Aleksandr Zinov’ev, Kommunizm kak real’nost’ [The Reality of Communism]

Michael Kirkwood (University of Glasgow)

Ed. by Neil Cornwell, University of Bristol
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 2.2.2.00: Post-1917 Writing and Culture in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, 1917-present.
Vol. editors: Neil Cornwell (University of Bristol), Roman Koropeckyj (University of California, Los Angeles), Andrei Rogatchevski (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway)

Domains

Political Theory

Dates

First circulation or publication 1981

Places

Switzerland (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Treatise

Resources

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Recommended Reading

Kommunizm kak real'nost'

, published in 1981 and translated as

The Reality of Communism

, 1984, is a collection of over one hundred essays on various aspects of Soviet reality which Zinov'ev, however, presents as a theory of Communism as such, quite unperturbed by such questions as whether the Soviet Union would not be better described as a system of “state capitalism”, whether the Soviet Union could really be described as socialist, never mind Communist, etc. It is the first of four such volumes of essays, all of them prompted by what (in the 1980s) he perceived to be Western incomprehension of Soviet reality and the threat which Communism posed to mankind. This book is at once a culmination and an introduction. On the one hand, it systematises and catalogues Zinov'ev's views on the…

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2517 words

Citation: Kirkwood, Michael. "Kommunizm kak real’nost’". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 20 May 2009 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=23587, accessed 25 November 2024.]

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