History

The Russian Revolution and the Challenge to Liberty

ABSTRACT

Conferees explored the history of the Russian Revolution and the nature of the challenges to individual liberty it posed.

READING LIST

From Liberty Fund

Socialism

by By Ludwig von Mises
Translated by J. Kahane
Foreword by F. A. Hayek

More than thirty years ago F. A. Hayek said of Socialism: “It was a work on political economy in the tradition of the great moral philosophers, a Montesquieu or Adam Smith, containing both acute knowledge and profound wisdom. . . . To none of us young men who read the…

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Additional Readings

Lenin, V. I. “What is to be done?”

Petition Prepared for Presentation to Nicholas II, 9 January 1905 (Bloody Sunday).

Lenin, V. I. "Lenin’s Statement of Bolshevik Demands, 24 October 1917." http://www.firstworldwar.com.

The Soviet of People’s Commissars Decree. “Economic Apparatus” and “Abolition of Private Trade.” November 21, 1918.

The Supreme Council of National Economy decree. “Administration of Nationalized Industry.” March 3, 1918.

All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Fighting Counter-Revolution and Sabotage. “Establishment of the Cheka,” “In a People’s Court,” “Terror and its Defense,” and “Food Riots and Programs”.

Soviet Nationalities Policy. “Central Authorities for Nationalities Policy,” “Declaration of Rights of the Peoples of Russia,” and “Stalin on the Limitation of National Self-Determination”.

Brown, Archie. The Rise and Fall of Communism. New York: HarperCollins, 2009.

Figes, Orlando. Revolutionary Russia, 1891-1991: A History. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2014.

Goldman, Emma. My Disillusionment in Russia. Mineola and New York: Dover Publications, 2003.

Kolakowski, Leszek. Main Currents of Marxism: The Founders – The Golden Age – The Breakdown. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2008.

Lenin, V. I. “Lenin on the Organization of an Extraordinary Commission to Fight Counter-Revolution.” http://soviethistory.msu.edu. http://soviethistory.msu.edu/1917-2/state-security/ (April 6, 2017).

Pipes, Richard. The Formation of the Soviet Union. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997.

Reed, John. Ten Days that Shook the World. New York: Penguin Classics, 2007.

Richman, Sheldon L. “War Communism to NEP: The Road from Serfdom.” The Journal of Libertarian Studies V, no. 1 (Winter 1981): 89-97.

Ryan, James. “The Sacralization of Violence: Bolshevik Justifications for Violence and Terror during the Civil War.” Slavic Review 74, no. 4 (Winter 2015): 808-831.

Sanborn, Joshua A. Imperial Apocalypse: The Great War and the Destruction of the Russian Empire (The Greater War). New York: Oxford University Press, 2015.

Service, Robert. Comrades: A History of World Communism. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010.