Brooklyn Dodgers President Branch Rickey liked to take credit for breaking the color barrier. In truth, it was the culmination of a long campaign waged by the left wing press and labor unions.
Günter Schabowski’s press conference in November 1989 helped trigger the collapse of the Berlin wall. Was it really as much of an accident as we like to think?
South Africa is far from being the non-racial, classless society envisaged by 1970s activists.
Reuters/Alessandro Bianchi
The egalitarian society envisioned by political activists and thinkers Rick Turner and Steve Biko has not been realised. But, they continue to inspire critiques of post-apartheid South Africa.
Back in 1965, bodies of victims of the anti-communist massacre floated along the Brantas River in Kediri East Java.
Wibowo Djatmiko/Wikimedia Commons
In a watershed moment for Indonesia’s history, the deadly 1965 anti-communist purge transformed Indonesia from an independent Asian nation in the midst of Cold War into a pro-Western country.
South African Communist Party general secretary and South Africa’s higher education minister Blade Nzimande addresses the party’s 3rd special congress in Soweto in June.
Sowetan/Vathiswa Ruselo
The SACP is the oldest communist party in Africa, formed in 1921. It is one of only 20 parties which survived the anti-communist purge post independence. Its membership went through cycles over years.
When Australians hear about Foreign Minister Julie Bishop’s dire warnings and counter-terrorism raids, they could lose historical perspective on the threat posed by Islamic State.
AAP/Mal Fairclough
Dire government warnings and counter-terrorism raids in our suburbs paint a picture of the worst threat Western nations have ever faced. A little historical perspective is in order.
Robert Menzies meets the US defence secretary, Robert McNamara, at the Pentagon in 1964, the year before committing Australia to the escalating war.
Wikimedia Commons/PHC/Ralph Seghers
The anniversary of Menzies’ fateful decision to commit troops to the escalating war in Vietnam marks a turning point that is at least as significant as the Gallipoli landings for Australia today.
The release of a documentary film in the Czech Republic earlier this year caused much controversy. It is about a dissident named Pavel Wonka who fought against the totalitarian regime in Communist Czechoslovakia…
Gently overthrowing an oppressive regime in 1989.
Irmojohnny
At the top of Wencelas Square on the front of the Czech National Museum in Prague hangs a giant poster depicting the playwright dissident and former president Vaclav Havel. The poster has been hung, in…
Pope Francis argues that the poor are at the heart of the Gospel and it’s the communists who have ‘stolen the flag’.
EPA/Nicola Lanese
A blog in The Economist recently accused Pope Francis of following the founder of the Soviet Union, Vladimir Lenin, in adopting an “ultra-radical line” on capitalism. The blog, “Francis, capitalism and…
In Warsaw, a newly unveiled memorial puts freedom of speech at the heart of Poland’s liberation from communism.
Aleksandra Hadzelek
“It all started with a word,” said Polish president Bronislaw Komorowski at the opening of a memorial to freedom of speech, “and the word was ‘freedom’”. The event completed three days of commemorations…
Mexico’s Zapatistas are one of the world’s longest running active revolutionary groups. But who are they, and what are they fighting for?
EPA/Jorge Núñez
On New Year’s Day 1994, the world was taken by surprise. A group of indigenous people staged a rebellion against a Mexican state that had continued the trajectory of racism, neglect, genocide and exploitation…
Not-so-great wall: Maoism was alive and well in 1970s London.
EarthOwned
The couple accused in the case of alleged “domestic slavery” in London were reportedly the leaders of a tiny Maoist sect, the Workers’ Institute of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought, which had gone “underground…
A United States Air Force RF-101 Voodoo aircraft pilot photographs a Russian ship loaded with missiles while the aircraft itself casts a shadow in Port Casilda, Cuba, Nov. 6, 1962.
EPA/Defense Imagery
Fifty years ago, the United States and the Soviet Union stood on the brink of nuclear war over Soviet missiles in Cuba. Since then, the Cuban Missile Crisis has been recognised as one of the most definitive…