Word: communisme
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COMMUNISM by Vivian Gornick; Basic Books; 265 pages...
Vivian Gornick takes a considerably more dramatic-indeed romantic-view of what she calls the "romance" of American Communism: "Marxism was for those who became Communists what Helen was for Paris. Once encountered, in the compelling persona of the Communist Party, the ideology set in motion the most intense longings." These, writes Gornick, became a consuming passion, "that was in its very essence both compellingly humanizing and then compellingly dehumanizing...
...Gornick's women have some of the most fervent lines, it is probably because Communism offered them an occupation other than household drudgery. But not always. One party wife, weary of feeding her husband's comrades, finally exploded...
...this house. " The author acknowledges that her book grew out of her own intense commitment to feminism. Until the late '60s, she says portentously, "I was profoundly depoliticized, unable to see my own image reflected in the history of my times." As reflected in The Romance of American Communism, that image is sympathetic, generous but not clearly focused. She takes the complexities of idealism and motivation and submerges them into a provocative simile for destructive sexual desire. Even the selected evidence of her own interviews cannot adequately support such a grand moral vision...
Next day, when Rosalynn called on Catholic Primate Stefan Cardinal Wyszynski, a symbol of resistance to Communism, Polish-born Brzezinski did the translating. The President meantime laid a wreath at the Tomb of Poland's Unknown Soldier, as more than 500 people broke through police lines, shouting "Carter! Car-ter!" and "Niech zyje [long life]!" It was one of the few occasions when he had firsthand contact with ordinary Poles, many of whom regard him as a symbol of freedom because of his support for human rights. Later, when he placed flowers at the Nike (Greek for victory) monument...