Seiya Morita

Trotsky 1905

‘Hegemony’ in the English translation of Trotsky’s ‘1905’

Seiya Morita — The English translation of Leon Trotsky’s “1905” is brilliant as a whole, but it has a problem, in particular when it comes to the translation of his repeated used of the term “hegemony”.
The Women's Revolution

Another story of the Russian Revolution: Reading Judy Cox’s 'The Women's Revolution'

Seiya Morita — Judy Cox's 'The Women's Revolution' deftly reveals how important a role women revolutionaries, women Bolsheviks and women workers played in the Russian Revolution, its preparatory process, and in the civil war that followed.
Mikhail Gorbachev

Gorbachev's death and Russia's fate: From Perestroika to the Russian invasion of Ukraine

On 31 August 2022, news of Mikhail Gorbachev's death at age 91 filtered into Japan in the midst of sweltering heat and the spread of COVID-19. The Perestroika and Glasnost that Gorbachev carried out after 1985, when he became general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, are still praised as full-scale attempts to break away from Stalinism.
Shinzo Abe

When the chickens came home to roost: Behind the assassination of Shinzo Abe

“The political meaning of Abe’s death, the consequences, I no longer have the luxury of thinking about” ― Final line in a letter the killer sent to a journalist the day before the incident.

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