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This book is volume two of a three-volume work, Christianity Under Stress, which focuses on the experiences of Christian churches in contemporary communist and socialist societies. In this volume a distinguished group of experts examines the changing relationship of the Catholic church to contemporary communist and socialist societies in Eastern Europe, Latin America, and Asia.
Catholicism has, on the one hand, traditionally regarded earthly life as of secondary importance—as an instrument of spiritual transformation—and, on the other, has ascribed great value to the early institutions of the church, taking great interest in temporal matters that affects its institutional concerns. Against the backdrop of this duality, the church has changed over the centuries, adapting to local and national conditions. Catholicism and Politics in Communist Societies surveys these local and national adaptations in their historical contexts, linking the past experience of the church to its present circumstances. Organized around themes of tradition vs. modernity, hierarchy vs. lower clergy, and institutional structure vs. grass-roots organization, this comprehensive volume presents a detailed, country-by-country portrait of the political and social status of the church today in communist and socialist settings.

Contributors. Pedro Ramet, Arthur F. McGovern, Roman Solchanyk, Ivan Hvat, Robert F. Goeckel, C. Chrypinski, Milan J. Reban, Leslie Laszlo, Janice Broun, Eric O. Hanson, Stephen Denney, Thomas E. Quigley, Humberto Belli, Hansjakob Stehle, George H. Williams

Western efforts to control trade and technological relations with communist countries affect many interests and political groups in both Eastern and Western blocs. Although there is general agreement within the Western alliance that government-imposed controls are necessary to prevent material having military importance from falling in the hands of the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies, there is considerable controversy over the specifics: the exact definition of "militarily significant" material, how the Western nations should administer controls, the implications of glasnost, and other matters.

One of the most enduring and prolific American authors of the latter half of the twentieth century, John Updike has long been recognized by critics for his importance as a social commentator. Yet, John Updike and the Cold War is the first work to examine how Updike's views grew out of the defining context of American culture in his time—the Cold War. Quentin Miller argues that because Updike's career began as the Cold War was taking shape in the mid-1950s, the world he creates in his entire literary oeuvre—fiction, poetry, and nonfiction prose—reflects the optimism and the anxiety of that decade.

Miller asserts that Updike's frequent use of Cold War tension as a metaphor for domestic life and as a cultural reality that affects the psychological security of his characters reveals the inherent conflict of his fictional world. Consequently, this conflict helps explain some of the problematic relationships and aimless behavior of Updike's characters, as well as their struggles to attain spiritual meaning.

By examining Updike's entire career in light of the historical events that coincide with it, Miller shows how important the early Cold War mind-set was to Updike's thinking and to the development of his fiction. The changes in Updike's writing after the 1950s confirm the early Cold War era's influence on his ideology and on his celebrated style. By the Cold War's end in the late 1980s, Updike's characters look back fondly to the Eisenhower years, when their national identity seemed so easy to define in contrast to the Soviet Union. This nostalgia begins as early as his writings in the 1960s, when the breakdown of an American consensus disillusions Updike's characters and leaves them yearning for the less divisive 1950s.

While underscoring how essential history is to the study of literature, Miller demonstrates that Updike's writing relies considerably on the growth of the global conflict that defined his time. Cogent and highly readable, John Updike and the Cold War makes an important contribution to Updike scholarship.

“An original and much needed analysis of an important but neglected aspect of the legacy of the Russian Revolution…. Essential reading.”—Mary Davis, Marx Memorial Library
 
From Cuba to Vietnam, China to South Africa, the October Revolution of 1917 inspired millions of people beyond the territory of Russia. It proved that the masses could not only overthrow autocratic governments, but that they could also form an opposing government in their own image.
 
The new idea that the working class and the peasantry could be allied, combined with the clear strength and necessity of a vanguard party, guided multiple revolutions across the globe.  Here is much-needed antidote to all the glum histories written on the demise of the Soviet Union. Vijay Prashad throws a spotlight on the way the Russian Revolution was seen and received in the countries colonized by European empires. With Russia as an inspiration and providing support, suddenly workers and peasants, those left out of capitalist prosperity, organized and attempted to create for themselves real socialist revolution. Prashad’s chapters include:
 
*Eastern Graves
*Red October
*Follow the Path of the Russians
*The Lungs of Russia
*Soviet Asia
*Enemy of Imperialism
*Eastern Marxism
*Colonial Fascism
*Polycentric Communism
*Memories of Communism
 
The author writes in this Preface, “It has been a quarter-century since the demise of the USSR. And yet, the marks of the October Revolution remain—not just in the territories of the USSR but more so in what used to be known as the Third World. From Cuba to Vietnam, from China to South Africa, the October Revolution remains as an inspiration. After all, that Revolution proved that the working class and the peasantry could not only overthrow an autocratic government but it could form its own government.”
 
This book explains the power of the October Revolution in the Global South. From Ho Chí Minh to Fidel Castro, reflections on polycentric communism, and collective memories of communism, it shows how, for a brief moment, another world was possible.   

A collection of writings based on Enzensberger’s personal experience as a left-wing sympathizer during the 1960s. 

Hans Magnus Enzensberger, widely regarded as Germany’s greatest living poet, was already well known in the 1960s, the tempestuous decade of which Tumult is an autobiographical record. Derived from old papers, notes, jottings, photos, and letters that the poet stumbled upon years later in his attic, the volume is not so much about the man, but rather the many places he visited and people whom he met on his travels through the Soviet Union and Cuba during the 1960s. The book is made up of four long-form pieces written from 1963 to 1970, each episode concluding with a poem and postscript written in 2014. Translated by Mike Mitchell, the book is a lively and deftly written travelogue offering a glimpse into the history of leftist thought. Dedicated to “those who disappeared,” Tumult is a document of that which remains one of humanity’s headiest times.