Political Violence

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-ix

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2. Introduction

   1. Introduction

      • Paul Hollander

      Pages 1-20

3. Soviet Communism

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 21-21

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   2. The Reception of Robert Conquest’s The Great Terror

      • Joshua Rubenstein

      Pages 23-37

   3. Stalin and the Question of Soviet Genocide

      • Norman M. Naimark

      Pages 39-47

   4. The Victims Return: Gulag Survivors under Khrushchev

      • Stephen F. Cohen

      Pages 49-68

   5. Leadership Succession and Political Violence in the USSR Following Stalin’s Death

      • Mark Kramer

      Pages 69-92

   6. Post-Communist Political Violence: The Poisoning of Aleksandr Litvinenko

      • John B. Dunlop

      Pages 93-107

   7. The Mass Media in the Service of Soviet Communism and in Post-Communist Russia

      • Lee Edwards

      Pages 109-123

4. Comparative Perspectives

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 125-125

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   2. Managed Spontaneity in Rural Political Violence in China

      • Arthur Waldron

      Pages 127-142

   3. Political Repression in Castro’s Cuba: Policies, Institutions and Victims

      • Maria C. Werlau

      Pages 143-154

   4. Revolutions and Revolutionary Ideologies in Latin America

      • Mark Falcoff

      Pages 155-164

   5. Western Perceptions of Postcolonial Violence in Africa

      • Anthony Daniels

      Pages 165-175

   6. Apologists of Totalitarianism: From Communism to Islam

      • Ibn Warraq

      Pages 177-191

   7. The Roots of Arab and Muslim Violence

      • David Pryce-Jones

      Pages 193-203

5. Back Matter

   Pages 205-258

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A collection of original case studies of different types of political violence in the 20th and 21st century inspired by the pioneering work of Robert Conquest. It focuses on the origins, manifestations and legitimation of such violence and includes the former Soviet Union, Mao's China, Castro's Cuba and radical-militant Islam.

• genocide
• political violence
• terrorism
• violence

"Political Violence focuses on some of the lowest points of a 20th century marked by extremes, where ideological storms - primarily but not exclusively Marxist - drove human beings in large numbers onto the wildest, and most deadly, shores of politics. Untangling various strands of violent political contestation among would-be leaders, accounting for and memorializing millions of their victims, and making sense of the sources of such horrors and the ways in which, in some cases, they ceased - but in others, persist - are tasks of importance. In this book, a distinguished and sophisticated group of scholars and analysts takes them on. Their efforts yield impressive results, worth the attention of those who wish to understand the roots of some critical 21st-century problems." - Walter D. Connor, Boston University

"At a time when political violence is spreading ominously around the world, both between and within nations, and with the Russo-Georgian war now added to bloody conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, this book is particularly welcome. By analyzing not only violence, in places and times as varied as Soviet and post-Soviet Russia, China, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East, but the beliefs that help to engender and legitimize it, Paul Hollander and his colleagues brightly illuminate a darkening landscape." - William Taubman, Bertrand Snell Professor of Political Science at Amherst College, author of the Pulitzer Prize winning biography, Khrushchev: The Man and his Era

"As far as Conquest's "Great Terror" is concerned it is not too much to invoke Horace (and Pushkin) Exegi monumentum - I have reared a monument..." - Walter Laqueur

PAUL HOLLANDER is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Associate of the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University, USA.

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