Red

“You close your eyes and look at the sun, and through your eyelids you see the color of your blood—a carmine red. This is the color of your physical existence. Green is the color of external vegetation. Yellow is the color of the sun. Blue is the sky above you.” This is the sentence with which Gerd Koenen begins his epic story of a dream that is as old as humankind. This dream of a big, world-wide communion in which all men become brothers and no one has to be anyone else’s servant had left a powerful mark across the centuries until in October 1917 the revolutions in Russia brought Communism to power. But as the utopian ideal tries to become reality, the dream turns into a nightmare. With unparalleled storytelling ability, Koenen presents the history of Communism in a completely new and fresh way. He lets philosophers, revolutionaries, and politicians have their say and he describes the reasons why the Communist idea was so attractive: the rule and oppression, misery and poverty of the exploited. The master stroke of his book is that he brings home to the reader why the fight for social justice in a world of Capitalism is still legitimate and relevant today—but also how and why the rendezvous of Communism with history ends in terror and paranoia. Gerd Koenen is a historian and journalist. Until 1982, he held a leadership role in the Communist League of West Germany and then he went on to become the editor of the magazine “Pflasterstrand” and he also collaborated with Lew Kopelew, the Soviet author and dissident. He is the author of the bestselling Utopie der Säuberung (Utopia of the Purge), Das rote Jahrzehnt (The Red Decade) and Vesper, Ensslin, Baader. In 2007 he was the recipient of the Leipzig Book Award for European Understanding.