In a major reassessment of their work, Evgeny Steiner forcefully demonstrates that the Constructivists were as committed to implementing Utopia - regardless of the human cost - as their establishment counterparts."--BOOK JACKET.

Small Comrades is a fascinating examination of Soviet conceptions of childhood and the resulting policies directed toward children. Working on the assumption that cultural representations and self-representations are not entirely separable, this book probes how the Soviet regime's representations structured teachers' observations of their pupils and often adults' recollections of their childhood. The book draws on work that has been done on Soviet schooling, and focuses specifically on the development of curricula and institutions, but it also examines the wider context of the relationship between the family and the state, and to the Bolshevik vision of the "children of October"

Luanda, Angola, 1990. Ndalu is a normal twelve-year old boy in an extraordinary time and place. Like his friends, he enjoys laughing at his teachers, avoiding homework and telling tall tales. But Ndalu's teachers are Cuban, his homework assignments include writing essays on the role of the workers and peasants, and the tall tales he and his friends tell are about a criminal gang called Empty Crate which specializes in attacking schools. Ndalu is mystified by the family servant, Comrade Antonio, who thinks that Angola worked better when it was a colony of Portugal, and by his Aunt Dada, who lives in Portugal and doesn't know what a ration card is. In a charming voice that is completely original, Good Morning Comrades tells the story of a group of friends who create a perfect childhood in a revolutionary socialist country fighting a bitter war. But the world is changing around these children, and like all childhood's Ndalu's cannot last. An internationally acclaimed novel, already published in half a dozen countries, Good Morning Comrades is an unforgettable work of fiction by one of Africa's most exciting young writers.

Little Comrades tells the story of a girl growing up in a dysfunctional left-wing family in the Canadian West during the Depression, then moving, alone with her mother, to New York City during America's fervently anti-Communist postwar years. With wit and honesty, Laurie Lewis describes an unusual childhood and an adventurous adolescence.

This book is a portrait of the Petaluma Jewish community from the early years of the century to the present day. Kenneth L. Kann interviewed more than two hundred residents, representing three generations of Jewish Americans. The picture that emerges from their testimony is of a wonderfully animated and fractious community. Its history blends many of the familiar themes of American Jewish life into a richly individual tapestry. In the first few decades of this century, many Jewish immigrants from Russia and Eastern Europe wound up in Petaluma. This first generation of chicken farmers consisted largely of educated, often professional men and women; many were drawn to chicken farming as much by Marxist or Zionist beliefs in the dignity of labor as by economic necessity. They helped establish the particular character of a community, with its combination of arduous work and cultural aspiration.

Describes how, despite the attempts by authorities to censor their voices, ordinary users and political dissidents in Cuba, China, and Russia have created blogs which expose government abuses and the injustices occurring in everyday life.