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1. Rejuvenating Communism: Youth Organizations and Elite Renewal in Post-Mao China

Author:
Jérôme Doyon and Andrew J. Nathan
Publication Date:
03-2023
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University
Abstract:
Working for the administration remains one of the most coveted career paths for young Chinese. Rejuvenating Communism: Youth Organizations and Elite Renewal in Post-Mao China seeks to understand what motivates young and educated Chinese to commit to a long-term career in the party-state and how this question is central to the Chinese regime’s ability to maintain its cohesion and survive. Jérôme Doyon draws upon extensive fieldwork and statistical analysis in order to illuminate the undogmatic commitment recruitment techniques and other methods the state has taken to develop a diffuse allegiance to the party-state in the post-Mao era. He then analyzes recruitment and political professionalization in the Communist Party’s youth organizations and shows how experiences in the Chinese Communist Youth League transform recruits and feed their political commitment as they are gradually inducted into the world of officials. As the first in-depth study of the Communist Youth League’s role in recruitment, this book challenges the assumption that merit is the main criteria for advancement within the party-state, an argument with deep implications for understanding Chinese politics today.
Topic:
Communism, Politics, History, Youth, and Elites
Political Geography:
China and Asia

2. Book Talk. Café Europa Revisited: How to Survive Post-Communism by Slavenka Drakulic

Publication Date:
04-2022
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
The Harriman Institute
Abstract:
Please join the East Central European Center at the Harriman Institute for a book talk with Slavenka Drakulic, author of Café Europa Revisited: How to Survive Post-Communism (Penguin Books, 2021), an evocative and timely collection of essays that paints a portrait of Eastern Europe thirty years after the end of communism. This event is part of the Collective Memory and Democratic Backsliding in Central and Eastern Europe series organized by Harriman Institute Postdoctoral Fellow Čarna Pištan, and will be introduced by Aleksandar Bošković co-director of the East Central European Center.
Topic:
Communism, State Building, Post Cold War, Post-Soviet Space, and Anti-Communism
Political Geography:
Europe

3. A Conversation with Polish Basketball Legend Kent Washington

Publication Date:
05-2022
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
The Harriman Institute
Abstract:
Join the East Central European Center at the Harriman Institute, Columbia University for a conversation with Kent Washington, the first African-American and first American to play professional basketball in Cold War Eastern Europe. Recruited into the top Polish league in 1979, Washington went on to play five seasons in the Solidarity-era communist country. His story told for the first time in his new memoir, Kentomania: A Black Basketball Virtuoso in Communist Poland, is unprecedented, weaving together professionalism, race, and politics in powerful and daring ways. Washington will appear in conversation with Columbia University Lecturer in Polish Christopher Caes.
Topic:
Cold War, Communism, Race, and Sports
Political Geography:
Europe and Poland

4. The PLO and Communist Albania: Cold War Relations

Author:
Klejd Këlliçi
Publication Date:
12-2021
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:
Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:
This article examines Communist Albania’s support for the Palestinian cause and the relationships Tirana cultivated with the various groups comprising the Palestinian national movement. It explores the latter’s motivation for cultivating relations with Albania, a tiny Communist country that refused the logic of the bipolar world, both in its alliance with China and, later, through its disengagement from the East-West conflict and retreat into self-imposed isolationism. The article shows that, following Albania’s break with the Soviet bloc in the 1970s, the Palestine Liberation Organization, and specifically Fatah, was a more natural and logical choice for Tirana’s support than other, more self-avowedly left-wing Palestinian organizations. This study is based on primary sources from the archives of the Albanian foreign affairs ministry and the Party of Labour of Albania, as well as secondary sources such as accounts by members of the Albanian military who trained Fatah guerrilla fighters.
Topic:
Cold War, Communism, History, and PLO
Political Geography:
Middle East, Palestine, Albania, and Baltic States

5. The Chinese Communist Party’s Economic Challenge to the Free World

Author:
Miles M. Yu
Publication Date:
04-2021
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Hudson Institute
Abstract:
The Chinese economy and the philosophical roots of China’s system have greater implications for the United States economy than many assume. The one critical fact to understand about the People’s Republic of China is that it is a communist dictatorship ruled by a Marxist-Leninist party. The Party is dedicated to maintaining and strengthening its monopoly on all powers in the world’s most populous country and to mounting the most serious challenge to the free world since the Cold War. This policy memo will examine the Chinese economy’s distinct traits, how it operates, and why it thrives under a monopolistic government that exploits and challenges the global free market system, along with possible policy recommendations for the United States and its allies. Unlike most other communist countries, China has been afforded the benefits of a global free-market system and enjoys largely open access to international trade, capital markets, and advanced technologies. The paradox of a communist nation fully participating in a largely capitalist system has enriched and strengthened the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), to the point where Beijing poses a mortal threat to the United States and to the international free market economic system that has enabled the rise of the communist state. The West played a role in creating the current state of play. But too many conversations in the United States focus only on our own strategic thinking. In his historic speech at the Richard Nixon Library in July 2020, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo aptly described the situation and how we got here: “Our policies—and those of other free nations—resurrected China’s failing economy, only to see Beijing bite the international hands that were feeding it.” As President Richard Nixon admitted in his later years, his initiative to open up China in 1972 might have created a Frankenstein.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Communism, Economics, and Chinese Communist Party (CCP)
Political Geography:
China, Asia, and United States of America

