The Editors: Kevin Morgan teaches at the University of Manchester. The first two volumes of his Bolshevism and the British Left are to be published in 2005. Gidon Cohen teaches politics at the University of Northumbria and researches left-wing political activism and the use of computers in historical research. Andrew Flinn teaches at University College London and works on the participation of youth and minority groups within political parties. The editors’ prosopographical study Communists in British Society 1920-91 is forthcoming.

• Contents: Claude Pennetier/Bernard Pudal: Communist Prosopography in France: Research in Progress based on French Institutional Communist Autobiographies – Gidon Cohen/Andrew Flinn: In Search of the Typical British Communist – Thomas Sakmyster: A Hungarian in the Comintern: Jozsef Pogány/John Pepper – Jean Vigreux/Serge Wolikow: General Secretariat and General Secretaries: The Case of the French Communist Party – Tânia Ünlüdag-Puschnerat: A German Communist: Clara Zetkin (1857-1933) – James R. Barrett: Revolution and Personal Crisis: Communist Politics and Personal Narrative in the Life of William Z. Foster – Andrew Thorpe: Communist MP: Willie Gallacher and British Communism – Aldo Agosti: A Communist of a Special Mould: Umberto Terracini’s Opposition to the Cominform Turn in 1947 – Kevin Morgan: A Family Party? Some Geneaological Reflections on the CPGB – Wolfgang Weber: Every Family a Red Fortress? Geneaological Aspects of Communist Biographies in Austria – Gerrit Voerman: The Formative Years of the Communist ‘Moral Community’ in the Netherlands 1917-30 – Pirjo Kaihovaara: A Good Comrade, a Good Cadre: Autobiographies and Evaluation Reports as a Part of Cadre Policy in the Finnish Communist Party During the 1940s and 1950s – Kerry Taylor: Kiwi Comrades: The Social Basis of New Zealand Communism, 1921-48 – Joni Krekola: The Finnish Sector at the International Lenin School.

«Alles in allem ist das Buch ein wichtiger Impuls für eine innovative Kommunismusforschung, die sich in jüngster Zeit verstärkt biografischen Fragestellungen zuwendet und dadurch mit neuen Erkenntnissen aufwarten kann.» (Verena Moritz, Der Donauraum)