure of democracy, but the rise of a new form of Russian authoritarianism". She has described the "myth of Russian humiliation" and argued that NATO and EU expansion have been a "phenomenal success". In July 2016, before the US election , she wrote about connections between Donald Trump and Russia and wrote that Russian support for Trump
2448-480: A revival of Babeuf's thought in France and the dissemination of political theories referred to as Neo-Babouvism . According to Bournatti's Neo-Babouvism a revolutionary elite of "wise and courageous" citizens who cared only for "ensuring the triumph of equality" would be needed to uplift the masses and establish a new society based on egalitarian principles. By the 1830s and 1840s, the egalitarian concepts of communism and
2584-500: A separate group. In 1996, Doubleday founded the Christian publisher WaterBrook Press. WaterBrook acquired Harold Shaw Publishers in 2000 and Multnomah Publishers in 2006. In late 2008 and early 2009, Doubleday imprint merged with Knopf Publishing Group to form the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. In October 2008, Doubleday laid off about 10% of its staff (16 people) across all departments. That December,
2720-419: A society based on collective ownership." He did however temper his views by surmising that any attempts at enacting true equality and communal ownership would prove to be too costly and destructive to be worth implementing. Another French thinker, Étienne-Gabriel Morelly also contended that private property was the source of all vice in society and developed the basic principles for a communist society namely,
2856-457: A term for their belief system. A landmark event that established the popularity of the communist movement in France occurred in 1840 when Dézamy along with Pillot and Albert Laponneraye organized a pro-communist banquet in Belleville , France, the "first public manifestation of the communist party" in France which proved so successful that further planned communist banquets had to be outlawed by
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#17328761877482992-418: A theory and method conceived by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels during the 19th century. Marxism subsequently gained a widespread following across much of Europe, and throughout the late 1800s its militant supporters were instrumental in a number of unsuccessful revolutions on that continent. During the same era, there was also a proliferation of communist parties which rejected armed revolution, but embraced
3128-516: A train station, to Garden City, New York , on Long Island . The company purchased much of the land on the east side of Franklin Avenue, and estate homes were built for many of its executives on Fourth Street. Co-founder and Garden City resident Walter Hines Page was named Ambassador to Great Britain in 1916. In 1922, the company founded its juvenile department, the second in the nation, with May Massee as head. The founder's son Nelson Doubleday joined
3264-835: A union of xenophobic , nationalist parties such as Law and Justice in Poland, the Northern League in Italy, and the Freedom Party in Austria. In January 2022, Applebaum was invited to testify before the US House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee hearing entitled "Bolstering Democracy in the Age of Rising Authoritarianism". In 1992, Applebaum married Radosław Sikorski , who later served as Poland's Defence Minister , Foreign Minister , Marshal of
3400-467: A way that the term "conservative" had long been defined. She wrote that populist groups in Europe share "ideas and ideology, friends and founders", and that, unlike Burkean conservatives, they seek to "overthrow the institutions of the present to bring back things that existed in the past—or that they believe existed in the past—by force." Applebaum has underlined the danger of a new "Nationalist International",
3536-667: A world to win. — Karl Marx , 1848 At the time, Marxism took off not only in Germany, but it also gained popularity in Hungary , the Habsburg monarchy and the Netherlands , although it did not achieve such success in other European nations like the United Kingdom , where Marx and Engels had been based. Nonetheless, the new political ideology had gained sufficient support that an organisation
3672-656: Is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations . She is on the board of the National Endowment for Democracy and Renew Democracy Initiative . She was a member of the Institute for War and Peace Reporting 's international board of directors. She was a Senior Adjunct Fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) where she co-led a major initiative aimed at countering Russian disinformation in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). She
3808-581: Is no mine or thine but all is held in common", but once initiated the scheme was quickly abandoned. They have been considered precursors of totalitarian governance while under leadership of the dictatorial Jan Želivský . After Taborite power was broken at Lipany their successors fled to Moravia forming the Moravian Church under the pacifist spiritual leader Petr Chelčický who harbored both Christian communist and Christian anarchist beliefs. The extent to which Chelčický's followers, also known as
3944-472: Is to deliver the lower classes to brutal exploitation. The proletariat is no more than a revival of antique slavery." He also asserted that private ownership of the means of production allowed for the exploitation of the lower classes and that private property was a concept divorced from human dignity. Dézamy would assert in his 1842 book Code la Communaté that what was needed was a," complete and unrestricted society of communal property" in which all activity
4080-700: The Bohemian Brethren , adhered to his ideals, namely the abstinence from property, trade, and government, is disputed, and by the 16th century the Brethren definitely no longer embraced them. During the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century the radical Anabaptists , who originated in Switzerland , endorsed the communalization of goods as practiced in the Book of Acts. The most notable Anabaptist groups were
4216-669: The Book of Acts the passages Acts 2:44–45 and Acts 4:32–37 state all believers held their possessions communally and would distribute goods based on need. Additionally, the related Jewish sect known as the Essenes was committed to, "social and material egalitarianism." Despite these practices falling into decline even before the Christianization of the Roman Empire , the principles of sharing property and holding goods in common continued within
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4352-639: The Chinese who then controlled the country , instituting a pro-Soviet government which declared the nation to be the Mongolian People's Republic in 1924. The Comintern and other such Soviet-backed communist groups soon spread across much of the world, though particularly in Europe, where the influence of the recent Russian Revolution was still strong. In Germany , the Spartacist uprising took place in 1919 when armed Spartacus League communists attempted to set up
4488-499: The Cold War was not a geopolitical story; it was a moral story, a verdict pronounced by history itself." Applebaum has been writing about the Soviet Union and Russia since the early 1990s. In 2000, she described the links between the then-new president of Russia, Vladimir Putin , with the former Soviet leader Yuri Andropov and the former KGB . In 2008, she began speaking about " Putinism " as an anti-democratic ideology, though most at
4624-504: The Communist Correspondence Committee in 1846 through which the various communists, socialists and other leftists across Europe could keep in contact with one another in the face of political repression. He then published The Communist Manifesto in 1848, which would prove to be one of the most influential communist texts ever written. He subsequently began work on a multi-volume epic that would examine and criticise
4760-510: The Communist Correspondence Committee , was formed in Brussels in 1846 by another pair of German émigrés Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels . The two groups were merged in 1847 to form the Communist League which was headed by Schapper who then proceeded to task the co-founding members Marx and Engels with writing a manifesto laying out the principles of the new political party. Communism is
4896-628: The French Revolution of 1789 in which various anti-monarchists , particularly the Jacobins , supported the idea of redistributing wealth equally among the people, including Jean-Paul Marat and Gracchus Babeuf . The latter was involved in the Conspiracy of the Equals of 1796 intending to establish a revolutionary regime based on communal ownership, egalitarianism and the redistribution of property. Babeuf
5032-480: The German Social-Democratic Party which had been created in 1875, but which was outlawed in 1879 by the German government, then led by Chancellor Otto von Bismarck , who deemed it to be a political threat due to its revolutionary nature and increasing number of supporters. In 1890, the party was re-legalised and by this time it had fully adopted Marxist principles. It subsequently achieved a fifth of
5168-697: The Hutterites , founded by Jacob Hutter , who settled in Moravia in the 1520s and the Münster Anabaptists who were eradicated in battle during their attempt in 1535 to forcibly convert the city of Münster into a theocratic New Jerusalem . Various groups on the side of the Roundheads during the English Civil War in the mid-17th century propagated the redistribution of wealth on an egalitarian basis, namely
5304-681: The International Workingmen's Association which would later become known as the First International to unite various communists and socialists, with Marx being elected to the Association's General Council. Marx summarized his system with the slogan, " From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs ." This phrasing used to formulate the principles of communism is borrowed from earlier socialist political activists such as August Becker and Louis Blanc . During
5440-601: The Korean War which drove the Americans back to the prewar boundaries, but which escalated tensions. The United States decided to mobilize its economy for a long contest with the Soviets, built the hydrogen bomb and strengthened the NATO alliance that covered Western Europe . According to Gorlizki and Khlevniuk (2004), Stalin's consistent and overriding goal after 1945 was to consolidate
5576-409: The Levellers and the Diggers although only the latter group under Gerrard Winstanley promoted a propertyless, communist society. European writers began depicting idealized communist societies in utopian fiction from the 16th century onward. Inspired by largely fictional accounts of native communities in the New World , the English humanist and future Lord Chancellor Thomas More , wrote
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5712-443: The London School of Economics , where she earned a master's degree in international relations (1987). She also studied at St Antony's College, Oxford , before becoming a correspondent for The Economist and moving to Warsaw , Poland, in 1988. In November 1989, Applebaum drove from Warsaw to Berlin to report on the collapse of the Berlin Wall . As foreign correspondent for The Economist and The Independent , she covered
5848-471: The Paleolithic through to horticultural societies as found in the Chalcolithic were essentially egalitarian and he, therefore, termed their ideology to be primitive communism . One of the first writers to espouse a belief in the primitive communism of the past was the Roman Stoic philosopher Seneca who stated," How happy was the primitive age when the bounties of nature lay in common...They held all nature in common which gave them secure possession of
5984-417: The Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction in 2004 for Gulag: A History published the previous year. She is a staff writer for The Atlantic and a senior fellow at The Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies . Applebaum was born in Washington, D.C. to a reform Jewish family, the eldest of three daughters of Harvey M. and Elizabeth Applebaum. Her father,
6120-534: The Russian Revolution and in 1922 created the Soviet Union , the world's first self-declared socialist state . The Bolsheviks thoroughly embraced the concept of proletarian internationalism and world revolution , seeing their struggle as an international rather than a purely regional cause. This was to have a phenomenal impact on the spread of communism during the 20th century as the Soviet Union installed new Marxist–Leninist governments in Central and Eastern Europe following World War II and indirectly backed
6256-445: The Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic was officially redesignated to lead the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , simply known as the Soviet Union . In 1924, Lenin resigned as leader of the Soviet Union due to poor health and soon died, with Joseph Stalin subsequently taking over control. In 1919, the Bolshevik government in Russia instigated the creation of an international communist organisation that would act as
