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About
"One of Foreign Affairs' Picks for Best of Books 2018" A. James McAdams is the William M. Scholl Professor of International Affairs and director of the Nanovic Institute for European Studies at the University of Notre Dame. His many books include Judging the Past in Unified Germany and Germany Divided: From the Wall to Reunification (Princeton). He lives in South Bend, Indiana.
The first comprehensive political history of the communist party
Vanguard of the Revolution is a sweeping history of one of the most significant political institutions of the modern world. The communist party was a revolutionary idea long before its supporters came to power. In this book, A. James McAdams argues that the rise and fall of communism can be understood only by taking into account the origins and evolution of this compelling idea. He shows how the leaders of parties in countries as diverse as the Soviet Union, China, Germany, Yugoslavia, Cuba, and North Korea adapted the original ideas of revolutionaries like Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin to profoundly different social and cultural settings.
Taking readers from the drafting of The Communist Manifesto in the 1840s to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, McAdams describes the decisive role played by individual rulers in the success of their respective parties-men like Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, and Fidel Castro. He demonstrates how these personalities drew on vying conceptions of the party's functions to mesmerize their followers, mobilize their populations, and transform their societies. He also shows how many of these figures abused these ideas to justify incomprehensible acts of inhumanity. McAdams explains why communist parties lasted as long as they did, and why they either disappeared or ceased to be meaningful institutions by the close of the twentieth century.
The first comprehensive political history of the communist party, Vanguard of the Revolution is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand world communism and the captivating idea that gave it life. "A . . . successful example of big think history. If war built the state, it also helped build the Communist Party. Vladimir Lenin's faction, the Bolsheviks, was particularly aided by World War I. And Communism, once in power, reversed Clausewitz's famous dictum and made politics war by other means. The party often attacked the people--first in the Russia of Lenin and Stalin, but most especially in Mao Zedong's China, from the Hundred Flowers movement to the Great Leap Forward and then the Cultural Revolution, killing untold millions of people. It's a lively if depressing story."---Thomas E. Ricks, New York Times Book Review "The historiography on Marxism, as well as communist movements in general, is notoriously inaccessible; McAdams delivers a lucid and beautifully written volume that defies the norm, providing a highly readable study of the party." "Important. . . . Brilliant. . . . It's been nearly a decades since Robert Service's Comrades presented readers with a history of Communism on a global scale, and although the idea is still as dead as Jacob Marley, McAdams finds even more to tell about it, and is fascinating and judicial the whole time he does so."---Steve Donoghue, Open Letters Monthly "A brilliant and sweeping introduction to one of the most provocative political institutions of our times. . . . Vanguard of the Revolution provides intellectual provocation, historical breadth and an inspiration to take better care of our fragile democracies."---Yvonne Howell, Times Higher Education "It is a broad, comparative history of communist parties in power, one which required a tremendous amount of knowledge to write, and subtly but successfully undermines the easy equation of communism with totalitarianism that has been a liberal talking point for far too long."---Patrick Iber, Los Angeles Review of Books "The book excels in explaining the repertoire of methods whereby the new commu
The first comprehensive political history of the communist party
Vanguard of the Revolution is a sweeping history of one of the most significant political institutions of the modern world. The communist party was a revolutionary idea long before its supporters came to power. In this book, A. James McAdams argues that the rise and fall of communism can be understood only by taking into account the origins and evolution of this compelling idea. He shows how the leaders of parties in countries as diverse as the Soviet Union, China, Germany, Yugoslavia, Cuba, and North Korea adapted the original ideas of revolutionaries like Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin to profoundly different social and cultural settings.
Taking readers from the drafting of The Communist Manifesto in the 1840s to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, McAdams describes the decisive role played by individual rulers in the success of their respective parties-men like Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, and Fidel Castro. He demonstrates how these personalities drew on vying conceptions of the party's functions to mesmerize their followers, mobilize their populations, and transform their societies. He also shows how many of these figures abused these ideas to justify incomprehensible acts of inhumanity. McAdams explains why communist parties lasted as long as they did, and why they either disappeared or ceased to be meaningful institutions by the close of the twentieth century.
The first comprehensive political history of the communist party, Vanguard of the Revolution is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand world communism and the captivating idea that gave it life. "A . . . successful example of big think history. If war built the state, it also helped build the Communist Party. Vladimir Lenin's faction, the Bolsheviks, was particularly aided by World War I. And Communism, once in power, reversed Clausewitz's famous dictum and made politics war by other means. The party often attacked the people--first in the Russia of Lenin and Stalin, but most especially in Mao Zedong's China, from the Hundred Flowers movement to the Great Leap Forward and then the Cultural Revolution, killing untold millions of people. It's a lively if depressing story."---Thomas E. Ricks, New York Times Book Review "The historiography on Marxism, as well as communist movements in general, is notoriously inaccessible; McAdams delivers a lucid and beautifully written volume that defies the norm, providing a highly readable study of the party." "Important. . . . Brilliant. . . . It's been nearly a decades since Robert Service's Comrades presented readers with a history of Communism on a global scale, and although the idea is still as dead as Jacob Marley, McAdams finds even more to tell about it, and is fascinating and judicial the whole time he does so."---Steve Donoghue, Open Letters Monthly "A brilliant and sweeping introduction to one of the most provocative political institutions of our times. . . . Vanguard of the Revolution provides intellectual provocation, historical breadth and an inspiration to take better care of our fragile democracies."---Yvonne Howell, Times Higher Education "It is a broad, comparative history of communist parties in power, one which required a tremendous amount of knowledge to write, and subtly but successfully undermines the easy equation of communism with totalitarianism that has been a liberal talking point for far too long."---Patrick Iber, Los Angeles Review of Books "The book excels in explaining the repertoire of methods whereby the new commu