Smith's introduction to The History of Communism. In common with other recent studies of international communism, Smith--whose focus in a wide ranging volume is communism in power--notes that the Bolsheviks understood the October Revolution of 1917 as 'inaugurating a new stage in human history, the beginning of the transition from capitalism, a system they believed was based on exploitation, inequality, and war, to communism'.

Yet, despite these new biographically informed insights in the culture of communism and the states it ruled over, we still know more about the political history of the Comintern and its 'national sections'.

Tauno Saarela's review of literature on Scandinavian communism not only helps us break through the language barrier, but also shows how a relatively under-researched region--usually associated with social democracy--fits into the wider historiography.

Smith, 'Introduction: Towards a Global History of Communism', in Stephen A Smith (ed), The Oxford Handbook of Communism, Oxford: OUP, 2014, p.1.

* What did the communism in anti-communism stand for?

* What alternative to communism did the anti-communist stand for?

* How far was communism conceived more as internal or as external threat--and what was the relation between them?

* Did the strength of anti-communism correspond to the challenge actually posed by communism? Aristotle said that to secure the interest of the polity one had 'to invent fears and bring distant dangers near'.

Communism itself represented both the promise of emancipation and its betrayal.

Naturally, the communism of the anarchists was voluntary and anti-statist.

In any case, the important thing is to underline the anti-communism of the anarcho-collectivists, who saw all forms of communism as leading to disaster.

Thanks are also due to the new Communism Specialist Group of the Political Studies Association of the UK, which funded the Manchester event from which much of this material is drawn, with additional support from the universities of Durham and Manchester.

Finally, this is the first issue of Twentieth Century Communism to appear on its new twice-yearly basis.

The second, appearing in May 2010, will focus on communism and political violence, and any enquiries concerning this issue should be addressed to Matthew Worley.

In this founding issue, we are especially grateful to Peter Beilharz, Kevin McDermott and Bernhard Bayerlein for their wide-ranging and provocative responses to the broader question, 'why write the history of twentieth-century communism'.