6. A Light in the Window in Communist Times

Author:
Jonathan B. Rickert
Publication Date:
02-2021
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
American Diplomacy
Institution:
American Diplomacy
Abstract:
Sometimes a Christmas tree is more than just a decorated evergreen. In connection with Christmas 1994, the last Yule celebration in Bucharest for me and my wife Gerd before our transfer back to Washington at the completion of our tour, we hosted a large holiday party for many of our Romanian friends. The lovely Deputy Chief of Mission (DCM) residence on Strada Pangratti was richly decorated for the season. The focal point was the large Christmas tree standing in the living room next to the staircase leading to the second floor. The tree was well over twenty feet tall and beautifully trimmed, with electric lights and decorations from the United States, my wife’s native Sweden, Romania, and other countries where we had served. For us it was a delight to behold as it and the decorations held so many associations with family and Christmases past. Our guests all seemed to enjoy themselves, eagerly sampling the generous selection of seasonal goodies on offer, and we were pleased to have the opportunity to share our holiday with them. One guest even brought with him a group of a cappella singers, who enriched the festive atmosphere with lovely traditional Romanian colinde, or Christmas carols.
Topic:
Communism, Memoir, and Christmas
Political Geography:
Romania and United States of America

7. The COVID-19 Curtain: Can Past Communist Regimes Explain the Vaccination Divide in Europe

Author:
Inés Berniell, Yarine Fawaz, Anne Laferrere, Pedro Mira, and Elizaveta Pronkina
Publication Date:
11-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Distributive, Labor and Social Studies (CEDLAS)
Abstract:
As of November 2021, all former Communist countries from Central and Eastern Europe exhibit lower vaccination rates than Western European countries. Can institutional inheritance explain, at least in part, this heterogeneity in vaccination decisions across Europe? To study this question we exploit novel data from the second wave of the SHARE (Survey of Health, Ageing, and Retirement in Europe) Covid-19 Survey fielded in Summer 2021 that covers 27 European countries and Israel. First, we document lower Covid-19 vaccine take-up amongst individuals above 55 years old who were born under Communism in Europe. Next, we turn to reunified Germany to get closer to a causal effect of exposure to Iron curtain regimes. We find that exposure to the Communist regime in East Germany decreases one’s probability to get vaccinated against Covid-19 by 8 percentage points, increases that of not wanting the vaccine by 4 percentage points. Both effects are quite large and statistically significant, and they hold when controlling for individual socio-economic and demographic characteristics. We identify low social capital -measured as voluntary work, political engagement, trust in people- as a plausible channel through which past Communist regimes would still affect individuals’ preferences for Covid-19 vaccination.
Topic:
Communism, Public Health, Vaccine, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
Europe and Post-Soviet Europe

8. 30 Years Since the Collapse of the Soviet Union: Democracy, Community, and Russia

Author:
Jerzy Buzek
Publication Date:
09-2021
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Brown Journal of World Affairs
Institution:
Brown Journal of World Affairs
Abstract:
I am a man of Solidarity—Solidarność. That is the name of the mass social movement that began in Poland in 1980 and brought freedom and democracy to not only my country but to all of Central and Eastern Europe. 1989 marked the end of the Eastern Bloc, and 1991 brought the collapse of the Soviet Union. Back then, there was hope it would indeed be “the end of history” and that there would be no going back to the past. The fall of the communist empire seemed to be the ultimate proof for us in Poland and Central Eastern Europe, but also for the entire world, that there was no more place for authoritarian regimes and that oppressive governments would perish sooner or later. Such was the experi- ence of generations that lived through the twentieth century. Three decades prior, the air we breathed was full of democracy; we needed that air once more.
Topic:
Communism, Democracy, Community, and Post-Soviet Space
Political Geography:
Russia and Soviet Union

9. Inside Duterte’s Failed Response to the Philippines’ Communist Insurgency and the Appeal of New People’s Army among Indigenous Peoples

Author:
Jack Broome
Publication Date:
01-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Jamestown Foundation
Abstract:
On December 7, 2020, following speculation in the news, the Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte finally announced that the government would not offer a holiday ceasefire—as is tradition for this time of year—to the New People’s Army (NPA), the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP). Duterte’s announcement came during his weekly address to the nation on the government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, but Duterte went one step further by declaring that peace talks are “dead” and there would no longer be any ceasefires for the remainder of his presidency (abs-cbn.com, December 8, 2020).
Topic:
Communism, Terrorism, Insurgency, Non State Actors, and Indigenous
Political Geography:
Philippines and Asia-Pacific