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Welcome to the History Extra Podcast, Fascinating Historical Conversations from the makers of BBC History magazine.

First published in 1848, the Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels begins by presenting communism as a spectre haunting Europe.

During the century that followed,

this revolutionary ideology swept the world

and left an indelible mark on the geopolitical dynamics of the modern age.

In today's Everything You Wanted to Know episode, historian Morris J Casey talks to Danny

Bird about the history of communism.

From Bolshevik emigres and the fall of the Berlin Wall to the legacy of anti-communism.

I think we should begin with perhaps the biggest question of all. What is communism?

I think the easiest way of thinking about it is to think of communism

not just as a set of ideas and practices but as a point in time, right?

Communism is that point in the future where everything is held in common and all humankind works in cooperation.

And so the various communist ideologies are paths towards that future.

So Marxism, Leninism, Maoism, all these various ideologies are all about what is going to

lead humanity towards that destination.

What is communism in the popular imagination?

I think that's a different question and it's one that's very much shaped by the real

history of communism which began in the 19th century as what was quite a broad

and diverse movement that then became refracted through this moment in 1917 with the October Revolution and the triumph of the

...