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Fear Of Mirrors
{{Use dmy dates, date=April 2022 ''Fear of Mirrors'' is a novel by Tariq Ali published in 1998. The story is set in Germany after 1990 German reunification. While Germany may be reunited, the life of former East German dissident Vladimir Meyer has fallen apart. His wife has deserted him. He has been fired from his university for being a Marxist. His son, Karl, is now a moderate, up-and-coming Social Democrat. In the pages of this political meditation, Vladimir tries to discover whether his father was really Ludwik, the famous Communist spy purged at the time of the Hitler-Stalin pact of 1939. The question has gained urgency since Vladimir learned that his mother was an informer for the Russians for years and spied even on him. Ali folds his drama around the tight, cult-like atmosphere of Communist Party life, peopled by idealists who find their lives encumbered by betrayals, power grabs and corruption and who, in the post-communist era, must come to terms with their complicit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Novel
A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives from the for "new", "news", or "short story of something new", itself from the la, novella, a singular noun use of the neuter plural of ''novellus'', diminutive of ''novus'', meaning "new". Some novelists, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Ann Radcliffe, John Cowper Powys, preferred the term "romance" to describe their novels. According to Margaret Doody, the novel has "a continuous and comprehensive history of about two thousand years", with its origins in the Ancient Greek and Roman novel, in Chivalric romance, and in the tradition of the Italian renaissance novella.Margaret Anne Doody''The True Story of the Novel'' New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996, rept. 1997, p. 1. Retrieved 25 April 2014. The ancient romance form was revived by Romanticism, especially the histori ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tariq Ali
Tariq Ali (; born 21 October 1943) is a Pakistani-British political activist, writer, journalist, historian, filmmaker, and public intellectual. He is a member of the editorial committee of the ''New Left Review'' and ''Sin Permiso'', and contributes to ''The Guardian'', ''CounterPunch'', and the ''London Review of Books''. He read Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at Exeter College, Oxford. He is the author of many books, including ''Pakistan: Military Rule or People's Power'' (1970), ''Can Pakistan Survive? The Death of a State'' (1983), ''Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads and Modernity'' (2002), ''Bush in Babylon'' (2003), ''Conversations with Edward Said'' (2005), ''Pirates of the Caribbean: Axis Of Hope'' (2006), ''A Banker for All Seasons'' (2007), ''The Duel'' (2008), ''The Obama Syndrome'' (2010), and '' The Extreme Centre: A Warning'' (2015). Early life Ali was born and raised in Lahore, Punjab in British India (later part of Pakistan). He is the son of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
German Reunification
German reunification (german: link=no, Deutsche Wiedervereinigung) was the process of re-establishing Germany as a united and fully sovereign state, which took place between 2 May 1989 and 15 March 1991. The day of 3 October 1990 when the German Reunification Treaty entered into force dissolving the German Democratic Republic (GDR; german: link=no, Deutsche Demokratische Republik, DDR, or East Germany) and integrating its recently re-established constituent federated states into the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG; german: link=no, Bundesrepublik Deutschland, BRD, or West Germany) to form present-day Germany, has been chosen as the customary ''German Unity Day'' () and has thereafter been celebrated each year from 1991 as a national holiday. East and West Berlin were united into a single city and eventually became the capital of reunited Germany. The East Germany's government led by the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) (a communist party) started to falter on 2 May 1 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dissident
A dissident is a person who actively challenges an established Political system, political or Organized religion, religious system, doctrine, belief, policy, or institution. In a religious context, the word has been used since the 18th century, and in the political sense since the 20th century, coinciding with the rise of authoritarian governments in countries such as Fascist Italy (1922-43), Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, Empire of Japan, Imperial Japan, Francoist Spain, the Soviet Union (and later Russia), Saudi Arabia, North Korea, Iran, China, and Turkmenistan. In the Western world, there are historical examples of people who have been considered and have considered themselves dissidents, such as the Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza. In totalitarian countries, dissidents are often incarcerated or executed without explicit political accusations, or due to infringements of the very same laws they are opposing, or because they are supporting civil liberties such as freedom of speech. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marxist
Marxism is a Left-wing politics, left-wing to Far-left politics, far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a Materialism, materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand Social class, class relations and social conflict and a dialectical perspective to view social transformation. It originates from the works of 19th-century German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. As Marxism has developed over time into various branches and schools of thought, no single, definitive Marxist philosophy, Marxist theory exists. In addition to the schools of thought which emphasize or modify elements of classical Marxism, various Marxian concepts have been incorporated and adapted into a diverse array of Social theory, social theories leading to widely varying conclusions. Alongside Marx's critique of political economy, the defining characteristics of Marxism have often been described using the terms dialectical mater ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Social Democrat
