The Communist Manifesto and the Russian Revolution
O, sing me not that song again My lovely Nora, dear, The strong, the proud defiant strain It breaks my heart to hear. Charles J Kickham(*) 150 years on from the Communist Manifesto, the spectre that haunts the collective imagination of Europe and the world is not the looming prospect of communism, but the experience of "communism", that is, Stalinism. Ours is an age of disillusionment. We live in the time after the fall of "utopia". Not only is "utopia" discredited and abandoned, so also - and the two are connected - is much that went to make up the old liberal commitment to social progress...