The study presents the four main approaches in the historiography of Stalinism, summarising features of the system along the modernisation school, the totalitarian paradigm, various revisionists, and the main theses of the authors of the civilisation theory. Although scientific aspects increasingly come before in the examination of the Stalin phenomenon, in the environment of global capitalism, the research of state socialism is effected on the long run by the choice of accepting or rejecting socialism as a new civilisation.

The history of the theory and practice of the voluntary productive associations – so-called co-operatives – in a nutshell; from the early capitalist association forms to the organisation of the solidarity (social) economic sector of the European Union.

"What you will read here is another piece to the story of a failure" – introduces the author his article written in 1982 about the Polish crisis, originally published in a Transylvanian samisdat journal. This piece is a relevant document of the leftist state socialism criticism of the period, which is today often kept silent about or even denied.

Table of contents

1. Bartha Eszter : Stalinism in old and new historiography: theoretical and methodological problems in the definition of the phenomenon
2. Kovács-Eichner György : Uniform approach: from the mystification of the past to the defence of the present
3. Eric J. Hobsbawm : Man of the extreme century (interview)
4. Seumas Milne : On Martin Amis: Koba the Dread
5. Konok Péter : On The Oxford History of the Twentieth Century
6. Krausz Tamás : On Alexander Stykalin: Georg Lukacs – the thinker and the politician
7. Krausz Tamás : On Elemér Hankiss: In a strange world? and László Lengyel: Near the distant
8. Tamás Gáspár Miklós : Illegal pamphlet, February 1982
9. Balázs Gábor : Self-regulating French socialism and the French New Left
10. Karácsony Mihály : Is the thought of co-operatives timely?
11. Lux Judit : The story of the Hungarian National Tripartite Council
12. John Sulston : Saving the human genom from speculation
13. Richard Kuper : The American agricultural law
14. Porkoláb László : Will there be weather forecasts in 2040?
15. David Cockroft, Caroline Lucas : The political economy of tanker disasters
16. Fekete György : The reclaim of recollection