Communists And Their Victims

Author : Roman David
Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
Page : 280 pages
File Size : 53,5 Mb
Release : 2018-03-14
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9780812294989

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Communists and Their Victims by Roman David Pdf

In Communists and Their Victims, Roman David identifies and examines four classes of justice measures—retributive, reparatory, revelatory, and reconciliatory—to discover which, if any, rectified the legacy of human rights abuses committed during the communist era in the Czech Republic. Conducting interviews, focus groups, and nationwide surveys between 1999 and 2015, David looks at the impact of financial compensation and truth-sharing on victims' healing and examines the role of retribution in the behavior and attitudes of communists and their families. Emphasizing the narratives of former political prisoners, secret collaborators, and former Communist Party members, David tests the potential of justice measures to contribute to a shared sense of justice and their ability to overcome the class structure and ideological divides of a formerly communist regime. Complementing his original research with analysis of legal judgments, governmental reports, and historical records, David finds that some justice measures were effective in overcoming material and ideological divides while others obstructed victims' healing and inhibited the transformation of communists. Identifying "justice without reconciliation" as the primary factor hampering the process of overcoming the past in the Czech Republic, Communists and Their Victims promotes a transformative theory of justice that demonstrates that justice measures, in order to be successful, require a degree of reconciliation.

Author : Stéphane Courtois
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 920 pages
File Size : 43,5 Mb
Release : 1999
Category : History
ISBN : 0674076087

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The Black Book of Communism by Stéphane Courtois Pdf

This international bestseller plumbs recently opened archives in the former Soviet bloc to reveal the accomplishments of communism around the world. The book is the first attempt to catalogue and analyse the crimes of communism over 70 years.

Author : Gabriel Teodor Gherasim
Publisher : Publishamerica Incorporated
Page : 106 pages
File Size : 44,5 Mb
Release : 2011-05
Category : Self-Help
ISBN : 1462609589

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Victims of Communism and Their Persecutors by Gabriel Teodor Gherasim Pdf

Author : Cosmin Budeanca,Dalia Báthory
Publisher : LIT Verlag Münster
Page : 400 pages
File Size : 55,6 Mb
Release : 2018-03
Category : History
ISBN : 9783643909831

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Histories (Un)Spoken by Cosmin Budeanca,Dalia Báthory Pdf

This book contains analyses and case studies regarding the former political prisoners' and their families' fates impacted by the Communist dictatorships in Central and Eastern Europe (Romania, Poland, Lithuania, Republic of Moldova, Albania). The focus of research is extended from the individuals to the social context in which they functioned, as they were actors in flawed systems which were ready to harshly limit not only their actions but also of those closest to them. The case studies trace disruptions and distortions of broken lives along with strategies to reclaim and restore an apparent 'normalcy'. Cosmin Budeanca, PhD., is expert at The Institute for the Investigation of Communist Crimes and the Memory of the Romanian Exile. Dalia Bathory, PhD., is expert at The Institute for the Investigation of Communist Crimes and the Memory of the Romanian Exile.

Author : Catherine Epstein
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 337 pages
File Size : 43,8 Mb
Release : 2009-06-30
Category : History
ISBN : 9780674036543

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The Last Revolutionaries by Catherine Epstein Pdf

"The Last Revolutionaries" tells a story of unwavering political devotion: it follows the lives of German communists across the tumultuous twentieth century. Before 1945, German communists were political outcasts in the Weimar Republic and courageous resisters in Nazi Germany; they also suffered Stalin's Great Purges and struggled through emigration in countries hostile to communism. After World War II, they became leaders of East Germany, where they ran a dictatorial regime until they were swept out of power by the people's revolution of 1989. In a compelling collective biography, Catherine Epstein conveys the hopes, fears, dreams, and disappointments of a generation that lived their political commitment. Focusing on eight individuals, "The Last Revolutionaries" shows how political ideology drove people's lives. Some of these communists, including the East German leaders Walter Ulbricht and Erich Honecker, enjoyed great personal success. But others, including the purge victims Franz Dahlem and Karl Schirdewan, experienced devastating losses. And, as the book demonstrates, female and Jewish communists faced their own sets of difficulties in the movement to which they had given their all. Drawing on previously inaccessible sources as well as extensive personal interviews, Epstein offers an unparalleled portrait of the most enduring and influential generation of Central European communists. In the service of their party, these communists experienced solidarity and betrayal, power and persecution, sacrifice and reward, triumph and defeat. At once sordid and poignant, theirs is the story of European communism--from the heroic excitement of its youth, to the bureaucratic authoritarianism of its middle age, to the sorry debacle of its death.

