Ideology

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Bernie’s Cold War: To Yaroslavl with Love

Posted on by Kevin Lavery Leave a comment
Last week, amid the upheaval in the Democratic primaries, the New York Times published a piece on the 1988 efforts of then-mayor Bernie Sanders to establish Burlington as a sister city to Yaroslavl in the Soviet Union. The headline, “As Bernie Sanders Pushed for Closer Ties, Soviet Union Spotted Opportunity,” sounds sinister, but the article […]... Read More
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Echoes in the Ivory Tower: The Second World Youth Congress and the Conflicts of Academia and Society

Posted on by Kevin Lavery Leave a comment
As the 2018-2019 academic year kicks off, I can’t help but think back to my May research trip to Vassar College. All last year, I had a tenuous relationship at best with my thesis work on the World Youth Congress Movement (1936-1939), confident of the project’s potential but confounded by how to assert the significance […]... Read More
And Now, Youth Ilma

Modern Youth, Remarkable Woman: The Life and Times of Viola Ilma

Posted on by Kevin Lavery 1 Comment
In the last two years, we’ve seen incredible political action undertaken by students and other young people. From the #Resistance to the #NoMore movement, Millennials have found themselves called into action to defend their future against the forces of reaction. Their work is not without precedent; America has a deep but often forgotten tradition of […]... Read More
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Making History, Marking History: The Great Anniversaries of 2018

Posted on by the Staff Leave a comment
To mark the first anniversary of Concerning History, we’re taking a look at some of the major historical moments being commemorated this year and providing some recommendations for further reading. There are plenty of other events out there worth marking, however, so if you have one you think we should have included, we invite you to scroll down to the comments and share it with us.... Read More
Youth Demands a Peaceful World

Infiltrated! Reds in the World Youth Congress

Posted on by Kevin Lavery Leave a comment
It’s been some time since I’ve written here about my research on the World Youth Congress Movement. I’m still chipping away and just got back from a trip to Amsterdam, Manchester, and London, where I was trawling around archives in search of evidence of the nature of the relationship between liberal internationalists and communist youth. […]... Read More
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Fascist Americas: It Can’t Happen in the High Castle

Posted on by Kevin Lavery 6 Comments
By some coincidence, I found myself immersed in two stories of alternate history this fall. Both imagined the hypothetical scenario of American democracy being hijacked by mid-twentieth-century fascism. The first was It Can’t Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis, a 1935 satirical novel in which the author asserts that it very much could happen here in […]... Read More