Tuesday, July 24, 2007

A spectre is haunting Europe - the spectre of Communism


“A spectre is haunting Europe - the spectre of Communism”
Scherbakov V., 1920

“A spectre is haunting Europe - the spectre of Communism” - this is the first phrase from The Manifesto of the Communist Party – the document of almost extreme magnitude for the history of 20th century. It was written in 1848 by German theorists Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx. The book was suppressed in Russia but there were a number of illegal editions during the 1880s.

This document gave theoretical grounds to communist revolution of 1917. Lenin (pictured on the poster above) - the leader of bolshevics- based the ideology of his party mainly on this very work, declaring abolition of property on land and means of production.

During the revolution of the 1917 working class managed to overthrow the bourgeois social state, declaring the society without classes. The state belonged to the people in general and nobody in particular. This ideology ruled the country for the next 70 years.