Mario Keßler
Completed book project

Over decades there were in the East and in the West different personalities in the communist parties and their governing bodies who sought to democratize communism as ideology, political movement and state order. This book portrays a great number of the reforms and reformers in communism and examines the reasons why they failed. Twenty-two authors from Germany, France, the United States, Canada, Russia and China participated in this multi-national project that was sponsored by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation. Topics range from research on Rosa Luxemburg and Nikolai Bukharin, to failed reform attempts in the state socialist countries, including Cuba, and to recent developments in China, which are discussed controversially. The book was presented on March 7, 2015, on the occasion of the 99th birthday of the agricultural scientist and political activist Theodor Bergmann (1916-2017).