Problems of Peace and Socialism
Problems of Peace and Socialism was the German language edition of "World Marxist Review " ( WMR ), the theoretical and ideological journal of communist and workers' parties of the world. It existed 32 years until it was discontinued in June 1990. The headquarters of the WMR was in Prague, Czechoslovakia. Published by the Prague publishing house peace and socialism magazine appeared at its peak in 41 languages and had a circulation of half a million copies. She had spread in 145 countries. In Prague office representatives were active by 69 Communist parties. The significant main issue was published in Russian under the title " Problemy Mira i sotsializma " (Russian: " Проблемы мира и социализма ," engl. " Problems of Peace and Socialism "). The other language editions have been edited and modified by the communist parties of the respective countries depending on party line. In the GDR, the magazine appeared on the Dietz Verlag Berlin.
Changing Editors
The first editor in chief was the Soviet sociologist Alexei Rumyantsev, who has held this position until 1964. He was succeeded by GP Frantow, Rector of the Soviet Academy of Social Sciences. In 1986 Alexander M. Subbotin, a leading member of the CPSU. In the final phase led Lubomir Molnar, a Czechoslovakian diplomat, the editors of the WMR, he was the first non-Soviet publishers.
Political significance
The magazine was considered prosowjetisches mouthpiece of the world communist movement. They took the contents line of the CPSU and also made the turns of the Moscow party line. Parties who did not follow Moscow's standpoint, retired from the Prague editors. So, for example, be connected in the Sino-Soviet conflict several communist parties such as the Cuban temporarily not the line to the Kremlin. The three countries of the " Beijing wing " - China, Albania and North Korea - then distanced themselves from the Moscow line and not published the magazine.
The magazine was the late 1980s, an important mouthpiece for Mikhail Gorbachev's reform policies of glasnost and perestroika. Many of his advisors worked for the international journal in Prague as Gennadi Gerasimov, Georgi Shakhnazarov, Yevgeny Ambartsumow, Anatoly Chernyaev, Georgi Arbatov, Alexander Zipko, Yegor Yakovlev and Ivan Frolov.
The journalists from the Soviet Union called for in the wake of glasnost, the magazine in a " pluralistic institution " to convert, in which dissenters can find a forum. In contrast, defended the GDR representatives in the editorial, Werner Jarowinsky, " the character of the leaf as a collective organ of the communist and workers' parties against attempts to make the magazine a grandstand ideological, pluralistic debates and discussions. It was important to the common struggle and to make peace, disarmament and social progress in the focus of reporting and not inward polemic ".
After the turn of 1989/1990 is also the editor fit to the new time and there were articles by exponents of the new thinking published as Zbigniew Brzezinski, Alexander Dubček, Milovan Djilas and Andrei D. Sakharov.