This is a comprehensive history of political violence during Europe's incredibly violent twentieth century. Leading scholars examine the causes and dynamics of war, revolution, counterrevolution, genocide, ethnic cleansing, terrorism and state repression. They locate these manifestations of political violence within their full transnational and comparative contexts and within broader trends in European history from the beginning of the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire in the late nineteenth-century, through the two world wars, to the Yugoslav Wars and the rise of fundamentalist terrorism. The book spans a 'greater Europe' stretching from Ireland and Iberia to the Baltic, the Caucasus, Turkey and the southern shores of the Mediterranean. It sheds new light on the extent to which political violence in twentieth-century Europe was inseparable from the generation of new forms of state power and their projection into other societies, be they distant territories of imperial conquest or ones much closer to home.

Violence analyzes both the violence exerted on the societies of Central and Eastern Europe during the twentieth century by belligerent powers and authoritarian and/or totalitarian regimes and armed conflicts between ethnic, social and national groups, as well as the interaction between these two phenomena. Throughout the twentieth century, Central and Eastern Europe was hit particularly hard by war, violence and repression, with armed conflicts in the Balkans at the start and end of the period and two world wars in between. In the shadow of these full-scale wars, ethnic, social and national conflicts were intensified, found new forms and were violently played out. The interwar period witnessed the emergence of authoritarian states who enforced their claim to power through continued violence against political opponents, stigmatized ethnic, national and social groups, and were themselves fought with subversive or terrorist techniques. This volume focuses specifically on physical violence: war and civil war, ethnic cleansing, systematic starvation policies, deportations and expulsions, forced labour and prison camps, persecution by state security – such as intensive surveillance, which had an enormous impact on the lives of those it affected – and other forms of government oppression and militant resistance. Geographically, it considers the western regions of Belarus and Ukraine as sites of extreme violence that had a noticeable impact on neighbouring Central and Eastern European countries as well. The concluding volume in a four-volume set on Central and Eastern Europe in the twentieth century, it is the go-to resource for those interested in violence in this complex region.

The twentieth century has been scarred by political violence and genocide, reaching its extreme in the Holocaust. Yet, at the same time, the century has been marked by a growing commitment to human rights. This volume highlights the importance of history-

Examines how narratives of the 1919 Central European revolutions promoted a violent counterrevolutionary culture in interwar Germany and Hungary.

This book analyses the process of ‘reshaping’ liberated societies in post-1945 Europe. Post-war societies tried to solve three main questions immediately after the dark times of occupation: Who could be considered a patriot and a valuable member of the respective national community? How could relations between men and women be (re-)established? How could the respective society strengthen national cohesion? Violence in rather different forms appeared to be a powerful tool for such a complex reshaping of societies. The chapters are based on present primary research about specific cases and consider the different political, mental, and cultural developments in various nation-states between 1944 and 1948. Examples from Italy, France, Norway, Denmark, Greece, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary demonstrate a new comparative and fascinating picture of post-war Europe. This perspective overcomes the notorious East-West dividing line, without covering the manifold differences between individual European countries.

This work sees the 20th century as a long century, and focuses on the crucial political events of the century. While it gives attention to the high level of violence in Europe, it weaves into the themes the struggle for hegemony, the establishment of common economic and political institutions, and the advance of science. A bibliographical essay in each chapter allows the readers to expand on issues discussed in the text.