Altri libri che potrebbero interessarti

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  The Revolution Betrayed - What...

  Leon Trotsky

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  It is June 1936. Leon Trotsky (1879-1940) has finally been granted a visa for asylum in Norway, having been banned first from living in Paris, and then the whole of France. With him comes the draft of The Revolution Betrayed: What Is the Soviet Union and Where Is It Going?, which is completed and sent to the publishers on the 4th of August. The book, published by Faber in 1937, is considered to be Trotsky’s major work on Stalinism. Trotsky’s passion for the spirit of the Revolution he co-founded, his disgust and sadness at how the people of Russia have been betrayed by Stalin and his acolytes, shows us the bleak lives of 170 million Russians under the absolute control of ‘the Ten Thousand’ of the bureaucracy.  
   
  Trotsky reminds us of the high concepts of the 1917 October Revolution, (Marx’s 'From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs') with the sharing of the nation’s resources for the benefit of all. Prominent among such forward thinking was the commitment to lift women out of the trap of housework and childbirth by communal refectories and creches in the workplace. He praises the positive economic advances of the USSR since the death of Lenin - the growth in areas such as industrial and electrical output. But he notes the continued and inevitable low productivity (much lower than the capitalist West, he acknowledges) that is the result of lack of incentive for the Soviet worker. This, he argues, will never allow the country to lift itself up to full potential, despite Stalin’s ever-changing Five-Year Plans. 
   
  Indeed, it is this zig-zagging of panicked policy and bovine directionlessness that frustrates Trotsky so much. It is bad enough that Stalin and his self-serving cohorts have formed a Thermidorian regime of brutal repression and conservative nest-feathering. But even worse, their economic adventurism is carrying ‘the nation to the edge of disaster’.  
   
  Trotsky brings us a clear picture of the miserable existence of the vast majority of Russians, barely surviving on bad rations, endemic corruption and fear, and the promise of a tomorrow that will never come. He laments the lack of a proletarian uprising in the West that might encourage Russians to change their own off-course regime. He notes the rise of Hitler and Mussolini, and seems, even in 1936, to see war as inevitable. He predicts the toppling of Stalinism but would have wept at how many decades it took and how many millions of lives would be wasted by stupidity and war.  
   
  Only 10 days after Trotsky sent this book to the publishers, Stalin announced the first of the Moscow show trials that began the Great Purge. Trotsky and his wife were badly treated and muzzled by the Norwegians to prevent his protesting at Stalin’s actions, and they moved to Mexico City in early 1937. There they lived, terrorized by Stalin’s determination to assassinate his old rival, until Trotsky’s death following a blow from an ice pick on 20th August 1940. The Revolution Betrayed, with its vivid translation by Max Eastman, is presented with clarity and commitment by Jonathan Booth.

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  From Red Terror to Terrorist...

  Yuri Felshtinsky, Vladimir Popov

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  'Detail worthy of a John le Carre novel.' Telegraph The history of modern Russia traditionally has Communism at its centre: Lenin defines its rise, Gorbachev its fall, and Putin its aftermath. In this radical new history, Yuri Felshtinsky and Vladimir Popov, however, introduce a new historical axis: the Cheka―the Bolsheviks' nebulous revolutionary intelligence service. Wrapped around the Party in a fight to the death from 1918 under its first head Felix Dzerzhinsky, only Stalin was able to resist its stranglehold at the cost of enormous bloodshed. Luring Russia into submission over less than a century, its murder-plots and unrivalled scheming culminated in the capture of the Kremlin in 2000. Drawing on Popov's secret documents of over two decades as a senior officer in one of the KGB's key covert sections, and on Felshtinsky's encyclopedic knowledge of Russian state archives open in the 1990s, little-known sources, and access to leading oligarchs, a new Russian history emerges. The story they tell is often unexpected while introducing a new cast of characters still of great influence―potentially surpassing Lenin's role―on our world today. From Red Terror to Terrorist State is the first complete history of the Cheka. Written from the inside, it fundamentally transforms our understanding of Russia and rethinks the way today's Kremlin views itself and the rest of the world. Animated by lifelong study, this authoritative narrative by two exceptional Russian-intelligence experts presents ground-breaking new insights based on an unrivalled wealth of new factual details.

