Articles tagged as Communism | Smithsonian Magazine

How Mary Hemingway and JFK Got Ernest Hemingway’s Legacy Out of Cuba

1961, the year Hemingway died, was a complicated year for U.S.-Cuba relations

August 25, 2017

Dalton Trumbo was one of the "Hollywood 10" who were arrested for refusing to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee. He was later blacklisted from working in the industry.

The Columnist Who Shaped Hollywood’s Most Destructive Witch Hunt

Billy Wilkerson’s complicated legacy has only been recently discussed by the magazine he founded

July 28, 2017

Sacco and Vanzetti were anarchists at a time when that movement was very different than it is today.

The Biggest Trial of the 1920s Continues to Resonate

Sacco and Vanzetti were on trial for their Italianness and their political leanings as much as for their alleged crimes

July 14, 2017

China has yet to acknowledge the Tienanmen Square massacre, but a museum in Hong Kong still keeps the incident's memory alive.

For some, the museum is the first time they confront information about the 1989 massacre

May 3, 2017

Alexander Kerensky, as Minister of War, meets with other military officials.

World War I: 100 Years Later

In a Czar-less Russia, Winning Was Easy. Governing Was Harder.

Now without a sovereign, Russia’s provisional government sought to maintain peace at home while waging a world war

April 13, 2017

Hitler used the Reichstag fire in 1933 to seize almost unlimited power.

History of Now

The True Story of the Reichstag Fire and the Nazi Rise to Power

When the German parliamentary building went up in flames, Hitler harnessed the incident to seize power

February 21, 2017

Romanians protest in Victoria Place in Bucharest on January 22.

Up to half a million citizens protested a new decree that would have diminished anti-corruption penalties

February 7, 2017

Trapped between nationalism and documentation, a Polish museum grapples with how to tell its story

January 25, 2017

Thatcher visits with President Bush in Aspen, Colorado in 1990 during a diplomatic reception. News of her resignation lit up diplomatic channels around the world.

The Iron Lady glistens in newly released papers about her last years as Prime Minister

December 30, 2016

President Boris Yeltsin hands over a copy of the Russian constitution to Vladimir Putin, December 21, 1999.

In the 25 years since the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia has changed dramatically—and it’s more important than ever to understand those changes

December 29, 2016

Poland's Sjem, or lower house of parliament, was the site of a recent showdown on press freedoms.

Trending Today

Poland Has Lifted Its Media Ban

It’s the latest in an ongoing saga about press freedoms in the populist-led country

December 21, 2016

The Romanov family between 1913 and 1914. Alexei is seated in front.

Russian Revolution

What You Need to Know First to Understand the Russian Revolution

Read this first in a series of columns chronicling what led to that 1917 cataclysm

November 28, 2016

The Great Hall of the People in Beijing is now on a 20th-century cultural preservation list in China.

A country with an uneasy relationship to its past will preserve 98 buildings of the 20th century for future generations

October 17, 2016

Scores of lives were lost while building the 816 Nuclear Plant, a long-abandoned nuclear project now open to the public.

Cool Finds

Tour the World’s Biggest Manmade Cave in China

The 816 Nuclear Plant stands as a reminder of a paranoid past

October 5, 2016

Is Europe Returning to Pre Cold War Divisions?

Author Robert D. Kaplan notes the beginnings of a complex map, caused by Russian revisionism, the refugee crisis and a structural economic crisis in the EU

May 9, 2016

The Slovak Radio Building, an inverted pyramid completed in 1983, has been called “one of the ugliest buildings in the world.” Recording studios at the center are surrounded by outward-facing offices. Its heavy weight and rough texture seem to capture the grim, waning years of Communist Party rule.

Is Bratislava’s Communist-Era Architecture Worth Preserving?

For residents of Slovakia’s capital, Cold War structures recall a painful past

April 22, 2016

It’s hard to topple a 66-foot statue—or contend with the symbols of Ukraine’s communist past

March 18, 2016

Slogans like the one on this propaganda poster for Mao Zedong, "Urgently Forge Ahead and Bravely Advance with Great Leader Chairman Mao,” take on a new smell now that it’s revealed that Stalin may have studied his poop.

Get a whiff of this stranger-than-fiction story of political paranoia and Soviet science

January 29, 2016

A work by Pavel Ilie at the Romania Postmodernism Museum's "Before & After" exhibition.

Cool Finds

This Postmodern Art Captures a Tiny Moment of Hope During Romania’s Communist Years

Learn about Romania’s “unfrozen years” at Bucharest’s Postmodernism Museum

January 15, 2016

A gold-painted statue of Chairman Mao has been erected in a remote part of central China.

Cool Finds

Chinese Capitalists Built a Gigantic, Golden Statue of Chairman Mao

Like the Chairman’s legacy, this 121-foot statue is hard to ignore

January 6, 2016