Resurrecting the Red: Pete Seeger and the Purifi cation of Diffi cult Reputations Th e fi ft h chapter addresses the question of how reputations that had once been under attack can be preserved. Today Pete Seeger is widely considered one of America’s most beloved folk singers. Yet, throughout much of his career, Seeger was an active and outspoken member of the Communist Party, even during its most brutal Stalinist years. How could this left ist activist, controversial in his early career, become so widely accepted and why were conservatives largely silent as his reputation became purifi ed? Aft er debates are judged concluded, political activists are no longer committed to revisiting them unless there is a clear gain

The gestation period of Marxism in Bulgaria before a Marxist party came into existence in 1891 is one of the least studied periods in the history of the Bulgarian Communist Party. In Bulgaria and the Soviet Union, where most of the work on BCP historiography has been done, attention has primarily, and understandably, gone to the activities of Dimitŭr Blagoev, the so-called father of Bulgarian Marxism, whose early career as propagandist and organizer of the new movement included a notable effort while he was a student at the University of St. Petersburg to form the first Marxist group in Russia. The story of the penetration and dissemination of Marxism in Bulgaria, however, is by no means exhausted with accounts of Blagoev's life to 1891. Yet, Bulgarian Marxist historians have done little to date to reconstruct this story in monographic investigations of the kind they have produced for other phases of their party's history. Of the general accounts they have produced, the best one, relatively speaking, is in the latestIstorita na Bŭlgarskata Komunisttcheska Partiia, which devotes fifteen pages (out of 699) to Blagoev's early activities and the party's prehistory, including the founding congress of 1891.

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Dong Xiwen (1914–1973)

Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism ◽

10.4324/9781135000356-rem417-1 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Yan Geng

Keyword(s):

Communist Party ◽

Fine Arts ◽

Radical Change ◽

Early Career ◽

People’S Republic Of China ◽

Political Art ◽

People's Republic Of China ◽

Republic Of China ◽

Communist China ◽

Creative Talent

Dong Xiwen [董希文] was a modern Chinese painter, whose art was widely appreciated in Communist China. Dong attended the National Academy of Arts in Hangzhou, and in his early career experimented with a diverse range of artistic styles and demonstrated great creative talent. His art underwent a radical change after the founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949. After moving to Beijing in the mid-1940s, Dong Xiwen began to make art in support of the Communist Party. He joined the Communist Party in 1949, and became one of the PRC’s most prominent painters, producing compelling paintings as part of state commissions while also teaching at the Central Academy of Fine Arts. His most famous commissioned work is The Founding of the Nation, commemorating the historical moment when Mao Zedong [毛泽东] proclaimed the People’s Republic of China atop of the Tiananmen gate in 1949. This painting was recognized as a model of new political art, not only articulating communist ideology, but also acting as an exemplar of nationalized oil painting. However, Dong was later forced to revise the painting twice, removing the disgraced figures from his monumental piece.

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The Social Origins and Provenance of the English Bishops during the Reign of Edward II

Transactions of the Royal Historical Society ◽

10.1017/s0080440100017540 ◽

1959 ◽

Vol 9 ◽

pp. 51-79

Author(s):

K. Edwards

Keyword(s):

Middle Ages ◽

Social Background ◽

Early Career ◽

The Political ◽

Social Origins ◽

Political Activities ◽

Edward Ii ◽

The Social ◽

Complete Study ◽

History Of

During the last twenty or twenty-five years medieval historians have been much interested in the composition of the English episcopate. A number of studies of it have been published on periods ranging from the eleventh to the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. A further paper might well seem superfluous. My reason for offering one is that most previous writers have concentrated on analysing the professional circles from which the bishops were drawn, and suggesting the influences which their early careers as royal clerks, university masters and students, secular or regular clergy, may have had on their later work as bishops. They have shown comparatively little interest in their social background and provenance, except for those bishops who belonged to magnate families. Some years ago, when working on the political activities of Edward II's bishops, it seemed to me that social origins, family connexions and provenance might in a number of cases have had at least as much influence on a bishop's attitude to politics as his early career. I there fore collected information about the origins and provenance of these bishops. I now think that a rather more careful and complete study of this subject might throw further light not only on the political history of the reign, but on other problems connected with the character and work of the English episcopate. There is a general impression that in England in the later middle ages the bishops' ties with their dioceses were becoming less close, and that they were normally spending less time in diocesan work than their predecessors in the thirteenth century.

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