Editor's Introduction

Abstract

With a stroke of the editorial pen renaming Kommunist as Svobodnaia mysl' (Free Thought), Communists have become free thinkers, or so the editors of the former theoretical journal of the CPSU Central Committee would like to imply in this issue's first selection. The article by Aleksandr Iusupovskii that follows "To Our Readers," while prepared before August 1991, prefigures the fact that, while this implied claim may be premature, it is no exaggeration to note that formerly Communist organs have never been more interesting to read or more independent and informative than since the failed putsch. Iusupovskii, criticizing Engels and Bukharin on the national question, offers a typology of nationalist movements and independent national states that is useful in understanding post-Communist developments in the former Soviet Union. In the next article in this issue, one of the journal's editors, A. Razumov, proclaims the need for a "left-wing democratic" opposition to Yeltsin, calling on the journal to define the principles of such a leftist movement. Added to the editorial board since that time have been Aleksandr N. Yakovlev, Roald Sagdeev, Vitalii Zhurkin, and even Acting Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar.