Professor%20David%20Priestland: List of publications
Showing 1 to 17 of 17 publications
Comparison, Rivalry and Competition under Neo-Liberalism and State Socialism
September 2019
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Chapter
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The Force of Comparison. A New Perspective on Modern European History and the Contemporary World
Kızıl Bayrak
June 2017
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Book
Introduction
October 2016
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Chapter
Neoliberalism, Consumerism and the End of the Cold War
July 2016
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Chapter
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The Routledge Handbook of the Cold War
The field of Cold War history has consistently been one of the most vibrant in the field of international studies. Recent scholarship has added to our understanding of familiar Cold War events, such as the Korean War, the Cuban Missile Crisis and superpower détente, and shed new light on the importance of ideology, race, modernization, and transnational movements.
The Routledge Handbook of the Cold War draws on the wealth of new Cold War scholarship, bringing together essays on a diverse range of topics such as geopolitics, military power and technology and strategy. The chapters also address the importance of non-state actors, such as scientists, human rights activists and the Catholic Church, and examine the importance of development, foreign aid and overseas assistance.
The Left and the Revolutions
May 2016
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Chapter
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The Oxford Handbook of European History, 1914-1945
This article provides a new interpretation of Europe’s revolutionary era between 1917 and 1923, exploring the origins of the revolutionary wave and its diverse impact across Europe, focusing on the role of the Left. It seeks to revive the insights of social history and historical sociology, which have been neglected by a recent historiography, that stress the role of contingency, the impact of war, and the influence of militaristic cultures. Yet unlike older social history approaches which emphasised domestic social conflict at the expense of ethnic politics and empire, it argues that the revolutions were the result of a crisis of old geopolitical and ethnic hierarchies, as well as social ones. It develops a comparative approach, presenting a new way of incorporating the experience of eastern Europe and the Caucasus into the history of Europe’s revolutions, and a new analysis of why Russia provided such fertile ground for revolutionary politics.
History, historical sociology and the problem of Ideology: the cases of communism and neoliberalism
April 2016
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Chapter
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Global Powers Michael Mann's Anatomy of the Twentieth Century and Beyond
In this volume, distinguished scholars assess Mann's work, focusing on his final two volumes of Sources of Social Power, which deal with the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Social Science
Introduction
January 2015
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Chapter
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The Conquest of Bread (Penguin Classics)
The Fall of Communism: Causes and Consequences
November 2013
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Chapter
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O Fim da URSS, A Nova Rússia e a Crise das Esquerdas
Neoliberalism, Consumerism and the End of the Cold War
October 2013
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Internet publication
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Terrors of Left and Right: 1937 in Comparative Perspective
July 2013
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Chapter
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The Anatomy of Terror: Political Violence under Stalin
Should we compare the Terror with other episodes of communist violence, see it as ideologically inspired, driven by the desire to create a pure utopia of new socialist people? Should we see it in the context of wartime practices of mass deportation and killing, which became common during and after the First World War? Or should we avoid comparisons, seeking the causes in Stalin's own peculiar personality, or in the patrimonial court politics which he sought to create? The chapter develops some of the comparative arguments he briefly explored in Stalinism and the Politics of Mobilization. It defends the value of comparisons with other episodes of communist violence (such as Mao's Cultural Revolution, or Pol Pot's ‘killing fields’). But he argues that we need a more sophisticated view than the old ‘utopia in power’ approach, by distinguishing between different forms of communist violence, and between the disparate elements of Stalin's Terror.
Merchant, Soldier, Sage: A New History of Power
August 2012
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Book
From historian David Priestland, Merchant, Soldier, Sage is a remarkable book that proposes a radical new approach to how we see our world, and who runs it, in the vein of Francis Fukuyama's The End of History
We live in an age ruled by merchants. Competition, flexibility and profit are still the common currency, even at a time when Western countries have been driven off a cliff by these very values. But will it always be this way?
David Priestland argues for the predominance in any society of one of three broad value systems - that of the merchant (commercial and competitive); the soldier (aristocratic and militaristic); and the sage (bureaucratic or creative). These 'castes' struggle alongside the worker (egalitarian and artisanal) for power, and when they achieve supremacy, they can have such a strong hold over us that it is almost impossible to imagine life outside their grip. And yet there does come a point of drastic change, usually because one caste becomes too dominant. The result is economic crisis, war or revolution, and eventually a new caste takes over.
Priestland argues, we are now in the midst of a period with all the classic signs of imminent change. As the history of the last century shows, there is good reason to be fearful of the forces that this failure may unleash. Merchant, Soldier, Sage is both a masterful dissection of our current predicament and a brilliant piece of history. The world will not look the same again.
Cold War mobilisation and domestic politics: the Soviet Union
January 2012
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Chapter
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The Cambridge History of the Cold War
This chapter argues that the Cold War was of supreme importance to all aspects of Soviet politics, and that the literature on the period, which is still in an early stage of development following the opening of archives, certainly could pay greater attention to the interaction between domestic and international forces. The Cold War placed the USSR in an equally difficult position in the ideological sphere. The Stalinist economic system was designed to reduce consumption and extract resources from agriculture, 'pumping' them into heavy industries and defence, and the absence of material incentives ensured that the regime had to rely on high levels of coercion. Stalin's political position, like that of most Bolshevik leaders, changed over time, but it is possible to identify a reasonably consistent belief in the primacy of politika. The Cold War did not create a fundamentally different form of politics because the Soviet system was already designed for the mobilisation of its population for war.
Terrors of Left and Right: 1937 in Comparative Perspective
January 2012
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Chapter
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The Anatomy of Terror
The Red Flag
August 2010
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Book
Communism was one of the most powerful movements of the modern world. At the height of its influence over a third of the global population lived under its rule. And yet very few predicted either its bewildering rise or sudden decline.
How did a contradictory measure of revolutionary romanticism and ruthless pragmatism succeed for so long? Why did it manage to inspire so many people - from the militants of 1920s Russia to the urban terrorists in 1970s Europe? The Red Flag charts the progress of Communism from Marx to Mao, from Stalin to Che Guevara, from the Bolsheviks and the guerrilla fighters of China to the Marxist students of Ethiopia and the Baader-Meinhof Group, showing how it helped shape the world we live in.
Political Science
Introduction
January 2008
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Chapter
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Women in Peace Politics
Stalinism and the Politics of Mobilization: Ideas, Power, and Terror in Inter-war Russia
February 2007
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Book
Stalinism and the Politics of Mobilization offers a new interpretation of Bolshevik ideology, examines its relationship with Soviet politics between 1917 and 1939, and sheds new light on the origins of the political violence of the late 1930s. While it challenges older views that the Stalinist system and the Terror were the product of a coherent Marxist-Leninist blueprint, imposed by a group of committed ideologues, it argues that ideas mattered in Bolshevik politics and that there are strong continuities between the politics of the revolutionary period and those of the 1930s. By exploring divisions within the party over several issues, including class, the relations between elites and masses, and economic policy, David Priestland shows how a number of ideological trends emerged within Bolshevik politics, and how they were related to political and economic interests and strategies. He also argues that central to the launching of the Terror was the leadership's commitment to a strategy of mobilization, and to a view of politics that ultimately derived from the left Bolshevism of the revolutionary period.
Business & Economics
Stalin as Bolshevik romantic: ideology and mobilisation, 1917–1939
September 2005
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Chapter
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Stalin: A New History
Speaking at the Eighteenth Party Congress in 1939, Stalin argued that Marxist-Leninist ideology lay at the centre of Soviet politics:
There is hardly any need to dwell on the serious importance of Party propaganda, of the Marxist-Leninist education [vospitanie] of our workers [rabotnikov] … It must be accepted as an axiom that the higher the political level and the Marxist-Leninist consciousness of workers in any branch of state or Party work the better and more fruitful will be the work itself … and, conversely, the lower the political level of the workers, and their Marxist-Leninist consciousness, the more probable will be disruption and failure in work, the more probable will it be that workers will become superficial and that they will degenerate into pragmatists and pedants [deliagi-krokhobory], the more likely their [complete] degeneration.
The significance and meaning of statements such as this have been the subject of disagreement among historians of Stalinism. Why did Stalin, a leader so frequently denounced by his rivals as a mediocre theorist, pay so much attention to the role of ideas in politics? What was the relationship between ideas and Stalin's political behaviour? And what was the nature of the ‘Marxist-Leninist’ ideology he claimed to be so committed to?
It used to be common to assume that Stalin was indulging in empty rhetoric and that he had little interest in political ideas. For some, Stalin was best seen as a typical modernising state-builder, a pragmatist whose commitment to Marxism was ‘skin-deep’.
