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Formation and appeal of "scientific socialism" -- Communist manifesto / Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels -- Socialism: utopian and scientific / Engels -- Lenin and the premature socialist revolution -- State and revolution / Vladimir Lenin -- Stalin and industrialization -- Foundations of Leninism / Joseph Stalin -- Soviet bloc after Stalin : the new revisionists -- "New class," from the new class / Milovan Djilas -- Conspiracy of ivory tower intellectuals / Laszek Kolakowski -- New program of the communist party of the Soviet Union -- China and Orthodox Leninism -- On practice ; Combat liberalism long live Leninism / Mao Tse-tung

The "thaw" slips farther back into History. Displaced from our attention by the renewed obscurantism, those heady days are seldom studied any more. This is unfortunate. For, it seems to me, it is particularly now, as a counter to the broadening repression, that we should gather and preserve the achievements of that hopeful decade. It is in this vein that I want to go back to the period and recall a dramatic and brilliant expression of the liberal, "thaw" spirit, as well as a splendid contribution to the rich gallery of Russian Aesopian polemics: Soviet Shakespeare criticism and, especially, the revival of sound and insightful commentaries on Hamlet by Soviet critics and playwrights.

In May, 1968, France was saved from revolution not primarily by de Gaulle and his generals but by the French Communist Party. Nine million striking workers occupied the factories. Militants among the students and young unemployed workers had proven themselves more than ready to play the role of vanguard at the barricades. The peasantry had begun to move from passive grumbling to direct action, fearful that the end of agricultural tariffs in July would further depress their hard lot. Even the middleclass professionals, disenchanted with the hierarchical rigidities and the olympian paternalism of Gaullist society had risen to assert their rights to free expression and meaningful participation. All means of communication and transport and all financial agencies were either directly or indirectly under the control of the workers. At will they could have deprived Paris and other cities of food, water, fuel, electricity and gas.