6392-566: The White Guard as well as Western powers. This led to the events of the Russian Civil War which the Bolsheviks won and subsequently consolidated their power over the entire country, centralising power from the Kremlin in the capital city of Moscow . In the early 1920s, Lenin began recruiting black workers, accusing American political parties of not doing more to campaign for black civil rights . A handful of African American activists were fascinated by communism, and Cyril Briggs led an organization called African Blood Brotherhood . In 1922,
6528-411: The World Peace Council . Malcolm Kennedy says the "Communist 'front' system included such international organizations as the WFTU, WFDY, IUS, WIDF and WPC, besides a host of lesser bodies bringing journalists, lawyers, scientists, doctors and others into the widespread net". The World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) was established in 1945, to unite trade union confederations across the world and it
6664-407: The Young Communist International (youth), Profintern (trade unions), Krestintern (peasants), International Red Aid (humanitarian aid), and Red Sport International (organized sports), among others. In Europe, front organizations were especially influential in Italy and France which became the base for Communist front organizer Willi Münzenberg in 1933. These organizations were dissolved by
6800-434: The Zoroastrian priest and reformist Mazdak purportedly founded a movement preaching religious communism while under the patronage of the Sassanian King Kavad I who initially supported the priest and his reforms, but later had the Mazdakians repressed and Mazdak executed. Early Christianity supported a form of common ownership based on the teachings in the New Testament which emphasised sharing. For example, in
6936-422: The fall of the Berlin Wall and the fall of communism . In 1991 she moved back to England to work for The Economist , and was later hired as the foreign and later deputy editor of The Spectator , and later the political editor of the Evening Standard . In 1994, she published her first book Between East and West: Across the Borderlands of Europe , a travelogue that described the rise of nationalism across
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#17328761877487072-422: The proletariat (the working class masses) who toiled to produce everything, but who had no political control. He advanced the idea that human society moved through a series of progressive stages from primitive communism through to slavery , feudalism and then capitalism; and that this, in turn, would be replaced by communism. For Marx, communism was seen as inevitable yet uncertain and desirable. Marx founded
7208-456: The 1950s, Scalapino argues: "The primary Communist-front organization was the Japan Peace Committee". It was founded in 1949. In 1924, Joseph Stalin , a key Bolshevik follower of Lenin, took power in the Soviet Union. Stalin was supported in his leadership by Nikolai Bukharin , but he had various important opponents in the government, most notably Lev Kamenev , Leon Trotsky , and Grigory Zinoviev . Stalin initiated his own process of building
7344-461: The 21st century, only a small number of Marxist–Leninist states remain, namely China , Cuba , Laos , North Korea and Vietnam . With the exception of North Korea, all of these states have started allowing more economic competition while maintaining one-party rule. Many historical groups have been considered as following forms of communism . Karl Marx and other early communist theorists believed that hunter-gatherer societies as were found in
7480-489: The Book of Acts, but were persecuted by the Catholic Church and retreated to the Piedmont . Some Waldensians led a schism after they felt the group's leader was becoming authoritarian . With the rise of the Mendicant Orders in the 13th century groups such as the Franciscans began challenging the concept of private property to the extent it had to be defended by Pope John XXII in his 1328 papal bull Quia vir reprobus , in which he ruled that because God had gifted Adam with
7616-416: The Christian traditions of monasticism . From the High Middle Ages to the early modern period in Europe, various groups supporting Christian communist and communalist ideas were occasionally adopted by reformist Christian sects. An early 12th century proto-Protestant group originating in Lyon , Kingdom of Burgundy-Arles known as the Waldensians held their property in common in accordance with
7752-461: The Earth as his domain, the ownership of property was divinely sanctioned. Also beginning in the 13th century a lay order known as the Beghards , originating in the Low Countries , started to spread among the underprivileged groups of society, taking in members who renounced private property and dedicated themselves to communal living and pious, frugal lifestyles as artisans. Although the practices were successful enough to spread to other areas on
7888-439: The Equals (1796), "we aim at something more sublime and more just, the COMMON GOOD or the COMMUNITY OF GOODS" and "The French Revolution is just a precursor of another revolution, far greater, far more solemn, which will be the last." Restif also continued to write and publish books on the topic of communism throughout the Revolution. Accordingly, through their egalitarian programs and agitation Restif, Maréchal, and Babeuf became
8024-401: The Fall 1982 semester she studied Soviet history under Wolfgang Leonhard . As an undergraduate, she spent the summer of 1985 in Leningrad , Soviet Union (now Saint Petersburg, Russia), an experience she credits with helping shape her opinions. Applebaum received her BA from Yale in 1986 summa cum laude in history and literature, and was the recipient of a two-year Marshall Scholarship at
8160-410: The French government. Also in 1840 a society of "Egalitarian Workers" following a communist program was founded in Paris and a general strike was called whose leaders were reportedly inspired by communist ideals. During the 1840s Étienne Cabet had a following of between 100,000 and 200,000 French workers and was considered by Friedrich Engels to be the representative of the French proletariat. One of
8296-430: The Future of Syria and Future of Iran projects on future institutional change in those two countries, and commissioned a series of papers on corruption in Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine. Together with Foreign Policy magazine she created Democracy Lab, a website focusing on countries in transition to, or away from, democracy and which has since become Democracy Post at The Washington Post . She also ran Beyond Propaganda,
