Acton Institute Powerblog Archives

Post Tagged 'communism'

Vladimir Lenin: Bloodthirsty Superstar

Whenever I read a story involving one of the profusion of holy relics preserved and exhibited over the centuries, whether it be the Shroud of Turin or the finger bone of the fifth-century patroness Saint Genevieve, to this day displayed in a small glass cylinder in the Chapel of St. Continue Reading...

How Did George Orwell Know?

The collocation in the title captures the thoroughgoing exploration of the topic in a phrase: George Orwell and Russia. Masha Karp is not the first to ponder George Orwell’s relationship to Stalinist Russia—and the relationship of both Stalinist and post-communist Russia to Orwell—but she is the first to frame a comprehensive, well-researched study around them. Continue Reading...

The Firemen’s Ball: When Comedy Made Ideology Cringe

Miloš Forman was an incredibly famous director in the 1980s, when his Amadeus (1984) won eight Oscars out of 11 nominations, and Ragtime (1981) also received eight nominations, period pieces about music’s potential for social transformation, overcoming prejudices or conventions, and making a new world. Continue Reading...

Tetris and the Birth of an Obsession

It may be hard to picture now, when American children spend seemingly every waking hour absorbed in Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube, but once upon a time the country’s youth contented themselves with activities that did not involve gazing into tiny screens—you know, riding bikes, throwing around a football, jumping rope. Continue Reading...

Fidel Castro’s Failed Paradise

Six decades after its celebrated communist revolution, Cuba remains a totem for America’s left. Yet the country is imploding into irrelevance. Fidel Castro is dead and Raul Castro is retired, but their successors rule as if 1989 had never occurred. Continue Reading...

The Manchurian Candidate Is a Neglected Masterpiece

In 1959, when Richard Condon published his political thriller The Manchurian Candidate, he took a topical idea and ran amok with it. The idea was that during the Korean War a platoon of GIs had been captured by the Chinese, brainwashed (“not just washed, but dry-cleaned”), and released back home to do the enemy’s bidding. Continue Reading...

Remember the Cold War’s Witness

It was 70 years ago, 1952, that Whittaker Chambers published his memoir, Witness. It was a bestseller with a major impact, including on a future president who, more than any other figure, defeated the country that Chambers once served, winning the Cold War. Continue Reading...

Lenin’s ugly legacy of identity politics

“I broke sharply with all questions of religion,” said Vladimir Lenin, with typical vituperation. “I took off my cross and threw it in the rubbish bin.” Such was a metaphor for the dark turn made by Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, who came to be known by an alias, “Lenin.” Continue Reading...

Xi Jinping manipulates history on his way to a third term

China’s Xi Jinping has already served longer than any U.S. president other than Franklin Delano Roosevelt. And Xi is likely to pass FDR in just a couple years. The Chinese president and Chinese Communist Party general secretary has secured the support necessary for a third term—expected to be followed by a fourth and even fifth one, should Xi, currently 68, live long enough. Continue Reading...