Following nearly five decades in power, Fidel Castro, the former Cuban president, has died at the age of 90. El Commandante, whose 1959 revolution overthrew the American-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista, survived some 638 attempts on his life devised by the CIA and Cuban exiles.
Disney’s Epcot theme park in Florida includes exhibits of countries from around the world, staffed by student ambassadors from those countries. But before the theme park even opened in 1982, the FBI was concerned that EPCOT might become overrun with Communist spies from China, Poland, and the Soviet Union.
It was Christmas Eve, 1985. Seattle attorney Charles Goldmark was at home with his wife, Annie, and their two children, 10-year-old Colin and 12-year-old Derek; all were eagerly anticipating the festive holiday dinner to come. But a murderous, hate-filled stranger would put an end to all of their plans.
It’s always the most embarrassing part of a fallen regime. All those statues, no longer relevant. Usually they come down, hence the severed head of Vladimir Lenin recently unearthed in Berlin. But what to do with all those Lenins still standing? Turn them into the likeness of a more benevolent leader, of course.
Thanks to the internet's amazing capacity for self-recycling, articles about Soviet pirate recordings made of X-rays pop up frequently in my feeds. These popular, widely-shared posts explain how, in the 1950s and 60s, music fans in the Soviet Union fabricated bootlegged recordings of banned western music—and they used…
Earlier this week, the British Film Institute (BFI) published results from a first-of-its-kind poll, asking 340 filmmakers and critics to vote for the best documentary of all time. The clear winner was Dziga Vertov's Man with a Movie Camera.
It was the 1930s, and America was changing. Women were going to college and communists were marching in the streets. But people really didn't want those two things to combine. And thus was born a study that had its heart in the right place and its head in the wrong one.
Once, they beamed optimism from walls all across the Eastern Bloc. These murals depicted Socialist progress, and allowed the great Communist leaders to look down on their people from everywhere. But now, they're fallen into ruin. Check out the disintegrating beauty of great Socialist murals.
The Revolution never dies, comrades — especially when we've painted its leaders on massive billboards that loom over your cities and towns. Here are some of the world's most imposing portraits of Communism's most famous instigators.
North Korea remains a grim enigma — a lone totalitarian state that few outsiders manage to visit. We glimpse military parades and marvel at the colorful propaganda, but we seldom get much of a sense of what it’s like to live there. But these Instagram photos give a remarkably vivid look at ordinary life in North Korea.
Though "Utopia" means "nowhere," many real-life societies have been strongly influenced by various concepts of a perfect realm where humans live in harmony with each other. Here are some of the most influential Utopian visions — and how they changed our distinctly non-Utopian world.
Communist architecture is often monumental, sometimes minimalist, and always imposing. But in the latter years of most European communist states, traditional Brutalist architecture gave way to something a little weirder — and occasionally even playful. Here are some incredible buildings from this era in late Eastern…
We've been waiting for the animated remake of Kin-Dza-Dza since we first discovered this ultra-wacky 1986 Russian movie back in 2008. And now, it's finally here — and you can check out the first footage above, via Twitch Film.
Remember those derelict Bulgarian war memorials that resemble space fortresses? Well, it turns out they're just as otherworldly inside. Here's one intrepid urban explorer's journey into the shadowy corridors of the shuttered Bulgarian-Soviet Friendship memorial in Varna, Bulgaria. It's also a case study on why you…
Here's a curious tidbit from spy history: in the 1950s, American intelligence asked Britain's MI5 to investigate the actor Charlie Chaplin on suspicions that Chaplin was a dangerous communist. But the intelligence agencies were unable to confirm that Chaplin was born in England, leading to an investigation into…
Now that lunatic dictator Kim Jong-il has passed on to the great rusty amusement park near the Earth's mantle, we've dug deep in the io9 vaults for a look back at his sole contribution to science fiction cinema, the 1985 kaiju flick Pulgasari.
These fabrics mostly speak for themselves, but skinny is that these fabrics are Soviet era textiles from the 1920-1930 period of Russia's history. And while awesome, the industrial, work-obsessed imagery on display here is hardly subtle.
Electric bikes are going to be banned in Shenzen, China on July 1st because they're too quiet. Seriously. According to China, electric bikes are said to have caused more than 15% of accidents resulting in 64 people dead and 233 injured. Wtf?
Originally built as a 5-story bloc by the ruling Communist party, this complex has undergone certain, shall we say, "renovations" over the years. And by "renovations" I mean wholesale reconstruction.
This week we posted America Under Communism, a propaganda comic about life in Soviet America. Here's If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do?, probably the only evangelical Christian grindhouse horror movie ever made about life in Commie America.
