From Stalin to Mao: Albania and the Socialist World
When:
—
Venue:
Senate House
No booking required
The Centre for the Study of Internationalism (Birkbeck) and the Rethinking Modern Europe seminar series (IHR) will host Dr Elidor Mëhilli (Assistant Professor of History, Hunter College of the City University of New York) to launch his book, From Stalin to Mao: Albania and the Socialist World. The evening will see Dr Mëhilli introduce his book with a short lecture, followed by discussion led by Alessandro Iandolo (University of Oxford) and Julia Lovell (Birkbeck). This will be followed by a drinks reception.
Elidor Mëhilli has produced a groundbreaking history of communist Albania that illuminates one of Europe's longest but least understood dictatorships. From Stalin to Mao, which is informed throughout by Mëhilli's unprecedented access to previously restricted archives, captures the powerful globalism of post-1945 socialism, as well as the unintended consequences of cross-border exchanges from the Mediterranean to East Asia.
"For the first time, a source-based history of Communist Albania, the little eastern European country that defied, first, its Yugoslav neighbours, then its Soviet sponsors, and finally its Chinese protectors, only in order to build, by its own efforts, one of the world's most sectarian and cruel Stalinist dictatorships. It is a remarkable tale, well told in this book." - OA Westad, Harvard University, author of The Cold War.