The Left Side of History: World War II and the Unfulfilled Promise of Communism in Eastern Europe - Couverture souple

Ghodsee, Kristen

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 0822358352 ISBN 13 : 9780822358350

Editeur : Duke University Press, 2015

Synopsis

In The Left Side of History Kristen Ghodsee tells the stories of partisans fighting behind the lines in Nazi-allied Bulgaria during World War II: British officer Frank Thompson, brother of the great historian E.P. Thompson, and fourteen-year-old Elena Lagadinova, the youngest female member of the armed anti-fascist resistance. But these people were not merely anti-fascist; they were pro-communist, idealists moved by their socialist principles to fight and sometimes die for a cause they believed to be right. Victory brought forty years of communist dictatorship followed by unbridled capitalism after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Today in democratic Eastern Europe there is ever-increasing despair, disenchantment with the post-communist present, and growing nostalgia for the communist past. These phenomena are difficult to understand in the West, where "communism" is a dirty word that is quickly equated with Stalin and Soviet labor camps. By starting with the stories of people like Thompson and Lagadinova, Ghodsee provides a more nuanced understanding of how communist ideals could inspire ordinary people to make extraordinary sacrifices.

A propos du livre

À propos de l'auteur

Kristen Ghodsee is Professor of Gender and Women's Studies at Bowdoin College and a former Guggenheim Fellow. She is the author of Lost in Transition: Ethnographies of Everyday Life after Communism, also published by Duke University Press.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Duke University Press
• Date d'édition: 2015
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 0822358352
• ISBN 13: 9780822358350
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 256
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible