Examines the relationship between the Czech Red Unions, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and the Moscow Internationals and demonstrates that the Red trade unions were able to maintain a degree of independence and national specificity in the face of growing pressure from the Bolshevisers.

The 1921 founding congress in Moscow of the Red International of Labour Unions was a historic event. That gathering set out to create an international revolutionary trade-union organisation embracing millions of workers, and it brought together a wide variety of forces within the world labour movement. Lively and at times acrimonious debates occurred at the congress with syndicalist and other currents over the purpose and tasks of trade unions, the nature of class-struggle unionism, and union strategy and tactics. The congress proceedings, published here in a richly annotated edition, are part of a multi-volume series on the Communist International in Lenin’s time.

The 'Red International of Labour Unions' (RILU, Russian abbreviation Profintern) was a central instrument for the spreading of international communism during the inter-war period. This comprehensive and scholarly history of the organisation, based on extensive research in the former communist archives in Moscow and East Berlin, sheds significant light on the international trade union movement of the period. Tosstorff shows how the RILU began as a revolutionary alliance of syndicalists and communists in defiance of the social democratic International Federation of Trade Unions. His text presents a full account of the organisation’s main stages: the decline of the revolutionary wave after World War One, after which many syndicalists left, and others were integrated into the communist parties; the continuation of the RILU as an international communist apparatus; and its dissolution in 1936–7 as part of communism's popular front policy. First published in German as Profintern: Die Rote Gewerkschaftsinternationale 1920-1937 by Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn, in 2004.

Czechoslovakia has been at the center of some of the most difficult--and tragic--episodes of modern European history: its sacrifice to Nazi Germany at Munich; the Communist Coup of 1948; and the military crushing of the Prague Spring. It has also enacted momentous change almost magically, as in the peaceful overthrow of communism in 1989, and then the negotiated end to the country in 1992. Czechoslovak history has consequently produced enduring political metaphors for our times, such as the Velvet Revolution and Velvet Divorce. The second edition of the Historical Dictionary of the Czech State has been thoroughly updated and greatly expanded. Featuring a chronology, introductory essay, appendix, bibliography, and hundreds of cross-referenced dictionary entries, this detailed, authoritative reference provides understandings of the Czechs as a people; the territory they inhabit; their social, cultural, political, and economic developments throughout history; and interactions with their neighbors and the wider world.

Democracy in Europe has been a recent phenomenon. Only in the wake of World War II were democratic frameworks secured, and, even then, it was decades before democracy truly blanketed the continent. Neither given nor granted, democracy requires conflict, often violent confrontations, and challenges to the established political order. In Europe, Geoff Eley convincingly shows, democracy did not evolve organically out of a natural consensus, the achievement of prosperity, or the negative cement of the Cold War. Rather, it was painstakingly crafted, continually expanded, and doggedly defended by varying constellations of socialist, feminist, Communist, and other radical movements that originally blossomed in the later nineteenth century. Parties of the Left championed democracy in the revolutionary crisis after World War I, salvaged it against the threat of fascism, and renewed its growth after 1945. They organized civil societies rooted in egalitarian ideals which came to form the very fiber of Europe's current democratic traditions. The trajectories of European democracy and the history of the European Left are thus inextricably bound together. Geoff Eley has given us the first truly comprehensive history of the European Left--its successes and failures; its high watermarks and its low tides; its accomplishments, insufficiencies, and excesses; and, most importantly, its formative, lasting influence on the European political landscape. At a time when the Left's influence and legitimacy are frequently called into question, Forging Democracy passionately upholds its vital contribution.

The Russian Revolution and Civil War in the years 1917 to 1921 is one of the most widely studied periods in history. It is also somewhat inevitably one that has generated a huge flow of literature in the decades that have passed since the events themselves. However, until now, historians of the revolution have had no dedicated bibliography of the period and little claim to bibliographical control over the literature. The Russian Revolution and Civil War, 1917-1921offers for the first time a comprehensive bibliographical guide to this crucial and fascinating period of history. The Bibliography focuses on the key years of 1917 to 1921, starting with the February Revolution of 1917 and concluding with the 10th Party Congress of March 1921, and covers all the key events of the intervening years. As such it identifies these crucial years as something more than simply the creation of a communist state.

In the late nineteenth century in a number of continental European countries Christian associations of workers arose: Christian trade unions, workers' cooperatives, political leagues, workers' youth movements and cultural associations, sometimes separately for men and women. In some countries they formed a unified Christian labour movement, which sometimes also belonged to a broader Christian subculture or pillar, encompassing all social classes. In traditional labour history Christian workers' organizations were solely represented as dividing the working class and weakening the class struggle. However, from the 1980s onwards a considerable amount of studies have been devoted to Christian workers' organizations that adopted a more nuanced approach. This book takes stock of this new historiography. To broaden the analysis, each contribution compares the development in at least two countries, thus generating new comparative insights. This volume assesses the development of Christian workers' organizations in Europe from a broad historical and comparative perspective. The contributions focus on the collective identity of the Christian workers' organization, their denominational and working-class allegiances and how these are expressed in ideology, organization and practice. Among the themes discussed are relations with churches and Christian Democracy, secularization, the development of the Welfare State, industrial relations and the contribution to working-class culture. This volume is the result of a joint intellectual enterprise of the International Institute of Social History (IISG) in Amsterdam (Netherlands) and a group of scholars linked to the KADOC - Documentation and Research Centre for Religion, Culture and Society of the KU Leuven (Catholic University Leuven-Belgium).