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  Party People - Candidates and...

  Allan Sikk, Phillip Koker

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  Candidates are the literal "face" of political parties, yet they are not wedded to them permanently: candidates can enter or leave politics, switch parties, move along or stay behind when parties split or merge. Even in parties that look stable, candidate change happens below the surface, ultimately altering what the parties stand for. Inspired by evolutionary theories, Party People: Candidates and Party Evolution conceptualizes candidates as "party genes" and develops a candidate-based approach to party evolution. Tracking candidates between elections and parties opens up new perspectives on party development in complex and dynamic settings in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and beyond. Based on a new database of 200,000 electoral candidates from over sixty elections across nine CEE democracies, this book presents a groundbreaking study of party evolution using candidate change as an indicator of party change. Allan Sikk and Philipp Köker offer a series of methodological and conceptual advances for the measurement of candidate turnover, party fission and fusion, programmatic change, and party leadership change; the resulting analyses make a significant contribution to the study of CEE party politics as well as to the general scholarship on elections, parties, and political change.

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  Civics Test The - Study Guide...

  Raffles Education

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  Are you aware that you have only TWO opportunities to pass the U.S. naturalization test? 
  That’s why preparing thoroughly for the civics test is absolutely essential... 
  This audiobook provides the latest set of 100 questions and answers for the civics test, ensuring you're studying accurate and up-to-date material. We've also included a chapter with expert tips & guidance on the citizenship process. 
  Here are a few examples of the types of questions you’ll hear inside:Which ocean is on the West Coast of the United States?Name one state that borders Mexico?When was the Constitution written?There were 13 original states. Name three?Why does the flag have 13 stripes?Why does the flag have 50 stars?What are two rights of everyone living in the United States?When is the last day you can send in federal income tax forms? 
  If you weren’t able to instantly recall the correct answers to these questions, it’s time to strengthen your knowledge. 
  With THIS AUDIOBOOK, you can approach your oral test with confidence, knowing you're prepared to achieve the required score of 6 out of 10. 
  Step toward your U.S. citizenship — listen to this CIVICS TEST audiobook today!

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  The Prince

  Niccolo Machiavelli

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  "The Prince" is a political treatise by Niccolò Machiavelli, written in 1513 and published in 1532. The book is a pragmatic guide for political leaders, focused on how to maintain power and navigate the complex and often ruthless world of governance. Although the text is commonly viewed as a manual for manipulation and a justification for Machiavellian deceit and cunning, it has also been interpreted as a realistic, if cynical, analysis of power dynamics. The work is a foundational text in political theory and continues to be studied and debated today.

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  The Tragic Mind - Fear Fate and...

  Robert D. Kaplan

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  A moving meditation on recent geopolitical crises, viewed through the lens of ancient and modern tragedy 
   
  Some books emerge from a lifetime of hard-won knowledge. Robert D. Kaplan has learned, from a career spent reporting on wars, revolutions, and international politics in Europe, the Middle East, and East Asia, that the essence of geopolitics is tragedy. In The Tragic Mind, he employs the works of ancient Greek dramatists, Shakespeare, German philosophers, and the modern classics to explore the central subjects of international politics: order, disorder, rebellion, ambition, loyalty to family and state, violence, and the mistakes of power. The great dilemmas of international politics, he argues, are not posed by good versus evil—a clear and easy choice—but by contests of good versus good, where the choices are often searing, incompatible, and fraught with consequences. A deeply learned and deeply felt meditation on the importance of lived experience in conducting international relations, this is a book for everyone who wants a profound understanding of the tragic politics of our time.

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