The Russian Revolution and the Unfinished Twentieth Century

One hundred years after the outbreak of World War I and the Russian Revolution, none of the problems of the twentieth century—devastating wars, economic crises, social inequality, and the threat of dictatorship—have been solved. In fact, they are posed even more sharply today. David North argues against contemporary historians who maintain that the dissolution of the USSR signaled the “end of history” (Fukuyama), or the “short twentieth century”(Hobsbawm). Disputing postmodernism’s view that all history is merely subjective “narrative,” North insists that a thorough materialist knowledge of history is vital for humanity’s survival in the twenty-first century.