Robert Service - Comrades!: a history of world communism

A timely and ambitious book... vast in its scope. He writes best when he offers an unabashed personal and moral perspective on the human cost of the totalitarian society

Tim Gardam, Observer

A splendid achievement... Service writes with fluency and verve with a nice sense of historical irony and barrowloads of sarcasm. He mercilessly dissects the ideas and personalities of the communist greats

History Today

An outstanding book, written with grace and style... Services conclusion is powerful and disturbing. Soviet-style communism inspired by Marx, created by Lenin and fine-tuned by Stalin will never return, but it will have an afterlife. Totalitarianism can mutate. The system of unrestrained state power penetrating all areas of life can rise again, adopting the USSR circa 1950 as a grim model, and seek to oppress us under a new kind of quasi-religious dictatorship. This is a warning, as well as a masterful book

Victor Sebestyen, Daily Telegraph

The decency of communisms ideals and the horror of its effects form the basis of Robert Services masterly handling of the beginning, progress and (all but) end of communism... It is also a finely tuned description of what life was like under communism

John Lloyd, Financial Times Magazine

Service has read widely using the extensive archives and poster collection of Stanford Universitys Hoover Institution to good effect and he has organised his material in an analytical narrative that sweeps the reader along

Michael Burleigh, Sunday Telegraph

A deceptively ambitious book. Neither unreasonably long nor overwhelmingly theoretical, it swiftly chronicles the movement from its philosophical origins to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the economic transformation of China... an ideal introductory history

Anne Applebaum, Spectator

Robert Service is the author of the highly acclaimed Lenin: A Biography, A History of Twentieth-Century Russia, Russia: Experiment with a People and Stalin: A Biography, as well as many other books on Russias past and present. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and works at St Antonys College, Oxford. He is married with four children.

Also by Robert Service

LENIN
A Biography

RUSSIA
Experiment with a People

STALIN
A Biography

COMMUNISM: A WORLD HISTORY

PAN BOOKS

First published 2007 by Macmillan

First published in paperback 2008 by Pan Books

This electronic edition published 2009 by Pan Books
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ISBN 978-0-330-51637-2 in Adobe Reader format
ISBN 978-0-330-51636-5 in Adobe Digital Editions format
ISBN 978-0-330-51638-9 in Mobipocket format

Copyright Robert Service 2007

The right of Robert Service to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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This book began with an idea and a plan. The idea was to put together a general account of communism around the world; the plan was to do this mainly by assembling the secondary literature on country after country with experience of communism. Surprisingly few attempts have been made at such a project, and nearly all of them were written before the collapse of communist states in eastern Europe and the USSR in 198991.

The initial idea was knocked about like a punch-bag. As I learned about the five-sixths of the worlds land mass that was not the Soviet Union, the structure and contents of the book underwent much remodelling. This is what happens with most books that have ever been written. Yet the plan was scrapped and for a very positive reason. In 20045 I spent a sabbatical year at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. Archives are the water of refreshment for the historian. When I discovered the vastness of resources available to scholars in the shadow of the Hoover Tower, I went through box after box of documents like a thirsty traveller. The endnotes give some idea of the exceptional holdings on countries such as Hungary, Cuba and India. Just as instructive for me were the boxes on the Soviet Union, especially on its relationship with the world communist movement. And although I did not have it in mind to do much on American and British communism, any reluctance was dissolved when I examined the boxes themselves. There were also many moments when odd little files suggested themselves from the catalogue: Ivy Litvinov on Rose Cohen; Soviet officials on Arthur and Yevgenia Ransome; Herbert Hoovers food-relief officials on the regime of Bla Kun; defecting Cuban ministers on Castro and his entourage; Eugenio Reale on Togliattis difficulties over eastern Europe; and the Russian diary of Malcolm Muggeridge.

The book investigates communism in its many aspects. This obviously requires an examination of communist states, their leaderships and their societies. Of equal importance are communist ideology and its appeal to people outside such states. Likewise I have given a good deal of space to twentieth-century geopolitics. Moreover, a truly global account of communism must also cover countries where communists failed to get anywhere near to national power.

The archival research nudged me towards modifying the interpretations I started with. It also brought events and situations to life and I hope that this conveys itself to those who read the chapters. The staff at the Hoover Institution Archives were extraordinarily knowledgeable and helpful. I owe a debt to Elena Danielson, Linda Bernard, Carol Leadenham, Ron Bulatov, Lora Soroka, David Jacobs, Lyalya Kharitonova and their colleagues, who pointed me in the direction of several boxes I would have missed. My gratitude goes too to Robert Conquest for originally encouraging my stay at the Hoover Institution and to Director John Raisian and Board of Overseers member Tad Taube for making it a practical possibility. Deborah Ventura and Celeste Szeto, who supervise arrangements for visiting scholars, were models of helpfulness.

My wife Adele was a tremendous help throughout the process, carrying out research in the National Archives at Kew as well as reading up and discussing Asian communist history while we were in California; she also scrutinised and improved the entire text. I also want to express thanks to those who advised on one or more of the following chapters: Alan Angell, Arnold Beichman, William Beinart, Leslie Bethell, Archie Brown, Richard Clogg, Robert Conquest, Valpy Fitzgerald, Robert Evans, Paul Flewers, John Fox, Timothy Garton Ash, Roy Giles, Paul Gregory, Jonathan Haslam, Ronald Hingley, Michael Kaser, Alan Knight, Simon Sebag Montefiore, Norman Naimark, Brian Pearce, Silvio Pons, Alex Pravda, Paul Preston, Martyn Rady, Harold Shukman, Steve Smith, Geoffrey Swain, Steve Tsang, Amir Weiner and Jerry White. My literary editor David Godwin was encouraging from the earliest stage of the project. Georgina Morley at Macmillan and Kathleen MacDermott at Harvard have been characteristically constructive editors. Peter James has copyedited the printout with exemplary care.