Social democracy is a Political philosophy, political, Social philosophy, social, and economic philosophy within socialism that supports Democracy, political and economic democracy. As a policy regime, it is described by academics as advocating Economic interventionism, economic and social interventions to promote social justice within the framework of a liberal-democratic polity and a capitalist-oriented mixed economy. The protocols and norms used to accomplish this involve a commitment to Representative democracy, representative and participatory democracy, measures for income redistribution, regulation of the economy in the Common good, general interest, and social welfare provisions. Due to longstanding governance by social democratic parties during the post-war consensus and their influence on socioeconomic policy in Northern and Western Europe, social democracy became associated with Keynesianism, the Nordic model, the social-liberal paradigm, and welfare states within po ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ignace Reiss
Ignace Reiss (1899 – 4 September 1937) – also known as "Ignace Poretsky," "Ignatz Reiss," "Ludwig," "Ludwik", "Hans Eberhardt," "Steff Brandt," Nathan Poreckij, and "Walter Scott (an officer of the U.S. military intelligence)" – was one of the "Great Illegals" or Soviet spies who worked in third party countries where they were not nationals in the late 1920s and 1930s. He was known as a nevozvrashchenec ("unreturnable"). An NKVD team assassinated him on 4 September 1937 near Lausanne, Switzerland, a few weeks after he declared his defection in a letter addressed to Joseph Stalin.Pg 457 - - Total pages: 511 He was a lifelong friend of Walter Krivitsky; his assassination influenced the timing and method of Whittaker Chambers' defection a few months later. Background Reiss was born Nathan Markovich Poreckij in 1899 in Podwołoczyska (today Pidvolochysk), then in Galicia, Austria-Hungary (now Ukraine). His mother was a Lithuanian Jew but his father was ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact
, long_name = Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , image = Bundesarchiv Bild 183-H27337, Moskau, Stalin und Ribbentrop im Kreml.jpg , image_width = 200 , caption = Stalin and Ribbentrop shaking hands after the signing of the pact in the Kremlin , type = , date_drafted = , date_signed = , location_signed = Moscow, Soviet Union , date_sealed = , date_effective = , condition_effective = , date_expiration = 23 August 1949(planned)22 June 1941( terminated)30 July 1941( officially declared null and void) , signatories = Joachim von Ribbentrop Vyacheslav Molotov , parties = , depositor = , languages = , wikisource = Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact was a non-aggression pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union that enabled those powers to partition Poland between them. The pact was signed in Moscow on 23 August 1939 by German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Communist Party
A communist party is a political party that seeks to realize the socio-economic goals of communism. The term ''communist party'' was popularized by the title of ''The Manifesto of the Communist Party'' (1848) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. As a vanguard party, the communist party guides the political education and development of the working class (proletariat). As a ruling party, the communist party exercises power through the dictatorship of the proletariat. Vladimir Lenin developed the idea of the communist party as the revolutionary vanguard, when the socialist movement in Imperial Russia was divided into ideologically opposed factions, the Bolshevik faction ("of the majority") and the Menshevik faction ("of the minority"). To be politically effective, Lenin proposed a small vanguard party managed with democratic centralism which allowed centralized command of a disciplined cadre of professional revolutionaries. Once a policy was agreed upon, realizing political goals req ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stalinism
Stalinism is the means of governing and Marxist-Leninist policies implemented in the Soviet Union from 1927 to 1953 by Joseph Stalin. It included the creation of a one-party totalitarian police state, rapid industrialization, the theory of socialism in one country, collectivization of agriculture, intensification of class conflict, a cult of personality, and subordination of the interests of foreign communist parties to those of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, deemed by Stalinism to be the leading vanguard party of communist revolution at the time. After Stalin's death and the Khrushchev thaw, de-Stalinization began in the 1950s and 1960s, which caused the influence of Stalin’s ideology begin to wane in the USSR. The second wave of de-Stalinization started during Mikhail Gorbachev’s Soviet Glasnost. Stalin's regime forcibly purged society of what it saw as threats to itself and its brand of communism (so-called "enemies of the people"), which included ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Novels By Tariq Ali
A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives from the for "new", "news", or "short story of something new", itself from the la, novella, a singular noun use of the neuter plural of ''novellus'', diminutive of ''novus'', meaning "new". Some novelists, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Ann Radcliffe, John Cowper Powys, preferred the term "romance" to describe their novels. According to Margaret Doody, the novel has "a continuous and comprehensive history of about two thousand years", with its origins in the Ancient Greek and Roman novel, in Chivalric romance, and in the tradition of the Italian renaissance novella.Margaret Anne Doody''The True Story of the Novel'' New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996, rept. 1997, p. 1. Retrieved 25 April 2014. The ancient romance form was revived by Romanticism, especially th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
