Bohemian Bolsheviks is a sharp reminder that historical narrative not only shapes our sense of the terrain under our feet, but the horizon in front of us. Marxist political alignment engages a welter of intimate and biographical factors enriching the record of a varied history of fiction, poetry, literary criticism, and other intellectual practices. In this book, Alan Ward sets out to explore a field of study which is marked by the enduring paradoxes of modernity. The rubric “Bohemian Bolsheviks” perfectly captures Wald’s sustained fascination with persistent contradictions between the image of Left political commitment and the actuality of experience, especially in relation to cultural work and cultural workers.