Author : Barry McLoughlin
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 338 pages
File Size : 44,7 Mb
Release : 2007
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : STANFORD:36105123308665

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Left to the Wolves by Barry McLoughlin Pdf

Between the end of the Russian Civil War in 1921 and Stalin's death in 1953, the Soviet secret police sentenced over 4 million persons on political grounds. Over 800,000 were shot and millions died in the slave camps of the Gulag system. At the height of the mass-repression - the Great Terror of 1937/38 - foreigners were in great jeopardy. Knowing that a major war was coming, Iosif Stalin and his cohorts decided to rid Soviet society of all perceived or potential 'enemies'. Among the putative 'Fifth Columnists' were non-Russian ethnic minorities, political refugees from fascism and foreign-born Communists. At least three of these countless victims were of Irish nationality. This book describes their social background, how and why they entered the semi-clandestine world of Communism and the reasons for their residence in the USSR. Patrick Breslin was a graduate of the International Lenin School who turned to journalism and translating. Brian Goold-Verschoyle's visits to Moscow were periodic until his masters in the Soviet espionage service sent him to the Spanish cockpit in 1937. Finally, Se���¡n McAteer was given political refugee status in the new Russia in 1923 after his flight from Scotland Yard. He used his language skills to proselytize sailors for the world revolution or to teach students the rudiments of English in exotic Odessa. Each man in turn knew by time of arrest that the secret police NKVD rarely released or acquitted anybody; and the fabricated charges they were faced with increased their sense of isolation and hopelessness. This realisation was all the more bitter considering the faith they had placed in the Soviet experiment. ����

Author : Joanna Wawrzyniak
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 259 pages
File Size : 52,9 Mb
Release : 2015-12-15
Category : Veterans
ISBN : 3631640498

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Veterans, Victims, and Memory by Joanna Wawrzyniak Pdf

In the vast literature on how the Second World War has been remembered in Europe, research into what happened in communist Poland, a country most affected by the war, is surprisingly scarce. The long gestation of Polish narratives of heroism and sacrifice, explored in this book, might help to understand why the country still finds itself in a -mnemonic standoff- with Western Europe, which tends to favour imagining the war in a civil, post-Holocaust, human rights-oriented way. The specific focus of this book is the organized movement of war veterans and former prisoners of Nazi camps from the 1940s until the end of the 1960s, when the core narratives of war became well established."

Author : Jana Kopelentova Rehak
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
Page : 193 pages
File Size : 48,7 Mb
Release : 2013
Category : History
ISBN : 9780739176344

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Czech Political Prisoners by Jana Kopelentova Rehak Pdf

Czech Political Prisoners: Recovering Face is the story of men and women who survived Czechoslovakian concentration camps under the Communist regime. Men and women disappeared, were arrested, imprisoned, interrogated, tortured, put on trial, convicted, and sentenced to forced labor camps. In 1948 in Czechoslovakia, political others became political prisoners. New forms of political practices developed under the institution of the totalitarian Czechoslovakian communist state. This new regime of totalitarian political power produced culturally specific forms of organized political violence. Between 1948 and 1989 some citizens recognized by the state as political others were subjected to such ritualized political violence. The link between ritualized violence and state subjects' political passage laid the groundwork for the formation of new social identities. In the post-totalitarian state, the political other from the socialist era remains other through distinct desires and acts of coming to terms with the experience of organized violence. Like other members of the Czech and Slovak states, former prisoners are now facing the post-totalitarian remaking of life. In contrast to society at large, the political prisoners' recovery from the totalitarian past has proven that the ethics of political life--individual and communal coming to terms with the past--is closely related and crucial to their efforts toward reconciliation. Today, in the Czech Republic, as well as in other post-socialist countries, the desire to reconcile is not limited to survivors of camps, prisoners, and dissidents. People from the youngest generation are asking questions about crimes, punishment, and forgiveness related to the Communist regime in central and eastern Europe. The purpose of this story is to expose individual and communal experience, subjectivity, and consciousness hidden in the ruins of memory of Socialism in Czechoslovakia.

Author : Tomáš Bouška,Klára Pinerová
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 128 pages
File Size : 47,9 Mb
Release : 2016
Category : Alltagsgeschichte
ISBN : 8026084128

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Czechoslovak Political Prisoners by Tomáš Bouška,Klára Pinerová Pdf

Author : Anna Kaminsky
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 44,9 Mb
Release : 2018
Category : Collective memory
ISBN : 3954983915

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Museums and Monuments to the Memory of the Victims of Communist Dictatorships by Anna Kaminsky Pdf

Since the collapse of Communist systems of tyranny, memorials of many kinds have been erected in the states of Central and Eastern Europe as well as in Africa, Asia, Australia and America; indeed, some were created while the Communist system was still in place: Memorials, museums, monuments, religious buildings and sculpture parks recall the Communist dictatorships and their victims, along with opposition and resistance to, and the final overcoming of, these unjust regimes. This volume presents a selection of 119 places of remembrance in 35 countries. In addition to an overview of the history of the crimes in question, the individual contributions cast light on the origins of the memorials and document the efforts to restore the memory of the victims of Communist tyranny to its rightful place in public awareness.

