Communism

Professor Lea Ypi reflects on her childhood years, which witnessed the final years of communism in Albania and the fraught transition to capitalist democracy. (Image by Getty Images)

Living through the fall of communism

Christina Ezrahi shares the story of Nina Anisimova, a premier Soviet ballerina arrested for supposed counter-revolutionary activity. (Image by Getty Images)

How a ballerina survived the Gulag

Nikita Khrushchev visits President of Egypt Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1964

Snuffed out democracies and poisoned toothpaste: how the Cold War wreaked havoc in post-colonial Africa

An 18th Century cartoon satirises reactions to Louis XVI's attempt tp flee France. The french Revolution shows what can happen when the state fails on a catastrophic scale

Are revolutions doomed to failure?

Giles Milton reveals how the German capital became the frontline in a bitter diplomatic conflict between the western Allies and the Soviet Union in the wake of the Second World War. (Image by Getty Images)

The Cold War battle for Berlin

Anne Sebba explores the life of Ethel Rosenberg, who was executed for espionage in one of the most sensational and controversial episodes of the Cold War. (Image by Getty Images)

The trials of Ethel Rosenberg

Vladimir Ilyich Ulianov

Vladimir Lenin and his lust for power

Graham Hutchings discusses how China was convulsed by the communist revolution of 1949. (Image by Getty Images)

Chaos & communism: China’s 1949 revolution

Robert Service answers key questions about the Russian Revolution. (Image by Getty Images)

The Russian revolution: everything you wanted to know

Berlin Wall

The Berlin Wall: everything you need to know

East Germans crowd around and on the Berlin Wall the day after the gates opened for free movement in 1989

What happened after the fall of the Berlin Wall?

A ‘Trabi’ – the classic East German Trabant 601 car

The cost of unity: Ian Kershaw on the fall of the Berlin Wall

Protester Blocking Tanks Approaching Tiananmen Square

Why China has forgotten ‘Tank Man’? Remembering the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrations

How is the image of revolutionary Che Guevara commodified? Alex von Tunzelmann explores. (Photo by Francois ANCELLET/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)

Che Guevara: face of the revolution

A portrait of Karl Marx, the German economist, sociologist and philosopher who is known for his work the 'Communist Manifesto'. (Getty Images)

Your guide to Karl Marx: who was he, what was the Communist Manifesto and why is he important?