While Lenin was still alive, Soviet writers and artists found it quite easy to obtain permission and the means to go to the West and stay for a few weeks or even longer. As Napoleon said to Savary, who succeeded …
Billington’s previous book, his masterful cultural history of Russia, The Icon and the Axe, was acclaimed as a major departure in the interpretation of Russian culture. His present work, which aims to trace the origins of modern revolutionary faith and …
There is something shameless about Ford Motor Company executives abandoning the Company’s 75-year-old free-trade policy to seek government protection from Japanese imports. No doubt, Ford is having its trouble selling cars. Ford reported a 1980 loss of $1.54 billion. Detroit’s …
I know George Gilder as a likable chap, prey to surges of emotion that last long enough to translate themselves into entire books. In the wake of the 1964 Goldwater debacle, Gilder, then in his Ripon Society phase, wrote with …
Just inside the campus grounds of the National Autonomous University of San Carlos (USAC), Guatemala City, stop the buses that carry students between the campus and the city center. On Monday, July 14, 1980, the 8-black pulled in with its …
Even as youngsters playing his music, we were aware that Shostakovich had led a life dominated by the vicissitudes of Soviet politics, that his art was frequently manipulated for the party’s anti-artistic purposes. It seemed to us that his works, …
The document below is a somewhat abridged translation of a report on the meeting of Solidarity’s highest body, the National Coordinating Committee (KKP), which took place in the western Polish town of Bydgoszcz this year on March 23-24. The report …
At one point in The Adventures of Augie March, Saul Bellow’s larky protagonist gets hooked up with an eccentric millionaire named Robey. Augie will, presumably, be his research assistant and, presumably, Robey will write a “survey or history of human …
The chapter on class that concludes the third volume of Capital did not remain incomplete because Marx died at his desk. Capital presents the economic “anatomy of civil society” on the basis of a two-class model articulated by the relation …
Time and again, the demise of the family in America has been predicted by ultra-radicals and conservatives alike, by the former as part of their wishful thinking, by the latter as part of their disenchantment with every sign of social …
A socialist in economics, a liberal in politics, and a conservative in culture: this is how Daniel Bell tried to make the briefest possible sense of himself amid the political and cultural confusions of the moment. As ideological one-liners go, …
The Reagan administration has a new approach to human rights which, while it won’t affect anyone in the U.S., may have some important ramifications for political prisoners around the world. The philosophy of the new approach was expressed recently by …
Ed Koch is apt to conclude a boisterous community meeting with a warning. “Just remember,” he chides disgruntled New Yorkers in that shrill, pedantic singsong of his, “if you don’t like what I’m doing, you can vote me out! I’ll …
The beating heart of the American auto industry is Detroit. It is home for 78 auto and auto-related manufacturing plants employing 200,000 workers and for the corporate headquarters of the “Big Three” companies (Volkswagen of America is also here) and …
Last year, on the night of December 10, our friend and long-time member of the Dissent editorial board Henry Pachter died of a heart attack at the age of seventy-three. His “rich and active life,” in the words of his …
