Talk:Jon Halliday

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User:Dariusisdaman link spam

This user has been indefinitely blocked as a sockpuppet of User:Dariusdaman - I am undoing his link spammage. John Smith's (talk) 07:23, 18 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

"historian of Russia"?

What is this claim based on? None of the books listed stand out as dealing with Russia. I always had the impression, from works of his which I read back in the 1980s, that he was a specialist in Korean history. What has he done which places him in the field of Russian history. If this isn't an error, then it should be better supported. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 4.247.122.44 (talk) 15:41, 1 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Politics?

He seems to be someone who was leftwing, even Maoist, up to the 1980s, but since switched?--Jack Upland (talk) 11:15, 12 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

He was a leading member of the New Left Review group, which was broad-front but mostly Marxist. He and his wife Jung Chang take a very standard left-wing line in their first book, a biography of Madam Sun. In their Mao biography they call her a 'Communtern Agent', which is very definitely a switch. And his Korea, the Unknown War had damn all that wasn't already well known, but is definitely pro-Communist. --GwydionM (talk) 12:18, 12 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

His brother Fred was a leftist. He edited Hoxha's memoirs, Albania being the one ally of Maoist China. He co-wrote his Korean War book with Bruce Cumings who is a critical sympathesiser with the DPRK. But clearly the Mao bio was an attack on him. It would be good to have something specific about the switch.--Jack Upland (talk) 10:10, 22 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

For what it's worth, his The Artful Albanian treats Mao, Stalin, the USSR and Hoxha himself negatively. He sympathizes slightly with Hoxha's obvious "underdog" position vis-à-vis the superpowers and finds many aspects of his memoirs fascinating, but otherwise has little positive to say about him as a leader. As for the DPRK, in a sympathetic 1983 article ("The North Korean Enigma") he says that "it is generally agreed that the political system is one of the most dreadful ever constructed in the name of socialism" and that Kim Il Sung "has played a major role in the Korean revolution. But he is crucial to both its success and its failure... By his grotesque expropriation for his own glory of the toil of the Korean masses Kim has deprived them of the solidarity they so richly deserve." His Mao biography definitely shows a shift to the right, but it's not a 180 turn. --Ismail (talk) 06:24, 21 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Birth?

According to this and this he was born in 1939, which makes it problematic to state that he is "the younger brother of Irish International relations academic and writer Fred Halliday", obviously he must be the older brother. --Finn Bjørklid (talk) 10:53, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]