A Dictionary of 20th-Century Communism (review)

The crossed hammer-and-sickle emblem, covered with a patina of rust, lies on a worn gray stone surface. This image on the cover of A Dictionary of 20th-Century Communism evokes the vision of a tombstone. Although remnants of Communism are still in power on the periphery of what had been the core of the Communist world, the Soviet Union, the Communist regimes in China and Vietnam have been substantially redefined, and even the regime in Cuba is on the verge of change. North Korea remains a pervasively tyrannical regime, but it is of greater interest for its nuclear weapons than for its Stalinist trappings. Today’s reality on the whole suggests that Communism is indeed dead. But as a source of scholarly controversy or a part of world history, Communism deserves continuing study and reassessment. Scrutiny of various aspects of Communist regimes has been reinvigorated by the opening of some archives after the Soviet and other Communist regimes disintegrated.

A Dictionary of 20th-Century Communism, edited by Silvio Pons, a professor at the University of Rome Tor Vergata and director of the Gramsci Institute Foundation in Rome, and Robert Service, a senior research fellow at Oxford University, is the English edition of a previously published Italian version. This origin is reflected in the roster of contributors to the nearly 900-page dictionary. Of the 160 authors, 46 are affiliated with Italian academic institutions (no affiliation is indicated for three contributors), and the U.S. and British numbers are 29 and 25, respectively. Five experts from Australia, three from Canada, thirteen from France, and twelve from Russia have also contributed entries. This linguistic distribution seems to account for the single most salient flaw of the book: Most of the bibliographical references for the entries written by Italian or French experts are to Italian or French sources. They are useless for English-language readers, particularly undergraduate students. Even when an English edition is available, the entries by non-English-speaking contributors cite their own preferred language. Ragnheidur Kristjansdottir refers to G. von Rauch’s Geschichte der baltischen Staaten (with the publication date given as 1977 rather than the correct 1970) even though an English edition was published in 1974 under the title The Baltic States. Editorial neglect is also evident in some entries with unclear passages and awkward phrasing as well as overuse of jargon and clichés (e.g., the use of “mixed marriage” in Carlo Spagnolo’s “Citizenship” entry without clarifying a mixed marriage of what). The inadequate references are but slightly compensated for by the cross-references that follow individual entries.

Beginning with the “Afghan War” (Elena Dudova) and ending with “Zionism” (Laurent Rucker) as an ideology competing with Communism for a similar audience, the 400 entries of the dictionary, including events, concepts, figures, organizations, and movements, provide an overview of what defines the history of Communism. Some entries, notably Francesco Benvenuti’s “Nationalism,” are included because of the policy challenge the ideology posed for Communist leaders from Vladimir Lenin and Iosif Stalin to Leonid Brezhnev and Mikhail Gorbachev. The entry for “Nonalignment” (Giampolo Calchi Novati), however, is not linked to Communism in any sense. Novati’s essay also undervalues the role of Josip Broz Tito and Gamal Abdel Nasser in forging the movement into an influential grouping and mischaracterizes the essence of nonalignment. The aim was not to remain equidistant from East and West, but to play a role in international relations by avoiding advance commitment to one side or the other. The fact that only two of the seven references given are English-language sources—even though most of the important studies of the Nonaligned Movement are available in English—makes the relevance of this entry unclear.

Most entries are predictable and appropriate for a dictionary on this topic, notably the 41 entries for Communist parties from Albania (Ana Lalaj) to Yugoslavia (Leonid Gibianskii). Some entries, however, are surprising and unexpected: “Citizenship” (Carlo Spagnolo), “Borders” (Sabine Dullin), “Festivals” (Richard...