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#17328761877488432-501: The German authorities in 1849. Marx and Engels took on many influences from earlier socialists such as the Utopian socialist Saint-Simonist school. Politically, they were influenced by Maximilien Robespierre and several other radical figures of the French Revolution whilst economically they were influenced by David Ricardo . Philosophically, they were influenced by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel . Engels regularly met Marx at Chetham's Library in Manchester , England from 1845 and
8568-412: The Marxist ideal of collective property and a classless society . Although Marxist theory suggested that industrial societies were the most suitable places for social revolution (either through peaceful transition or by force of arms), communism was mostly successful in underdeveloped countries with endemic poverty such as the Republic of China . In 1917, the Bolshevik Party seized power during
8704-402: The Mets to Wilpon for $ 135 million after a feud over the monetary value of the team. In 1988, portions of the firm became part of the Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, which in turn became a division of Random House in 1998. Doubleday was combined in a group with Broadway Books , Anchor Books was combined with Vintage Books as a division of Knopf , while Bantam and Dell became
8840-564: The Sejm , and a member of the European Parliament . Since 2023, he has again been Minister of Foreign Affairs. The couple have two sons, Aleksander and Tadeusz. She became a Polish citizen in 2013. She speaks Polish and Russian in addition to English. History of Communism The history of communism encompasses a wide variety of ideologies and political movements sharing the core principles of common ownership of wealth , economic enterprise , and property . Most modern forms of communism are grounded at least nominally in Marxism ,
8976-463: The Sun propagated the concept of a society where the products of society should be shared equally. In Campanella's utopia all people are well educated, there is only a four-hour work day, there is no private property, the population practices eugenics to improve mental and physical fitness, most time is devoted to either leisure or self improvement, and society is managed by a ruling scientist who bases his administration on scientific principles all in
9112-402: The Third International after the collapse of the Second International in 1916. This was known as the Communist International , although it was commonly abbreviated as the Comintern. Throughout its existence, the Comintern would be dominated by the Kremlin despite its internationalist stance. Meanwhile, in 1921, the Soviet Union invaded its neighboring Mongolia to aid a popular uprising against
9248-451: The abolition of property, the right to live and work for all, and the duty of all citizens to work for the common good. The French philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau in his hugely influential The Social Contract (1762) outlined the basis for a political order based on popular sovereignty rather than the rule of monarchs, and in his Discourse on Inequality (1755) inveighed against the corrupting effects of private property claiming that
9384-501: The actions of President Vladimir Putin had violated "a series of international treaties". On March 7, in another article on The Daily Telegraph , discussing an information war , Applebaum argued that "a robust campaign to tell the truth about Crimea is needed to counter Moscow's lies". At the end of August, she asked whether Ukraine should prepare for "total war" with Russia and whether central Europeans should join them. In 2014, writing in The New York Review of Books she asked (in
9520-504: The alcove where they met remains identical to this day. It was here that Engels relayed his experiences of industrial Manchester, chronicled in the Condition of the Working Class in England , highlighting the struggles of the working class. Marx stated that "the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles ", something that he believed was happening between the bourgeoisie (the select few upper class and upper middle class ) who then controlled society and
9656-458: The alliances that preserve international peace and American power". Applebaum's March 2016 Washington Post column prompted the Swiss newspaper Tages-Anzeiger and the German magazine Der Spiegel to interview her. The articles appeared in December 2016 and January 2017. She argued very early on that the international populist movement which had frequently been identified as "far right" or "alt right" were in truth not conservative in nature in
9792-693: The ascension of others in the Americas, Asia and Africa. Pivotal to this policy was the Communist International , also known as the Comintern, formed with the perspective of aiding and assisting communist parties around the world and fostering revolution. This was one major cause of tensions during the Cold War as the United States and its military allies equated the global spread of communism with Soviet expansionism by proxy. By 1985, one-third of
9928-562: The assault on Petrograd occurred largely without any human casualties . From the outset, the new government faced resistance from a myriad of forces with differing perspectives, including anarchists , social democrats , who took power in the Democratic Republic of Georgia , Socialist-Revolutionaries , who formed the Komuch in Samara, Russia , scattered tsarist resistance forces known as
10064-568: The board until his death on January 11, 1949. Douglas Black took over as president from 1946 to 1963. His tenure attracted numerous public figures to the publishing company, including Dwight D. Eisenhower , Harry S. Truman , Douglas MacArthur , Robert Taft , and André Malraux . He was a strong opponent of censorship and felt that it was his responsibility to the American public to publish controversial titles. Black also expanded Doubleday's publishing program by opening two new printing plants; creating
10200-536: The board. By 1986, the firm was a fully integrated international communications company, doing trade publishing, mass-market paperback publishing, book clubs, and book manufacturing, together with ventures in broadcasting and advertising. The company had offices in London and Paris and wholly owned subsidiaries in Canada , Australia, and New Zealand, with joint ventures in the UK and the Netherlands. Nelson Doubleday Jr. sold
10336-473: The bourgeoisie-controlled government and instead establishing a dictatorship of the proletariat . The historical existence of the Communist International (Comintern) and the broader communist movement is divided among periods, regarding changes in the general policy it followed. At the start of the 20th century, the Russian Empire was an autocracy controlled by Tsar Nicholas II , with millions of
