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Reisende der Weltrevolution - Eine Globalgeschichte der Kommunistischen Internationale
Die Geschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts lässt sich ohne die Geschichte des Kommunismus nicht verstehen. Mit der Kommunistischen Internationale nahm 1919 ein revolutionäres Projekt Gestalt an, das auf einer schlagkräftig organisierten und global vernetzten Avantgarde aufbaute. Mit besonderem Augenmerk auf eine Gruppe von transnational engagierten Frauen und Männern zeichnet Brigitte Studer ein Gesamtbild der Komintern in globaler Perspektive nach – von Moskau und Berlin über Baku und Taschkent bis nach Wuhan und Shanghai. Sie zeigt die soziale Realität der arbeitsteiligen Welt der Komintern und die Erfahrungen, Hoffnungen und auch Enttäuschungen von Menschen, für die die Revolution Arbeit und Lebensinhalt war.
- GenresPolitics
618 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2020
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91 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
November 11, 2022
This is a global history of the Communist International from the perspective of its employees. This book got a lot of attention, at least for a German-language book about Communist history, and is currently being translated to English, Spanish, and Turkish.
The publicity made it sound the focus would be on the "proletariat" of the Comintern — the typists, smugglers, etc. — whose stories were newly rescued from the archives. In fact, the main protagonists are quite well-known activists such as M.N. Roy, Evelyn Trent-Roy, Willi Münzenberg, Babette Groß, Heinz Neumann, Margarete Buber-Neumann, Karl Gröhl / Retzlaw, Jules Humbert-Droz, etc. — if not the top-tier leadership, then the second tier. This book is largely based on published memoirs and biographies, and supplemented by documents from the Comintern archives.
Even if you're a Comintern nerd who has read all these stories, Brigitte Studer nonetheless weaves them together to shows how they converged at different "hotspots" of Communist activity: Moscow 1920, Berlin 1923, Shanghai 1925-27, Madrid 1936, etc. Where Studer has lots of new information is on Swiss Communism, and also on the Comintern's secret apparatus in Shanghai, which had a complex connection to Switzerland. She also shows how women were doubly excluded, both from revolutionary praxis and from the history of revolutionary praxis — condemned to being known only as the partner of so-and-so, even if they were important leaders in their own right.
What this books lacks, unfortunately, is a coherent theory of Stalinization. The radical zigzags in Comintern policy (from anti-colonialism to support for "democratic" colonial powers, for example) are presented as a gradual, Weberian process of institutionalization and professionalization — the murderous bureaucracy was a "Human Resources Department of a special kind." Thus, the book lacks much insight on revolutionary lessons from the Comintern experience. I am really looking forward to the English translation of Pierre Broué's History of the Communist International, which is going to appear in the not-too-distant future.
Finally, why does every new history book need a 50-page introduction about methodology? If you like to watch soccer, do you want to be forced to watch a 30-minute interview with the team nutritionist before every game to learn what players are eating? I think these introductions are pretentious, repetitive, and so, so, so boring. Every single historian is supposed to have discovered some totally new way to write a book? If people need to write essays about their theory of history, I suggest that these be published in a special journal. Then we can put all copies of the journal in a shed and then burn the shed down. This would save so much paper. If you have a unique way to write a history book, then show me, don't tell me. Academia really poisons everything, huh? As a historian, I am going to go out on a limb and say: books, and especially their first chapters, should be interesting, not boring.
The publicity made it sound the focus would be on the "proletariat" of the Comintern — the typists, smugglers, etc. — whose stories were newly rescued from the archives. In fact, the main protagonists are quite well-known activists such as M.N. Roy, Evelyn Trent-Roy, Willi Münzenberg, Babette Groß, Heinz Neumann, Margarete Buber-Neumann, Karl Gröhl / Retzlaw, Jules Humbert-Droz, etc. — if not the top-tier leadership, then the second tier. This book is largely based on published memoirs and biographies, and supplemented by documents from the Comintern archives.
Even if you're a Comintern nerd who has read all these stories, Brigitte Studer nonetheless weaves them together to shows how they converged at different "hotspots" of Communist activity: Moscow 1920, Berlin 1923, Shanghai 1925-27, Madrid 1936, etc. Where Studer has lots of new information is on Swiss Communism, and also on the Comintern's secret apparatus in Shanghai, which had a complex connection to Switzerland. She also shows how women were doubly excluded, both from revolutionary praxis and from the history of revolutionary praxis — condemned to being known only as the partner of so-and-so, even if they were important leaders in their own right.
What this books lacks, unfortunately, is a coherent theory of Stalinization. The radical zigzags in Comintern policy (from anti-colonialism to support for "democratic" colonial powers, for example) are presented as a gradual, Weberian process of institutionalization and professionalization — the murderous bureaucracy was a "Human Resources Department of a special kind." Thus, the book lacks much insight on revolutionary lessons from the Comintern experience. I am really looking forward to the English translation of Pierre Broué's History of the Communist International, which is going to appear in the not-too-distant future.
