How was anti-communism organised in the West? This book covers the agents, aims, and arguments of various transnational anti-communist activists during the Cold War. Existing narratives often place the United States – and especially the CIA – at the centre of anti-communist activity. The book instead opens up new fields of research transnationally.

Interdoc was established in 1963 by Western intelligence services as a multinational effort to coordinate an anti-communist offensive. Drawing on exclusive sources and the memories of its participants, this book charts Interdoc's campaign, the people and ideas that lay behind it and the rise and fall of this remarkable network during the Cold War.

Interdoc was established in 1963 by Western intelligence services as a multinational effort to coordinate an anti-communist offensive. Drawing on exclusive sources and the memories of its participants, this book charts Interdoc's campaign, the people and ideas that lay behind it and the rise and fall of this remarkable network during the Cold War.

Freedom fighters. Guerrilla warriors. Soldiers of fortune. The many civil wars and rebellions against communist governments drew heavily from this cast of characters. Yet from Nicaragua to Afghanistan, Vietnam to Angola, Cuba to the Congo, the connections between these anticommunist groups have remained hazy and their coordination obscure. Yet as Kyle Burke reveals, these conflicts were the product of a rising movement that sought paramilitary action against communism worldwide. Tacking between the United States and many other countries, Burke offers an international history not only of the paramilitaries who started and waged small wars in the second half of the twentieth century but of conservatism in the Cold War era. From the start of the Cold War, Burke shows, leading U.S. conservatives and their allies abroad dreamed of an international anticommunist revolution. They pinned their hopes to armed men, freedom fighters who could unravel communist states from within. And so they fashioned a global network of activists and state officials, guerrillas and mercenaries, ex-spies and ex-soldiers to sponsor paramilitary campaigns in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Blurring the line between state-sanctioned and vigilante violence, this armed crusade helped radicalize right-wing groups in the United States while also generating new forms of privatized warfare abroad.

This book provides a cross-section of case studies that highlight the connections between overt/covert activities and cultural/political agendas during the early Cold War.

In 1919, Bolshevik Russia and its followers formed the Communist International, also known as the Comintern, to oversee the global communist movement. From the very beginning, the Comintern committed itself to ending world imperialism, supporting colonial liberation, and promoting racial equality. Coinciding with the centenary of the Comintern's founding, Left Transnationalism highlights the different approaches interwar communists took in responding to these issues. Bringing together leading and emerging scholars on the Communist International, individual communist parties, and national and colonial questions, this collection moves beyond the hyperpoliticized scholarship of the Cold War era and re-energizes the field. Contributors focus on transnational diasporic and cultural networks, comparative studies of key debates on race and anti-colonialism, the internationalizing impulse of the movement, and the evolution of communist platforms through transnational exchange. Essays further emphasize the involvement of communist and socialist parties across Canada, Australia, India, China, Japan, Southeast Asia, Latin America, South Africa, and Europe. Highlighting the active discussions on nationality, race, and imperialism that took place in Comintern circles, Left Transnationalism demonstrates that this organization - as well as communism in general - was, especially in the years before 1935, far more heterogeneous, creative, and unpredictable than the rubber stamp of the Soviet Union described in conventional historiography. Contributors include Michel Beaulieu (Lakehead University), Marc Becker (Truman State University), Anna Belogurova (Freie Universitat Berlin), Oleksa Drachewych (University of Guelph), Daria Dyakonova (Université de Montréal), Alastair Kocho-Williams (Clarkson University), Andrée Lévesque (McGill University), Lars T. Lih (Independent Scholar), Ian McKay (McMaster University), Sandra Pujals (University of Puerto Rico), John Riddell (Ontario Institute of Studies in Education), Evan Smith (Flinders University), S.A. Smith (All Souls College, Oxford), Xiaofei Tu (Appalachian State University), and Kankan Xie (Peking University).

Anti-communism has long been a potent force in American politics, capable of gripping both government and popular attention. Nowhere is this more evident that the two great 'red scares' of 1919-20 and 1946-54; the latter generally - if somewhat inaccurately - termed McCarthyism. The interlude between these two major scares has tended to garner less attention, but as this volume makes clear, the lingering effects of 1919-20 and the gathering storm-clouds of 'McCarthyism' were clearly visible throughout the 20s and 30s, even if in a more low-key way. Indeed, the period between the two great red scares was marked by frequent instances of political repression, often justified on anti-communist grounds, at local, state and federal levels. Yet these events have been curiously neglected in the history of American political repression and anti-communism, perhaps because much of the material deals with events scattered in time and space which never reached the intensity of the two great scares. By focusing on this twenty-five year 'interim' period, the essays in this collection bridge the gap between the two high-profile 'red scares' thus offering a much more contextualised and fluid narrative for American anti-communism. In so doing the rationale and motivations for the 'red scares' can be seen as part of an evolving political landscape, rather than as isolated bouts of hysteria exploding onto - and then vanishing from - the political scene. Instead, a much more nuanced appreciation of the conflicting interests and fears of government, politicians, organised labour, free-speech advocates, employers, and the press is offered, which will be of interest to anyone wishing to better understand the political history of modern America.