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review September 2026

A mini-Comintern in Central Europe: Rethinking interwar Czechoslovak communism

Review by Václav Kaška
Black-and-white photograph of Karel Šváb (1904–1952), Czechoslovak communist official and State Security representative. A middle-aged man in glasses and a dark suit sits at a desk, head bent in concentration as he writes with a pencil on a document, papers and folders spread before him.
In Marxism and the Interpretation of Dreams (Stanford University Press, 2026), Molly Pucci recounts the story of one of interwar Europe’s largest and most multinational parties, the Czechoslovak Communist Party, in its Central European context. Václav Kaška writes that this thought-provoking book successfully bridges national historiographies while demonstrating the continued value of Central Europe as a category of historical analysis.
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