Finally, why does every new history book need a 50-page introduction about methodology? If you like to watch soccer, do you want to be forced to watch a 30-minute interview with the team nutritionist before every game to learn what players are eating? I think these introductions are pretentious, repetitive, and so, so, so boring. Every single historian is supposed to have discovered some totally new way to write a book? If people need to write essays about their theory of history, I suggest that these be published in a special journal. Then we can put all copies of the journal in a shed and then burn the shed down. This would save so much paper. If you have a unique way to write a history book, then show me, don't tell me. Academia really poisons everything, huh? As a historian, I am going to go out on a limb and say: books, and especially their first chapters, should be interesting, not boring.
September 23, 2023
Tarihsel olarak düzgün bir çalışma. Enternasyonalin etkinliklerini de epey iyi yansıttığını düşünüyorum. Ama olaylara ve taraflara göre yorumu biraz değişken. İletişim Yayınları’ndan çıktığı için tahmin etmek zor olmuyor, anti Stalinist bir çizgisi var. Tabi bu kısımlar kötü bir okuma deneyimi yaşatmıyor. Ama konuyla ilgilenmiş insanları bile bezdirecek düzeyde isim var. Sadece major figürlerden bahsedilmesini söylemesem de kalıcılığını azaltıyor herkesin ismini vererek yapılan anlatımlar.
July 25, 2022
Brigitte Studer zeichnet auf vielen, vielen Seiten ein eindrückliches Bild der Männer und Frauen im Dienst der Komintern, immer im Zusammenhang mit der politischen Weltsituation der Zeit und der Rückwirkung auf die persönliche und politische Biografie der Revolutionär*innen. Bei aller Wissenschaftlichkeit ausgesprochen spannend und lebending erzählt. Durch die transparente Struktur ist es auch jederzeit möglich, die Hintergründe bei unterschiedlichen wichtigen Ereignissen nachzuschlagen. Meine beiden Lieblingskapitel waren sicherlich der Teil über die frühen Weltkongresse und die Schilderung des chinesischen Desasters. Auch das Drama der Säuberungen und der Stalinisierungsprozess wird in aller Tragik sichtbar. Man sollte allerdings schon ein paar Vorkenntnisse mitbringen, um das Buch mit Gewinn zu lesen. Wer zum ersten Mal von "Sozialfaschismus" oder "Einheitsfront" liest/hört, hat schon ein paar Hürden zu überwinden.
June 19, 2021
Affianco ai leader dei singoli partiti comunisti, i cui nomi sono maggiormente noti al pubblico, lavoravano quelli che Brigitte Studer chiama i viaggiatori della rivoluzione, tutti quei comunisti che negli anni '20 e '30 del secolo scorso lavorarono per il Comintern e costruirono una rete di intricati rapporti transnazionali che li portò volenti o nolenti in giro per il mondo, dall'Europa alla Cina, dall'America Latina all'Unione Sovietica.
Vite di entusiasmo e spesso sofferenza fino al sacrificio della vita stessa non sempre per mano dei nemici ma spesso per quella degli "amici", quando il terrore staliniano fa strage di comunisti sovietici e stranieri.
Un libro necessario per capire cos'erano le vite dei rivoluzionari di professione che Studer descrive con evidente empatia cercando ogni qualvolta possibile di sottolineare il ruolo delle rivoluzionarie, quasi sempre poste nelle retrovie a compiere lavoro di supporto, visto che tra i comunisti di prima metà del XX secolo le differenze di genere rimasero ben marcate. Necessario anche per comprendere come operò la struttura che nacque per sostenere la rivoluzione mondiale, il Comintern, e che fu sciolto col trionfare della teoria del socialismo in un solo paese, teoria che per quell'eterogeneo gruppo di cosmopoliti significò la disillusione e, per più di uno, la morte.
Vite di entusiasmo e spesso sofferenza fino al sacrificio della vita stessa non sempre per mano dei nemici ma spesso per quella degli "amici", quando il terrore staliniano fa strage di comunisti sovietici e stranieri.
Un libro necessario per capire cos'erano le vite dei rivoluzionari di professione che Studer descrive con evidente empatia cercando ogni qualvolta possibile di sottolineare il ruolo delle rivoluzionarie, quasi sempre poste nelle retrovie a compiere lavoro di supporto, visto che tra i comunisti di prima metà del XX secolo le differenze di genere rimasero ben marcate. Necessario anche per comprendere come operò la struttura che nacque per sostenere la rivoluzione mondiale, il Comintern, e che fu sciolto col trionfare della teoria del socialismo in un solo paese, teoria che per quell'eterogeneo gruppo di cosmopoliti significò la disillusione e, per più di uno, la morte.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews