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Description
The life and work of Comrade Andrei Zhdanov contain far more than 300 plus pages of selected writings, writings already translated into English previously. In the Stalin era, he may well be considered the second most prominent Bolshevik, for he was entrusted with elaborating many of the key issues at critical junctures in building socialism. These works, however, give a taste of his life’s work and, moreover, the ones that were chosen to be translated into English previously were chosen well. One gets a taste of his work in deepening democracy and debureaucratization, building up a people’s culture free of the hindrances of bourgeois ideology and dealing, perhaps most importantly in light of today’s scenario, with the formation of an aggressive U.S. imperialist and anti-democratic bloc, opposing the anti-imperialist and democratic bloc in their strivings for revolution, socialism and communism. One sees just how much initiative Comrade Zhdanov gives to the line of the masses on all these topics — in his report to the 18th Congress on party building, for example, he gives dozens of real, concrete examples of where the work in the party was lacking, who was wronged and who was to blame, all in the light of democratizing the general social and political system. He was one with the people, a personification all his communist life of the party-people unity which defines the new socialist society, a trait today’s Marxist-Leninist communists can excel in learning from.