Splendour, Misery, and Possibilities - (Historical Materialism) by Darko Suvin (Paperback)

About the Book

Suvin's 'X-Ray' of Socialist Yugoslavia offers an indispensable overview of a unique and often overlooked twentieth-century socialism

Book Synopsis

The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was created in a surge of revolutionary self-determination that rejected both the free-market-Capitalism of Europe, and the bureaucratic-Socialism of the Soviet Union. Yet this early experimentation and dynamism ultimately gave way to the same sclerotic state-system its creators were trying to avoid. In this engaging treatise, Suvin seeks out the source of this failure.

Review Quotes

Suvin's Splendour, Misery and Possibilities is a landmark contribution to the scholarship on the socialist experiments of the twentieth century that should be of particular interest to all those unconvinced by the "a priori tenet of Cold War ideology...that a plebian communist revolution must necessarily end in catastrophe."

--Victor Strazzeri "Socialism and Democracy"

About the Author

Darko Suvin, Ph.D. (1970) Zagreb University, is Professor Emeritus of McGill University. He has published 21 books on Literature, Dramaturgy, Culture, and Political Epistemology, as well as poetry. Major publications include Metamorphoses of Science Fiction, To Brecht and Beyond, and Defined by a Hollow.