NOVEMBER, 2022 – To students of twentieth-century Russian history, the name Vladimir Il’ich Lenin is a constant, and inevitable, presence. But the name Iulii Osipovich Tsederbaum—better known through the pseudonym “Iulii Martov”—is either entirely absent from view or present only as a mysterious, and often unsavoury, figure. Prior to the revolution of 1917, this would not have been the case. Boris Souvarine would until 1924 be a close collaborator with Lenin. But for Souvarine and others of his generation growing up in France, “Lenin was only an indistinct reference point. Very few people had even heard of him. Trotsky, Martov…
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OCTOBER, 2022 – On June 24, 2022, in a stunning reminder of the depth of the backlash against women’s rights, the United States Supreme Court officially reversed the historic Roe v. Wade ruling which provided legal protection for abortion rights in that country.[1] Within two weeks of the ruling, some half of all states in the US saw court filings and amended laws challenging the legal status of abortion.[2] There are far-reaching international implications of the US reversal of women’s right to choose, and the Canadian context cannot be assumed to be unaffected.[3] Importantly, in Canada, we have a long…
Leave a CommentNOVEMBER, 2021 – It was in 1974 that I first picked up a copy of The Gulag Archipelago. I didn’t finish reading it until this century. It is a very long book—seven books to be precise, published in three volumes that together run to roughly two thousand pages in English translation. But it shouldn’t take forty years to read a book, even a very long one. Why it took me four decades to finish reading Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s crowning achievement requires a little backstory and can serve as an entry point into the present book. The above is the first paragraph of…
Leave a CommentIn the shadow of the economic crisis in Greece, inspired by Occupy, the Arab Spring, and Quebec’s “Maple Spring”, the 2012 edition of the Historical Materialism Conference in Toronto, was a resounding success. More than 400 people attended the 80-plus panels during an intensive three-day event stretching from Friday, May 11 through Sunday, May 13. Historical Materialism saw an important series of discussions on indigenous politics, involving eight sessions, a plenary and a Long Table discussion. There was a well-attended session on the relationship between Marxism and Feminism and several sessions on key issues in political economy. The complete program…
Comments closedFebruary 21, a three-stage Navy SM-3 missile hit a satellite the size of a school bus, and blew it to pieces.[1] The bizarre explanation for this from the Pentagon, was that they were concerned for peoples’ health. The fuel tank on the satellite (which was falling out of orbit) contains several hundred pounds of something called hydrazine, which is a health hazard. Don’t believe the “health” explanation. The missile strike marks a serious escalation in the arms race, a race that may have slowed after the end of the Cold War, but never really went away. First, the hydrazine “threat”…
Comments closedThe Mulroney-Schreiber affair has brought the little Central Asian country of Chechnya back into the headlines. Mulroney’s very bizarre defence for acting as Schreiber’s paid salesman, includes a reference to peddling military vehicles to Russia for use in “peacekeeping” in Chechnya. In this context, it is useful to look in some detail at the situation in Chechnya. The article posted here, makes the case that Russia’s oppression of Chechnya is a classic example of Great Power Imperialism. There is nothing remotely resembling “peacekeeping” in its actions there. This article (slightly revised with updated references) was originally written in February 2000.…
Comments closedMy daughter was born in 1988, the year of the second Mulroney majority election victory. Growing up as she did under the man who was ultimately to become one of the most hated prime ministers in history, it made absolute sense to her when we gave her a stuffed doll, with the Tory’s face on it, and the label “Lyin’ Brian” on the back. She and her friends got hours of pleasure from the little Tory doll. The doll would come in handy now, a generation later. Mulroney is today very publicly involved in an embarrassing dispute with international arms…
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