10472-451: The capitalist economy and the effect that it had upon politics, society and philosophy – the first volume of the work which was known as Capital: Critique of Political Economy was published in 1869. However, Marx and Engels were not only interested in writing about communism, as they were also active in supporting revolutionary activity that would lead to the creation of communist governments across Europe. They helped to found
10608-639: The co-founder of his magazine, formed McClure, Phillips and Company. Doubleday and Walter Hines Page formed Doubleday, Page & Company . The bestselling novels of Thomas Dixon Jr. , including The Leopard's Spots , 1902 and The Clansman , 1905, "changed a struggling publishing venture into the empire that Doubleday was to become". At the same time, Doubleday helped Dixon launch his writing career. Page and Dixon were both from North Carolina and had known each other in Raleigh, North Carolina . In 1910, Doubleday, Page & Co. moved its operations, which included
10744-507: The collective rearing of children mandatory. Over a decade later in Plato's Republic Socrates declares that an ideal state would eliminate all forms of private property among the elite of society to the extent that even children and wives are shared. He asserts that such practices would prevent internal conflict within a society and promote a sense of unity and common identity. Around AD 500 in Iran ,
10880-681: The company bought the New York Mets baseball team. The Mets defeated the Boston Red Sox to win the World Series in 1986 in a seven-game contest. In 1981, Doubleday promoted James R. McLaughlin to the presidency of Dell Publishing. Sales slowed in the early 1980s and earnings fell precipitously. Doubleday Jr., brought James McLaughlin over (from subsidiary Dell) to help streamline and downsize. McLaughlin went on to succeed Doubleday Jr., as president and CEO, with Doubleday Jr., becoming chairman of
11016-449: The conclusion to her book Iron Curtain , Applebaum argued that the reconstruction of civil society was the most important and most difficult challenge for the post-communist states of central Europe; in another essay, she argued that the modern authoritarian obsession with civil society repression dates back to Vladimir Lenin . She has written essays on the Polish film-maker Andrzej Wajda , on
11152-831: The continent such as France and Germany, the Beghards were later repeatedly condemned by the Catholic Church. Around 1300 the Apostolic Brethren in northern Italy were taken over by Fra Dolcino who formed a sect known as the Dulcinians which advocated ending feudalism, dissolving hierarchies in the church, and holding all property in common. The 14th century English scholastic and founder of Lollardy , John Wycliffe , preached of an idealized Christian state with collective ownership and disapproved of those rejecting the, "common charity and common property of Christian men." Around
11288-682: The country and the Tsar was forced to implement democratic reform, introducing an elected government, the Duma . In 1917, with further social unrest against the Duma and its part in involving Russia in World War I , the Bolsheviks took power in the October Revolution . They began remodelling the country by nationalizing various industries and confiscating land from wealthy aristocrats and redistributing it amongst
11424-405: The country's largely agrarian population living in abject poverty . The anti-communist historian Robert Service noted that "poverty and oppression constituted the best soil for Marxism to grow in". The man most responsible for introducing the ideology into the country was Georgi Plekhanov , although the movement itself was largely organised by Vladimir Lenin , who had for a time been exiled to
11560-511: The country, but the country itself was subsequently invaded by its neighbouring Romania within a matter of months who overthrew the government, with its leaders either escaping abroad or being executed. In 1921, a communist revolt against the Kingdom of Italy occurred whilst supportive factory workers were on strike in Turin and Milan in northern Italy , but the government acted swiftly and put down
11696-501: The crackdown on the Conspiracy of the Equals he was able, later in his life, to write the influential book Babeuf's Conspiracy for Equality first published in 1828 which chronicled and popularized Babeouf's beliefs. In it Buonarroti asserted that in society, "burdens, productions, and advantages ought to be equally divided," and believed that this division would lead to, "the greatest possible happiness of all." Bournatti's writings led to
11832-413: The current administrations over the treatment of the working classes rather than simply emphasising violent revolution as more orthodox Marxists did. Other Marxists opposed Bernstein and other revisionists, with many including Karl Kautsky , Otto Bauer , Rudolf Hilferding , Rosa Luxemburg , Vladimir Lenin and Georgi Plekhanov sticking steadfast to the concept of violently overthrowing what they saw as
11968-563: The dual Nazi–Soviet occupation of central Europe, and on why it is inaccurate to define "Eastern Europe" as a single entity. In 2014, Applebaum and Peter Pomerantsev launched Beyond Propaganda, a program examining disinformation and propaganda, at the Legatum Institute. Applebaum wrote about a 2014 Russian smear campaign aimed at her when she was writing heavily about the Russian annexation of Crimea . She stated that dubious material posted on
12104-572: The economic strength of the West and instead of triumph saw the West build up alliances that were designed to permanently stop or contain Soviet expansion. In early 1950, Stalin gave the go-ahead for North Korea 's invasion of South Korea , expecting a short war. He was stunned when the Americans entered and defeated the North Koreans, putting them almost on the Soviet border. Stalin supported China 's entry into
12240-541: The election of President Donald Trump , Applebaum wrote a Washington Post column asking, "Is this the end of the West as we know it?", which argued that "we are two or three bad elections away from the end of NATO, the end of the European Union and maybe the end of the liberal world order". Applebaum endorsed Hillary Clinton 's campaign for president in July 2016 on the grounds that Trump is "a man who appears bent on destroying
