Communism: A History written by Richard Pipes was published by Random House LLC on November 6, 2001. It has 175 pages with 157 pages of actual reading on communism, excluding the preface. Pipes is a Jewish Polish-American, that specializes in Russian history, his work is most prominent in the Soviet Union. He was educated at Muskingum College, Cornell University, and Harvard University. He began teaching at Harvard University in 1958, retiring in 1996. Within this time he was the director of Harvard 's Russian Research Center. In 1976 he headed Team B, a team of analysts organized by the Central Intelligence Agency who analyzed the strategic capacities and goals of the Soviet military and political leadership. He was a leading critic of détente.
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As stated in the preface, his wish was to determine through the book “whether [Communism’s] failure was due to human error or to flaws in its very nature”(ix) . Although he covered its theory, he decided to focus more on the actual implementation of communism in practice and its affect on the humans and the countries that were influenced --negatively-- by it. Pipes comes to the conclusion that: “Communism was not a good idea that went wrong; it was a bad idea.” He is very clear and confident with this statement. I appreciate that. He shows how the people that Stalin and communist leaders became were just as ‘corrupt’ as these …show more content…
I liked how it is exactly as the title reads. It is a history of Communism --especially because the explanation started in Ancient Greece, I found this particularly interesting. Although the book is not tremendously detailed, I do like the survey aspect of it and how it reads similar to a timeline. This book helped me better understand the basic sequence of events and how/why things happened the way they did. It was nice to get a full and complete picture. Although, I did notice and did not like how bias it is. However this is understandable based on his historical involvement. He really beats down on communism 's poor parts (which is accurate) and notes almost only the bad parts --even if the majority of the time it was degressive. For example he never mentioned general improvements in health and literacy in Cuba, even if it ended in poverty. I thought it would be interesting if a socialist wrote a prolog(or something similar)to the book. I think it might have be
As stated in the preface, his wish was to determine through the book “whether [Communism’s] failure was due to human error or to flaws in its very nature”(ix) . Although he covered its theory, he decided to focus more on the actual implementation of communism in practice and its affect on the humans and the countries that were influenced --negatively-- by it. Pipes comes to the conclusion that: “Communism was not a good idea that went wrong; it was a bad idea.” He is very clear and confident with this statement. I appreciate that. He shows how the people that Stalin and communist leaders became were just as ‘corrupt’ as these …show more content…
I liked how it is exactly as the title reads. It is a history of Communism --especially because the explanation started in Ancient Greece, I found this particularly interesting. Although the book is not tremendously detailed, I do like the survey aspect of it and how it reads similar to a timeline. This book helped me better understand the basic sequence of events and how/why things happened the way they did. It was nice to get a full and complete picture. Although, I did notice and did not like how bias it is. However this is understandable based on his historical involvement. He really beats down on communism 's poor parts (which is accurate) and notes almost only the bad parts --even if the majority of the time it was degressive. For example he never mentioned general improvements in health and literacy in Cuba, even if it ended in poverty. I thought it would be interesting if a socialist wrote a prolog(or something similar)to the book. I think it might have be