The history of communism, told from the evidence

From the Bolshevik seizure of power in 1917 to the party-states that rule today: how communist regimes took power, how they governed, and what it cost the people who lived under them — documented with archival records, survivor testimony and the work of historians.

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• Vyacheslav Molotov and the Origin of the Molotov Cocktail

  Who was Molotov, and why does a firebomb bear his name? Stalin's right hand, the 1939 pact with Hitler, and the Finnish soldiers who mocked him.

• Nikita Khrushchev: A Short Biography

  Khrushchev denounced Stalin's crimes in February 1956, then sent tanks into Hungary that November. His life, from the 1937 Terror to his fall, in documents.

• Antonio Gramsci and Cultural Hegemony: His Key Ideas Explained

  Hegemony, organic intellectuals, war of position, the subaltern: what Gramsci meant, where his ideas went, and what he did not say (false consciousness).

• Joseph Stalin: A Short Biography

  How Stalin won Lenin's succession and ruled through collectivization, famine, the Great Terror and mass deportation — with the archival record.

• Mao Zedong: A Short Biography

  From a Hunan village to supreme power: how Mao won China by the gun and ruled through terror, the Great Leap famine and the Cultural Revolution.

• Vladimir Lenin: A Short Biography

  Lenin built the first communist state: the vanguard party, the seizure of power in 1917, the Cheka and the Red Terror — in his own words and documents.

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