12376-536: The extent they demanded its abolition. One of the first secular visions for a communist society is contained within the French Catholic abbé Jean Meslier 's posthumously published Testament (1729). Similarly the Abbé de Mably , also a French philosopher wrote that the individual ownership of land was the source of all mischief and that wealthy inequality brought about social ruin that could only be reversed by adopting
12512-679: The farms and forced collection of grains from the peasants in accordance with predecided targets. There was food available for industrial workers, but those peasants who refused to move starved, especially in Kazakhstan and Ukraine . The All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) targeted kulaks , who owned a little land. Stalin took control of the Comintern and introduced a policy in the international organisation of opposing all leftists who were not Marxist–Leninists , labelling them to be social fascists , although many communists such as Jules Humbert-Droz disagreed with him on this policy, believing that
12648-474: The features of arrest and summary trial followed by execution were well entrenched in the Soviet system since the days of Lenin as Stalin systematically destroyed the older generation of pre-1918 leaders. Stalin did so usually under the justification that the accused were enemy spies or deemed " enemies of the people "; in the Red Army, a majority of generals were executed and hundreds of thousands of other "enemies of
12784-619: The firm in the same year. In 1927, Doubleday, Page merged with the George H. Doran Company , creating Doubleday, Doran , then the largest publishing business in the English-speaking world. Doubleday Canada Limited launches in the thirties. In 1944, Doubleday, Doran acquired the Philadelphia medical publisher Blakiston. In 1946, the company became Doubleday and Company . Nelson Doubleday resigned as president, but continued as chairman of
12920-461: The interest of benefiting society as a whole. Utopian communist societies were also described by the French writers François Fénelon and Denis Vairasse while English writer Francis Bacon wrote of a utopia that merely had a "communism in knowledge." During the Age of Enlightenment in 18th century France, some liberal writers increasingly began to criticize the institution of private property even to
13056-489: The invention of private property had led to the, "crimes, wars, murders, and suffering" that plagued civilization. I believe that no one will contest the justness of this proposition: that where no property exists, none of its pernicious consequences could exist...if you were to take away property, the blind and pitiless self-interest that accompanies it, you would cause all the prejudices in errors that they sustain to collapse. — Étienne-Gabriel Morelly , 1755 In 1785
13192-653: The late 1930s or early 1940s. The Pan-Pacific Trade Union Secretariat (PPTUS) was set up in 1927 by the Profintern (the Comintern's trade union arm) with the mission of promoting communist trade unions in China, Japan, Korea, the Philippines, Australia, New Zealand and other nations in the western Pacific. Trapeznik (2009) says the PPTUS was a "Communist-front organization" and "engaged in overt and covert political agitation in addition to
13328-545: The late 1980s and early 1990s, including the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 and several other Marxist–Leninist states repudiating or abolishing the ideology altogether. Later historians have proposed different explanations for this decline, including arguments that Marxist-Leninist governments failed to live up to the ideal of a communist society , that there was a general trend towards increasing authoritarianism , that they suffered from excessive bureaucracy, and that they had inefficiencies in their economies. As of
13464-489: The latter half of the 19th century, various left-wing organisations across Europe continued to campaign against the many autocratic right-wing regimes that were then in power. In France, socialists set up a government known as the Paris Commune after the fall of Napoleon III in 1871, but they were soon overthrown and many of their members executed by counter-revolutionaries. Meanwhile, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels joined
13600-555: The left should unite against the rise of right-wing movements like fascism across Europe. In the early 1930s, Stalin reversed course and promoted popular front movements whereby communist parties would collaborate with socialists and other political forces. A high priority was mobilizing wide support for the Republican cause in the Spanish Civil War . The Great Purge mainly operated from December 1936 to November 1938, although
13736-468: The members. To reach sympathisers unwilling to join the party, front organizations were created that advocated party-approved positions. Under the leadership of Grigory Zinoviev in the Kremlin, the Comintern established fronts in many countries in the 1920s and after. To coordinate their activities, the Comintern set up various international umbrella organizations (linking groups across national borders) such as
13872-501: The monthly McClure's Magazine in 1893. One of their first bestsellers was The Day's Work by Rudyard Kipling , a short story collection that Macmillan published in Britain late in 1898. Other authors published by the company in its early years include W. Somerset Maugham and Joseph Conrad . Theodore Roosevelt Jr. later served as a vice-president of the company. The partnership ended in 1900. McClure and John Sanborn Phillips ,
14008-429: The most prominent and influential French communists of the 1840s was Auguste Blanqui who was notable for his belief that violent revolutionary action should be used to overthrow the bourgeosie dominated state. In Blanqui's estimation a revolution would be most successful if it was executed by a small, secretive group which could then install a "dictatorship of the proletariat." Dézamy disagreed with any program endorsing
14144-443: The nation's superpower status and in the face of his growing physical decrepitude to maintain his own hold on total power. Stalin created a leadership system that reflected historic czarist styles of paternalism and repression, yet was also quite modern. At the top, personal loyalty to Stalin counted for everything. However, Stalin also created powerful committees, elevated younger specialists and began major institutional innovations. In
14280-564: The new states of the former Soviet Union. In 2001, she interviewed prime minister Tony Blair . She also undertook historical research for her book Gulag: A History (2003) on the Soviet prison camp system, which won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction . It was also nominated for a National Book Award, for the Los Angeles Times book award and for the National Book Critics Circle Award . She has been
