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MAYER WAKEFIELD is chilled by the co-dependency of two lost souls as portrayed by German communist playwright Franz Xaver Kroetz
The political advantage of an anti-war position
GAVIN O’TOOLE applauds a uniquely nuanced people’s history of the revolutionary period, told from below
The Star's critics BRETT GREGORY, JOHN GREEN, MICHAEL BONCZA and ANGUS REID review The Stimming Pool, Misericordia, La Cocina, Irena’s Vow, and The End
CHRIS MOSS welcomes a radical history that brings marginalised stories and overlooked people and agencies to the centre
ANDREW HEDGECOCK relishes visual storytelling with no respect for genres, movements or styles
MARK TURNER is staggered by a gifted jazz pianist from the Welsh Valleys
JESSICA WIDNER explores how the twin themes of violence and love run through the novels of South Korean Nobel prize-winner Han Kang
SARAH TROTT explores short fictional slices of life in the American midwest from a middle-aged and mostly female perspective
Blood on the Snow: The Russian Revolution 1914-1924
Robert Service, Picador, £30
REFERENCES abound to similarities between the current geopolitical context — a combustible mixture of warmongering by corrupt elites, resentful nationalism, and brooding popular discontent — and circumstances on the eve of WWI.
Bellicose politicians today banging the war drums as a distraction would, therefore, do well to revisit the starkest lesson to emerge from a period during which a gasping Europe was drowned in a cauldron of blood.
The defining event of that era was not the Treaty of Versailles, but the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk — the separate peace agreed between the new Bolshevik government of Soviet Russia and the Central Powers.
More from this author
While the group known as the Colourists certainly reinvigorated Scottish painting, a new show is a welcome chance to reassess them, writes ANGUS REID
ANGUS REID recommends an exquisite drama about the disturbing impact of the one child policy in contemporary China
The phrase “cruel to be kind” comes from Hamlet, but Shakespeare’s Prince didn’t go in for kidnap, explosive punches, and cigarette deprivation. Tam is different.
ANGUS REID deconstructs a popular contemporary novel aimed at a ‘queer’ young adult readership
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SAM BROWSE examines how Lenin’s analysis remains relevant for confronting modern challenges of inequality, climate change and rising fascism ahead of an important discussion with the acclaimed historian and activist Paul le Blanc
The reliance on political parties to bring about socialist change in Britain has proved a total failure says FAWZI IBRAHIM. Time for the true representatives of the working class, the trade unions, to take a direct role in asserting their will on the government of the day
STEVE ANDREW relishes a history of Lenin’s childhood and adolescence that gives a useful insight his personality
ANDREW MURRAY recommends two titles that popularise Lenin as a person and revolutionary theoretician and practitioner