Kurt Johansson: Aleksej Gastev: Proletarian Bard of the Machine Age (1983)

This book attempts to give an outline of Aleksej Gastev’s life and works primarily up until 1920.

Aleksej Gastev (1882-1941?) belonged to the Russian proletarian intelligent­sia. He was an active revolutionary, a journalist with syndicalist leanings, a metal-worker and trade-union leader, and one of the best proletarian poets. In later years he became perhaps the most important champion of the Taylor system and scientific management in Russia; as the founder and leader of the Institute of Labour (CIT) in Moscow he trained hundreds of thousands of new workers for Soviet industry. In 1938 he fell a victim to the Stalinist terror.

Besides presenting his biography, the present study tries to trace the development of Gastev’s Utopian ideas about the creation of a New Man suited to the industrial society of the future. In his articles and poems the worker is so Intimately fused with machines that he adopts their rhythm and functional movements, himself becoming “mechanical”. One chapter is specially devoted to Gastev’s poetry, the collection Poézija rabočego udara (“The Poetry of the Factory Floor”). Four prose poems are analyzed in detail. These describe the future development of the proletariat, and also show how Gastev ‘s manner of writing gradually becomes a kind of “Taylorized” poetry, that has been strongly influenced by futurism.

Publisher Almqvist & Wiksell International, Stockholm, 1983
Stockholm Studies in Russian Literature series
ISBN 9122006141
170 pages

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Magnus Ljunggren: The Russian Mephisto: A Study of the Life and Work of Emilii Medtner (1994)

Emilii (Emil) Medtner is an undeservedly forgotten key figure in early twentieth-century European culture. He had a central position in the Russian Symbolist movement, where he made it his mission to bind the young writers (especially Andrei Belyi) closer to German literature, philosophy, and music. After the out­break of World War I he moved to Zurich, where he became a patient, friend, and—later—colleague of Carl Gustav Jung. Through his unique Russian experi­ence he confirmed and corroborated vital aspects of Jung’s new psychological the­ory. As his role of intermediary demonstrates, there is a strong kinship between Russian Symbolism and Jungian analytical psychology. The letters and most of the photographs in this volume have never been published before.

Almqvist & Wiksell, Stockholm, 1994
Stockholm Studies in Russian Literature series, Vol. 27
ISBN 9122016562
240 pp

Review (Avril Pyman, The Slavonic and East European Review)

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Martin Duberman: Howard Zinn: A Life on the Left (2012)

“Howard Zinn was perhaps the best-known and most widely celebrated popular interpreter of American history in the twentieth century, renowned as a bestselling author, a political activist, a lecturer, and one of America’s most recognizable and admired progressive voices.

His rich, complicated, and fascinating life placed Zinn at the heart of the signal events of modern American history—from the battlefields of World War II to the McCarthy era, the civil rights and the antiwar movements, and beyond. A bombardier who later renounced war, a son of working-class parents who earned a doctorate at Columbia, a white professor who taught at the historically black Spelman College in Atlanta, a committed scholar who will be forever remembered as a devoted “people’s historian,” Howard Zinn blazed a bold, iconoclastic path through the turbulent second half of the twentieth century.

For the millions who were moved by Zinn’s personal example of political engagement and by his inspiring “bottom up” history, here is an authoritative biography of this towering figure—by Martin Duberman, recipient of the American Historical Association’s 2007 Lifetime Achievement Award. Given exclusive access to the previously closed Zinn archives, Duberman’s impeccably researched biography is illustrated with never-before-published photos from the Zinn family collection. Howard Zinn: A Life on the Left is a major publishing event that brings to life one of the most inspiring figures of our time.”

Publisher The New Press, 2012
ISBN 1595586784, 9781595586780
365 pages

Review (Michael Kammen, Los Angeles Review of Books)
Review (David Greenberg, New Republic)

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