TO OVERTHROW THE WORLD

A wide-ranging examination of how the concept of communism was a key driver of the conflicts of the 20th century—and remains a significant force.

McMeekin, author of such acclaimed books as Stalin’s War, July 1914, and The Ottoman Endgame, traces the arc of communism through early Marxist theory to the rise of the Soviet Union, followed by China and a series of smaller entities. The ideological path ran from utopian idealism to state control and then totalitarianism, with the most awful expression being the bloody Year Zero experiment in Cambodia, in which communism “was reduced to its essentials, as a negation of everything existing, a war of the young on the old, a social leveling of society down to equality in abject poverty and misery.” McMeekin identifies the late 1970s as the high-water mark, but the rot of corruption and stagnation had set in, and the collapse was remarkably quick. The author is unquestionably knowledgeable about his subject, but much of this information has been covered in such books as Richard Pipes’ Communism and Archie Brown’s The Rise and Fall of Communism, among numerous others. McMeekin provides more focused discussions of individual nations—especially China—that have abandoned the central tenets while retaining the mechanisms of state control. He asserts that these countries are still communist, but he is selective with the facts to fit his argument. In the closing pages, he notes the rise of authoritarian thinking in democratic countries, with “modern-day thought commissars.” “Far from dead,” he writes, “Communism as a governing template seems only to be getting started,” which feels like a definitional sleight of hand. Perhaps the author will explore this subject further in future work, but the current book is a look backward down a well-traveled road.

McMeekin assembles an impressive body of research but struggles to find a new perspective.