Towards a transnational communist history

TOWARDS A TRANSNATIONAL COMMUNIST HISTORY

Twentieth Century Communism day conference

University of Manchester, Friday 7 December 2012, 10.00-5.15

Given the professed internationalism of the communist movement, communist historiography has inevitably figured prominently in recent developments in transnational labour history. Much work has focused on the connection between national communist parties and the centre of world communism in Moscow. But researchers have also begun to explore less restricted conceptions of the transnational, whether through more sophisticated approaches to the concepts of national and international or through other forms of transnational association than those centring on Moscow. Through sessions on ‘Communism: national and national’ and Communism: exiles and diasporas’ this day conference presents recent work from both these perspectives.

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  Norman LaPorte (Glamorgan) Ernst Thälmann and the Making of a German Communist
  
• 
  Chris Holmsted Larsen (Roskilde) Danish cadres in the Comintern: Agents of international communism or vanguard of a national working class?
  
• 
  David Featherstone (Glasgow) African American volunteers in the Spanish Civil War
  
• 
  Adrià Llacuna (UAB) Spanish democracy at war against fascism: a militant experience of “new type” for British Communists
  
• 
  Alix Heiniger (Geneva) German communists in France and Switzerland during the Second World War
  
• 
  Shirin Hirsch (Manchester) Chileans in Britain: exile politics or communist internationalism?
  
• 
  José Neves (Lisbon, New University) The Foreign Road to Homeland - Notes from the History of Portuguese Communism
  
• 
  Josep Puigsech (UAB) The Communist International, Spanish communism in exile and the national question 1939-43
  

Thanks to generous support from the Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence, attendance at the conference is free but for catering purposes we do ask that you make sure to register in advance.
For further information (including confirmation of the venue) or to register for the conference please contact the organiser [e-mail]

http://www.lwbooks.co.uk/journals/twentiethcenturycommunism/contents.html