Geography Archives: Soviet Union (USSR)

  • Why the Islamic Republic Has Survived

    Obituaries for the Islamic Republic of Iran appeared even before it was born.  In the hectic months of 1979 — before the Islamic Republic had been officially declared — many Iranians as well as foreigners, academics as well as journalists, participants as well as observers, conservatives as well as revolutionaries, confidently predicted its imminent demise.  […]

  • Anti-communism with a Liberal Face

    Murali Balaji, The Professor and the Pupil: The Politics and Friendship of W. E. B. Du Bois and Paul Robeson, New York:  Nation Books, 2007. W. E. B. Du Bois and Paul Robeson have been poorly served by their biographers.  David Levering Lewis and Martin Duberman found these two US communist revolutionaries about as congenial […]

  • A Jewish Glasnost

    Winning the “hearts and minds” of the civilian population, according to counterinsurgency field manuals, is key to defeating the resistance.  It is a lesson that imperialists learned a long time ago, but one that they seldom put into practice, let alone successfully impart to their clients.  Israel’s attack on Gaza is a case in point.  […]

  • Afghanistan and the Soviet Withdrawal 1989: 20 Years Later

      Washington D.C., February 15, 2009 — Twenty years ago today, the commander of the Soviet Limited Contingent in Afghanistan Boris Gromov crossed the Termez Bridge out of Afghanistan, thus marking the end of the Soviet war which lasted almost ten years and cost tens of thousands of Soviet and Afghan lives. As a tribute […]

  • Socialism and the Peasantry

    One of the greatest insights of Karl Marx was his perception of the capitalist system as a self-acting, self-driven and “spontaneous” order.  Far from being a malleable system, where intervention by the State could be used for bringing about basic changes in the mode of its functioning, in which case of course the need to […]

  • The Crisis of Global Capitalism and the Environment: Interview with John Bellamy Foster, Editor of Monthly Review and Professor of Sociology, University of Oregon, for Eleftherotypia (Greece)

      CP: After twenty-five years of sporadic growth and extreme polarization of income and life conditions around the world, actually existing neoliberalism seems to be on the verge of collapse.  Where do you situate the current crisis in the history of the development of global capitalism? JBF: Neoliberalism has clearly collapsed.  But as Fred Magdoff […]

  • Flip-flops of Economics

    Most US economists are professors in colleges and universities.  Their academic positions enable research and teaching that is supposed to be independent of corporate interests.  They could, at least hypothetically, provide the critical insights into economic problems needed for their solution.  Economists might help to propose, evaluate, and debate the wide range of possible solutions […]

  • Actually, “It’s the System, Stupid”

    “Our community is expanding: MRZine viewers have increased in number, as have the readers of our editions published outside the United States and in languages other than English.  We sense a sharp increase in interest in our perspective and its history.   Many in our community have made use of the MR archive we put […]

  • How Should the Left Criticize Obama?

    “Our community is expanding: MRZine viewers have increased in number, as have the readers of our editions published outside the United States and in languages other than English.  We sense a sharp increase in interest in our perspective and its history.   Many in our community have made use of the MR archive we put […]

  • Six Prominent American Freethinkers

    “Our community is expanding: MRZine viewers have increased in number, as have the readers of our editions published outside the United States and in languages other than English.  We sense a sharp increase in interest in our perspective and its history.   Many in our community have made use of the MR archive we put […]

  • Bernanke and “The Great Moderation” Four Years Later

    “Our community is expanding: MRZine viewers have increased in number, as have the readers of our editions published outside the United States and in languages other than English.  We sense a sharp increase in interest in our perspective and its history.   Many in our community have made use of the MR archive we put […]

  • Indigenous Peoples Rising in Bolivia and Ecuador

    Introduction Indigenous peoples in Indo-Afro-Latin America, especially Bolivia and Ecuador, are rising up to take control of their own lives and act in solidarity with others to save the planet.  They are calling for new, yet ancient, practices of plurinational, participatory, and intercultural democracy.  They champion ecologically sustainable development; community-based autonomies; and solidarity with other […]

  • Socialism’s New American Opportunity

    The US left today confronts a remarkable opportunity.  George Bush and Sarah Palin effectively reopened the explicit debate over capitalism versus socialism.  More than that, their interventions, combined with the current crisis of capitalism, disrupt the conventional, classic definitions of both isms.  Thus, the debate over them is now transformed in advantageous ways for the […]

  • Venezuela’s Transition to Socialism

      In October 2008, I was invited by the World Forum for the Alternatives to a conference in Caracas, Venezuela.  This provided me with an opportunity to learn more about a country that has embarked on a path of redistribution under a programme that Venezuela’s President Hugo Cavez Frias now calls “Socialism of the 21st […]

  • Israel’s Man of the Year Eluded Justice

    After reading about Israel’s most recent Man of the Year Award recipient, I did not know whether to laugh or cry.  It looks like the judging panel at the Israeli television station Channel 2 is in need of a public relations consultant.  The recipient of this year’s award was Meir Dagan, the Chief of Mossad, […]

  • The End of the Libertarian Bubble

    The libertarian moment in U.S. bourgeois politics is quickly passing today.  It was burning bright in the spring, when Ron Paul banners were hung from every overpass.  Soon his books will be remaindered.  Libertarians have nothing to say that will get a hearing in a period of crisis.  Libertarianism can rationalize the economic success or […]

  • Solidarity Forever?

      William Minter, Gail Hovey, and Charles Cobb, Jr., eds.  No Easy Victories: African Liberation and American Activists over a Half Century, 1950-2000.   Trenton: Africa World Press, 2008. xvii + 248 pp. Illustrations, maps, notes, index.  $29.95 (paper), ISBN 978-1-59221-575-1. This is a remarkable and often insightful collection of essays and reflections, many of […]

  • The Life and Times of Genora Dollinger

      Child of the Sit-Downs: The Revolutionary Life of Genora Dollinger, by Carlton Jackson, WKU Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History.  Kent, OH: The Kent State University Press, 2008.  256 pages, $39.00 (cloth). This wonderful book is a most welcome biography of Genora Dollinger, labor reformer and feminist.  Genora (her husband told Dr. Jackson that she […]

  • Iran: Comprehensive Sustainable Development as Potential Counter-Hegemonic Strategy

    The questions regarding variations in social development, economic progress, and political empowerment have produced a voluminous literature over the past century, and because of the complexity of these issues, much important reflection will continue well into the future.  In the early 1980s, a United Nations’ Commission coined the term “sustainable development” as a public statement […]

  • Wall Street vs Main Street: Finger Pointing vs System Change

    Amid the current capitalist crisis, fear spreads and scapegoating surges.  Media and politicians charge the predictable suspects.  Arrests may follow.  Few recognize the system as the problem, rather than this or that group reacting to the system’s demands and pressures.  True, the word “capitalism” now arises in public discussion.  But there it means big business, […]