Introduction: Anti-Communist Persecutions in the Twentieth Century

The introduction lays out the volume’s approach and shows how large and widespread anti-communist persecutions were. The collection puts less emphasis than previous scholarship on political ideas, anti-communist organizations, foreign involvement, and Europe. Rather, contributors understand persecution as partially based on interactions among social groups and as complex and dynamic conflicts. This also explains the frequent repression against noncommunists, which worked for extended periods against the plurality of ideas and identities, and attempts of social engineering directed against the communist “threat.” Though often emerging in social crisis, many persecutions of leftists lasted for decades or were frequently repeated. A global view shows common patterns in practices of persecution, non-state actors, roles of race, ethnicity, and religion and responses by those under persecution across countries and continents in more than a century.