14416-604: The only ones. In Germany, the split in the SPD had initially led to a variety of Communist unions and parties forming which included the councilist tendencies of the AAU-D, AAU-E and KAPD . Councilism had a limited impact outside of Germany, but a number of international organisations formed. In Spain, a fusion of left and right dissidents led to the formation of the POUM . Additionally, the Spanish CNT
14552-566: The peasants. They subsequently pulled out of the war against Germany by signing the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk which was unpopular amongst many in Russia, for it gave away large areas of land to Germany. Lenin's government also instituted a number of progressive measures such as universal education , healthcare and equal rights for women . The initial stage of the October Revolution which involved
14688-632: The people" were sent to the gulag , where inhumane conditions in Siberia led a quick death. The opening of the Soviet archives has vindicated the lower estimates put forth by the "revisionist school" scholars, despite the popular press continuing to use higher estimates and containing serious errors. By 2009, historian Archie Brown reported that estimates were now lower; about 1.7 million were arrested in 1937–1938 and half were shot. The International Right Opposition and Trotskyism are examples of dissidents who still claim communism today, but they are not
14824-472: The popular French novelist Restif de la Bretonne wrote a book review on Victor d'Hupay's 1779 book Project for a Philosophical Community which described a plan for a communal experiment in Marseille where all private property was banned and which could be considered, "the first full blueprint for a secular communist society in the world." In the review Restif noted that d'Hupay had referred to himself as
14960-474: The progenitors of modern communism. Babeuf's plot was detected, however, and he and several others involved were arrested and executed. Because of his views and methods, Babeuf is sometimes referred to as the first revolutionary communist, although at the time Babeuf himself used the term "communitist". Despite this setback, the example of the French Revolutionary regime and Babeuf's doomed insurrection
15096-404: The public wealth." Because of this he believed that such primitive societies were the richest as there was no poverty. Other Greco-Roman writers that believed in a prehistoric humanity that practiced communism include Diodorus Siculus , Virgil , and Ovid . Similarly the early Church Fathers , like their pagan predecessors, maintained that humans society had declined to its current state from
15232-468: The publishing company to Bertelsmann in 1986 for a reported $ 475 million, with James R. McLaughlin resigning on December 17, 1986. After the purchase, Bertelsmann sold Laidlaw to Macmillan Inc. The sale of Doubleday to Bertelsmann did not include the Mets, which Nelson Doubleday and minority owner Fred Wilpon had purchased from Doubleday & Company for $ 85 million. In 2002 , Doubleday sold his stake in
15368-487: The rebellion. That same year, a further communist rebellion took place in the Weimar Republic only to be crushed, but another occurred in 1923 which once again was also defeated by the government. The Bulgarian Communist Party had also attempted an uprising in 1923, but like most of their counterparts across Europe they were defeated. Communist parties were tight knit organizations that exerted tight control over
15504-466: The related ideas of socialism had become widely popular in French revolutionary circles thanks to the writings of social critics and philosophers such as Pierre Leroux and Théodore Dézamy , whose critiques of bourgeoisie liberalism and individualism led to a widespread intellectual rejection of laissez-faire capitalism on economic, philosophical and moral grounds. According to Leroux writing in 1832, "To recognise no other aim than individualism
15640-581: The riddle of history solved, and it knows itself to be this solution. In the 1840s, German philosopher and sociologist Karl Marx , who was living in England after fleeing the authorities in Prussia , where he was considered a political threat, began publishing books in which he outlined his theories for a variety of communism now known as Marxism . Marx was financially aided and supported by another German émigré, Friedrich Engels (1820–1895), who like Marx had fled from
15776-411: The same time the revolutionary priest John Ball , who was later executed for his prominent role in the doomed Wat Tyler Rebellion allegedly declared, "things cannot go well in England, nor ever will, until all goods are held in common." In Tábor , Bohemia during the 15th century Hussite Wars , the radical Taborites attempted to institute a system they called a "community of goods" where, "there
15912-418: The sponsorship and they became less important. The devastation of the war resulted in a massive recovery program involving the rebuilding of industrial plants, housing and transportation as well as the demobilization and migration of millions of soldiers and civilians. In the midst of this turmoil during the winter of 1946–1947, the Soviet Union experienced the worst natural famine in the 20th century . There
16048-476: The teeth of persecution, Stalin's deputies cultivated informal norms and mutual understandings which provided the foundations for collective rule after his death. Doubleday (publisher) Doubleday is an American publishing company. It was founded as the Doubleday & McClure Company in 1897. By 1947, it was the largest book publisher in the United States. It published the work of mostly U.S. authors under
16184-569: The time still considered the Russian president to be a pro-Western pragmatist. Applebaum has been a vocal critic of Western conduct regarding the Russian military intervention in Ukraine . In an article in The Washington Post on March 5, 2014, she maintained that the US and its allies should not continue to enable "the existence of a corrupt Russian regime that is destabilizing Europe", noting that
16320-489: The utopian novel Utopia (1516) in which the main character decries private property after traveling to an idyllic island without money or private property and where, "everything is under state control." More coined the term utopia as a name for his idealized community, which means "nowhere" in Latin, evincing the fact that More did not consider such a society attainable in reality. Tommaso Campanella 's 1601 work The City of
16456-441: The vote in the German elections and some of its leaders, such as August Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht , became well-known public figures. The communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have
