(episode image is a French anti-communist poster circa 1950/51 "Caucasian Dance" made by the movement "Peace and Freedom". In the background, accompanying Stalin on balalaikas, are the leaders of the French Communist Party at the time: Marcel Cachin, Jacques Duclos, André Marty, and Maurice Thorez)

He is currently working on a book based off his doctoral dissertation defended at the University of Regensburg in 2022, titled "Sickle without a Hammer: Revolution and Nation-Building in the Balkans, 1900s–1930s."

Stefan Gužvica is assistant professor at the Department of History of the Higher School of Economics in Saint Petersburg, Russian Federation. He is the author of Before Tito: The Communist Party of Yugoslavia during the Great Purge, 1936–1940.

On today's episode we discuss all this and more with Stefan Gužvica, using his recent article in Jacobin on the notorious "Black Book of Communism" as a starting point. You can read the article here:

⁠⁠https://jacobin.com/2025/01/black-book-communism-courtois-history⁠⁠

So how should we assess and understand "anti-communism" and its relationship with History? And how do popular memory politics, nationalist imaginations, global political shifts, archival access and academic trends play into it? And what does all this mean for the left and socialist politics today?

While many historians have directly opposed anti-communist History writing, and successfully shaped and contributed to academic and popular discussions, anti-communism persists in the academy and popular discourses globally.

On the other hand, and far more consequential, Cold War-era anti-communism (and the collapse of the Soviet Union that followed) engendered generations of historians - both professional and not - with an implicit hostility to communism as an intellectual starting point.

Writing histories of communism & "really existing socialism" have been fraught with political tension for decades. On the one hand, sectarian debates in the global left too often overlooked nuances of really existing socialism & academic research to align with specific ideological orientations.

muse.jhu.edu/issue/53729

Episode Description here:

Here is the official line from the Georgian MFA

mfa.gov.ge/statements-b...

My guess is they already knew there would be no serious movement on candidacy until 2028/2030 and this announcement doesn’t change that, it was more a domestic concern - they wanted to remove accession from public discussion to the degree possible while still pursuing eventual EU membership