The Century of Communisms

the Century of Communisms is a work published in September 2000 with the Éditions of the Workshop, under the direction of seven researchers: Michel Dreyfus (Research director at CNRS), Bruno Groppo (in charge of research at CNRS), Claudio Sergio Ingerflom (research director at CNRS), Roland Lew (professor of Political sciences to the Universit3e libre de Bruxelles), Claude Pennetier (enquiring at CNRS), Bernard Pudal (professor of political sciences to the University of Montpellier I) and Serge Wolikow (professor with the University of Dijon). An increased edition and update were published in the Editions of the Threshold in 2004.

The research team

This work is the fruit of the work of an international team of a score of academics, historians, political economists and sociologists: Alain Blum (research director of the INED and director of studies associated with EHESS), Pierre Brocheux (University lecturer of Modern history to the University Paris VII), Sabine Dullin (university lecturer with the University Paris I), Donald Filtzer ( Lecturer Senior in European Studies , University off East London , Essex), Rene Galissot (professor of history to the University Paris VIII), Wendy Goldman ( Associate Professor , University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania), Peter Holquist ( Associate Professor , Cornell University , Ithaca), Michael Lowy (research director at CNRS), Frederique Matonti (professor of political sciences to the University of Nantes and the National university), Georges Mink (research director at CNRS), Gabor Tamas Rittersporn (in charge of research at CNRS), Lewis Sigelbaum ( Professor , Michigan State University), Remi Skoutelsky (enquiring associated with Université Paris I), Brigitte Studer (professor with the University of Bern), Jean-Charles Szurek (research director at CNRS), Antony Todorov (professor of political sciences to the New Bulgarian University, Sofia), Jean Vigreux (university lecturer of modern history at the University of Dijon), Lynne Violated ( Professor off History , Université of Toronto).

Presentation

The work was born from the will to study Communism in the plurality of these aspects, in answer to the works of François Furet and Stephan Courtois which treats Communisme in the singular. The book breaks up into four parts: “Interpretations of Communisms”, “the great phases of the history of Communisms”, “International, parties and men” and “Three stakes discusses it” (“Communism and violence”, “Fascisms, antifascisms and Communisms”, “working Politizations”).

In the introduction, written jointly by the seven researchers who directed the work, the authors justify the plural of the title by:

- the diversity of the historical conditions by which the Communist parties reach the capacity;
- the diversity of economic realities, social and cultural inherited at the time the catch to be able, which determine in a certain manner the history of the communist companies;
- the diversity of the Communist parties in themselves: bunches in many countries, powerful parties in others, they “have neither the same social bases, neither the same type of framing, nor the same destinies” (p. 10);
- the diversity of engagements, the human trajectories and the militant lives;
- the diversity of the currents and the theorists who lined up behind the banner of the Communism, which cannot be reduced to the Komintern then with the Kominform.

The fact of limiting this diversity and this complexity either to an illusion, or with an experiment resting on coercion, repression and the crime, expresses a “very ideological temptation” on behalf of the authors concerned, as well as a “rather vain desire - from a scientific point of view - to obtain a philosophy of the history of the XXe century when his report/ratio suitable is expressed for the idea that one is made " du" Communism more than the desire to include/understand the multiples and contradictory dimensions of them” (p. 13).

The authors of the Siècle of Communisms do not deny however the existence of a international communist Mouvement, under the aegis of the Parti Bolshevik, which frequently managed to assume the monopoly " du" Communism and which sought to impose its law. The “Muscovite Vatican”, according to the expression of Eric Hobsbawm, enacted a communist ideology in order to ensure PCUS the leadership of the international communist movement. To conclude this homogenization, and to feed the imaginary one of a new world to be built, a idealized representation of the USSR was propagated. But the “international communist system perduré only while being gradually closed again, eliminating all the implicit, tacit or potential disputes little by little open then” (p. 15). A long time during, there did not exist any more but formally, until finally crumbling in a few years (1989 with 1991) - except in China, in North Korea, with the Laos, Cuba and the Vietnam -, if not being enraciné that one could imagine it.

According to the academics who collaborated in the Siècle of Communisms , the compared analysis of the Nazisme and the Stalinisme, by the means of the concept of Totalitarisme or not, is “perfectly legitimate” (p.18). But the prospect specialist in comparative literature should not crush the various facets of the reality which the Social sciences try to apprehend, by leaving open the field of the investigations.

Reception

For Marc Lazar, a close relation of Courteous Stephan: “The authors of the Siècle take care well not to discuss face and a compared way some essential components which contributed to unify and to rigidify Communism: its criminality, its ideology, its values, its references, its structures partisanes or the belief which it causes. ”. It finishes while supporting that “it would be easy to track the implicit presence, even explicit for certain texts, of the ideology in a company which is draped in the coat of science”

According to Antoine Prost, “L is clear that this book is a response at the same time to the Passé from an illusion of François Furet and to the black Livre of Communism the Courteous one. ”, while for Marc Ferro, “'is a good book, interesting, more especially as I awaited an answer to the black Livre of Communism . ”

Random links: