- Fall 2017
- Out Now
- Issue 27
The First Red Century
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It is often said that “the germ of all Stalinism was in Bolshevism at its beginning.” Well, I have no objection. Only, Bolshevism also contained many other germs, a mass of other germs, and those who lived through the enthusiasm of the first years of the first victorious socialist revolution ought not to forget it. To judge the living man by the death germs which the autopsy reveals in the corpse — and which he may have carried in him since his birth — is that very sensible?
Front Matters
Today is the first day of the rest of your magazine.
The Soapbox
Letters + The Internet Speaks (print/pdf only)
“Kerensky was not some windbag or weakling. He spent the years 1905–17 defending the poor from the tsar’s oppression in court — a difficult and dangerous task that won him the love of the nation.”
Friends & Foes
The New Communists
It’s 2017. Time to stop worrying about the questions of 1917.
Means of Deduction
We’ve got more graphs than Gosplan.
Vulgar Empiricist
As Long as It Catches Mice (print/pdf only)
Central planning led to modernization in poor countries — and stagnation in rich ones.
Vulgar Empiricist
Workers’ Paradise Lost (print/pdf only)
As Stalin advanced his vision of “socialism in one country,” prisons sprouted like a thousand flowers across the USSR.
Transitions
When Did It Go Wrong? (print/pdf only)
A short century filled with long disagreements.
Uneven & Combined
Moscow Globetrotters
Statues of Lenin, once ubiquitous in Communist countries, now cast shadows across the capitalist world.
Reading Materiel
But you don’t have to take our word for it.
Field Notes
Brussels, Dec. 12, 1975 (print/pdf only)
Memorandum of Conversation
NATO leaders from across the political spectrum found common cause opposing Eurocommunism.
Dossier
A Red by Any Other Name
Wondering what to call your newborn?
Canon Fodder
The Man Who Brought Pizza
Mikhail Gorbachev’s journey from Communist reformer to “capitalist tool.”
Review of Gorbachev: His Life and Times by William Taubman (Simon & Schuster, 2017)
The Soviets Abroad
Throughout its existence, the Soviet Union played the role of both liberator and oppressor.
Red Diaper Babies
In America, school is preparation for “real” life. In the early Soviet Union, school was filled with life.
Cultural Capital
Out-of-context Mayakovsky quotes go here.
Beyond a Boundary
The Miracle on Ice
Without even an indoor rink, the Soviets changed hockey forever.
Bass & Superstructure
The Elvis of East Germany
How a young man from Colorado became the Eastern Bloc’s biggest pop star.
Red Channels
17 Soviet Films
The October Revolution unleashed cinematic brilliance that even decades of political censorship couldn’t extinguish.
The Tumbrel
We’re not mad, we’re just disappointed.
Girondins
Our Favorite Dupe
Henry Wallace was a brilliant progressive with an open mind. That’s where the trouble began.
Thermidor
Fascism’s Face-Lift
Anti-communist campaigns in Eastern Europe aren’t about building a more democratic society — they’re about rehabilitating the far right.
Versailles
Yacht Party Men
Not everyone hated shock therapy.
Leftovers
We hope you enjoyed yourself and get home safe. Remember to tip your magazine on the way out.
Popular Front
From Red Square to Square One
What’s left of the Left in the post-socialist world?
The Dustbin
Choose Your Own Adventure
When your God that fails is Pol Pot.
Means & Ends
Become a Jacobin Comrade Today
Political action can’t end with reading a magazine, but resistance needs ideas.