Growing Up Communist in the Netherlands and Britain

Elke Weesjes is a visiting research fellow at the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam, and an adjunct assistant professor at the City University of New York in Brooklyn, where she teaches courses in modern European and U.S. history, and women’s and gender studies.

• Acknowledgements, 1 Introduction: Cradle Communists and Oral History, Part I, Part II, 8 Epilogue: Looking Back, 9 Afterword, List of Abbreviations, Bibliography, Index

“Excellent – well researched, convincing in its argument, and a valuable contribution to communist (and wider social) history.”– Matthew Worley, Professor of Modern History, University of Reading; Co-founder and editor of Twentieth Century Communism “Elke Weesjes has built on the work of the historians of communism who have charted the study of daily communist lives as they were lived, not as simply an expression of Soviet policies. She skillfully compares the British and Dutch communist movements, specifically the experiences of children growing up in “red” families. Breaking new methodological and historiographical ground, this book captures the subjective experience of mid-twentieth century communist life in these two countries and how this influenced the forms of radicalism that emerged in the 1960s and beyond.”– Paul C. Mishler, Associate Professor of Labor Studies, Indiana University; author of Raising Reds: Young Pioneers, Radical Summer Camps, and Communist Political Culture in the United States 1922-1956 (Columbia University Press, 1999)