16592-521: The web was eventually recycled by semi-respectable American pro-Russian websites. Applebaum argued in 2015 that Facebook should take responsibility for spreading false stories and help "undo the terrible damage done by Facebook and other forms of social media to democratic debate and civilized discussion all over the world". Applebaum has been a member of the advisory panel of the Global Disinformation Index . In March 2016, eight months before
16728-458: The world's population lived under a Marxist–Leninist system of government in one form or another. However, there was significant debate among communist and Marxist ideologues as to whether most of these countries could be meaningfully considered Marxist at all since many of the basic components of the Marxist system were altered and revised by such countries. There was a rapid decline of communism in
16864-427: Was an inspiration for French socialist thinkers such as Henri de Saint-Simon , Louis Blanc , Charles Fourier and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon . Proudhon, the founder of modern anarchism and libertarian socialism would later famously declare " property is theft! " a phrase first invented by the French revolutionary Brissot de Warville . Importantly because one of Babeuf's co-conspirators, Philippe Buonarroti , survived
17000-626: Was associated with the development of the FAI political party, a non-Marxist party which stood for revolutionary communism. As the Cold War took effect around 1947, the Kremlin set up new international coordination bodies including the World Federation of Democratic Youth , the International Union of Students , the World Federation of Trade Unions , the Women's International Democratic Federation and
17136-579: Was based in Prague. While it had non-communist unions it was largely dominated by the Soviets. In 1949 the British, American and other non-Communist unions broke away from the WFTU to form the rival International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU). The labor movement in Europe became so polarized between the communist unions and social democratic and Christian labor unions, whereas front operations could no longer hide
17272-459: Was centralized. The systematic, historical and materialist analysis of the nature of communism in Dézamy's work led Marx to consider him among the first scientific socialists along with Jules Gay . It was only in the year 1840 that proponents of common ownership in France, including the socialists Théodore Dézamy, Étienne Cabet , and Jean-Jacques Pillot began to widely adopt the word "communism" as
17408-585: Was directly influenced by Morelly's anti-property utopian novel The Code of Nature and quoted it extensively, although he was under the erroneous impression it was written by Diderot . Also during the revolution the publisher Nicholas Bonneville , the founder of the Parisian revolutionary Social Club used his printing press to spread the communist treatises of Restif and Sylvain Maréchal . Maréchal, who later joined Babeuf's conspiracy, would state in his Manifesto of
17544-533: Was founded known as the Second International to unite the various Marxist groups around the world. As Marxism took off, it also began to come under criticism from other European intellectuals, including fellow socialists and leftists. For instance, the Russian collectivist anarchist Mikhail Bakunin criticised what he believed were the flaws in the Marxian theory that the state would eventually dissolve under
17680-500: Was joining the publication as a staff writer starting in January 2020. She was included in the 2020 Prospect list of the top-50 thinkers for the COVID-19 era . In July 2020, Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism was published. Partly a memoir and partly political analysis, it was a Der Spiegel and New York Times bestseller. Also in July 2020, Applebaum
17816-567: Was no serious opposition to Stalin as the NKVD secret police continued to send possible suspects to the gulag. Relations with the United States and Britain went from friendly to hostile, as they denounced Stalin's political controls over eastern Europe and his blockade of Berlin . By 1947, the Cold War had begun. Stalin himself believed that capitalism was a hollow shell and would crumble under increased non-military pressure exerted through proxies in countries like Italy. However, he greatly underestimated
17952-507: Was on the editorial board for The American Interest and the Journal of Democracy . According to Sheila Fitzpatrick , "Applebaum has been active as a political commentator highly critical of Russia and Putin’s regime." Ivan Krastev asserts that the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall "was the point of departure of everything that Applebaum did in the following three decades...For her, the end of
18088-524: Was one of the 153 signers of the "Harper's Letter" (also known as " A Letter on Justice and Open Debate ") that expressed concern that "the free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted." In November 2022, Applebaum was one of 200 US citizens sanctioned by Russia for "promotion of the Russophobic campaign and support for the regime in Kiev." Applebaum
18224-495: Was part of a wider Russian political campaign designed to destabilize the West. In December 2019, she wrote in The Atlantic that "in the 21st century, we must also contend with a new phenomenon: right-wing intellectuals, now deeply critical of their own societies, who have begun paying court to right-wing dictators who dislike America." Applebaum has written about the history of central and eastern Europe, Poland in particular. In
18360-544: Was president and CEO from 1963 to 1978. In 1964, Doubleday acquired the educational publisher Laidlaw. In 1967, the company purchased the Dallas -based Trigg-Vaughn group of radio and TV stations to create Doubleday Broadcasting. After expanding during the 1970s and 1980s, Doubleday sold the broadcasting division in 1986. Nelson Doubleday Jr. succeeded John Sargent as president and CEO from 1978 to 1985. In 1976, Doubleday bought paperback publisher Dell Publishing . In 1980,
18496-652: Was put down violently by the Freikorps, who historians believe killed around 1,200 communists and their sympathisers. That same year, political turmoil in Hungary following their defeat in World War I led to a coalition government of the Social Democratic Party and the Communist Party taking control. The Hungarian Communist Party led by Béla Kun soon became dominant and instituted various communist reforms in
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