Author : Roman David
Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
Page : 328 pages
File Size : 42,8 Mb
Release : 2011-09-21
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9780812205763

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Lustration and Transitional Justice by Roman David Pdf

How do transitional democracies deal with officials who have been tainted by complicity with prior governments? Should they be excluded or should they be incorporated into the new system? In Lustration and Transitional Justice, Roman David examines major institutional innovations that developed in Central Europe following the collapse of communist regimes. While the Czech Republic approved a lustration (vetting) law based on the traditional method of dismissals, Hungary and Poland devised alternative models that granted their tainted officials a second chance in exchange for truth. David classifies personnel systems as exclusive, inclusive, and reconciliatory; they are based on dismissal, exposure, and confession, respectively, and they represent three major classes of transitional justice. David argues that in addition to their immediate purposes, personnel systems carry symbolic meanings that help explain their origin and shape their effects. In their effort to purify public life, personnel systems send different ideological messages that affect trust in government and the social standing of former adversaries. Exclusive systems may establish trust at the expense of reconciliation, while inclusive and reconciliatory systems may promote both trust and reconciliation. In spite of its importance, the topic of inherited personnel has received only limited attention in research on transitional justice and democratization. Lustration and Transitional Justice is the first attempt to fill this gap. Combining insights from cultural sociology and political psychology with the analysis of original experiments, historical surveys, parliamentary debates, and interviews, the book shows how perceptions of tainted personnel affected the origin of lustration systems and how dismissal, exposure, and confession affected trust in government, reconciliation, and collective memory.

Author : Péter Apor,Sándor Horváth,James Mark
Publisher : Anthem Press
Page : 528 pages
File Size : 52,7 Mb
Release : 2017-09-27
Category : History
ISBN : 9781783087259

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Secret Agents and the Memory of Everyday Collaboration in Communist Eastern Europe by Péter Apor,Sándor Horváth,James Mark Pdf

The collection of essays in Secret Agents and the Memory of Everyday Collaboration in Communist Eastern Europe addresses institutions that develop the concept of collaboration, and examines the function, social representation and history of secret police archives and institutes of national memory that create these histories of collaboration. The essays provide a comparative account of collaboration/participation across differing categories of collaborators and different social milieux throughout East-Central Europe. They also demonstrate how secret police files can be used to produce more subtle social and cultural histories of the socialist dictatorships. By interrogating the ways in which post-socialist cultures produce the idea of, and knowledge about, “collaborators,” the contributing authors provide a nuanced historical conception of “collaboration,” expanding the concept toward broader frameworks of cooperation and political participation to facilitate a better understanding of Eastern European communist regimes.

Author : Robert Gellately
Publisher : Vintage
Page : 505 pages
File Size : 54,9 Mb
Release : 2013-03-05
Category : History
ISBN : 9780307962355

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Stalin's Curse by Robert Gellately Pdf

A chilling, riveting account based on newly released Russian documentation that reveals Joseph Stalin’s true motives—and the extent of his enduring commitment to expanding the Soviet empire—during the years in which he seemingly collaborated with Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and the capitalist West. At the Big Three conferences of World War II, Joseph Stalin persuasively played the role of a great world leader, whose primary concerns lay in international strategy and power politics, and not communist ideology. Now, using recently uncovered documents, Robert Gellately conclusively shows that, in fact, the dictator was biding his time, determined to establish Communist regimes across Europe and beyond. His actions during those years—and the poorly calculated responses to them from the West—set in motion what would eventually become the Cold War. Exciting, deeply engaging, and shrewdly perceptive, Stalin’s Curse is an unprecedented revelation of the sinister machinations of Stalin’s Kremlin.

Author : J. Arch Getty,Oleg V. Naumov
Publisher : Yale University Press
Page : 313 pages
File Size : 51,9 Mb
Release : 2010-01-01
Category : History
ISBN : 9780300142419

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Road to Terror by J. Arch Getty,Oleg V. Naumov Pdf

"Now updated with new facts, and abridged for use in Soviet history courses, this gripping book assembles top-secret Soviet documents, translated into English, from the era of Stalin's purges. The dossiers, police reports, private letters, secret transcripts, and other documents expose the hidden inner workings of the Communist Party and the dark inhumanity of the purge process."[book cover].

Author : Vincent Bevins
Publisher : PublicAffairs
Page : 362 pages
File Size : 52,6 Mb
Release : 2020-05-19
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9781541724013

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The Jakarta Method by Vincent Bevins Pdf

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF 2020 BY NPR, THE FINANCIAL TIMES, AND GQ The hidden story of the wanton slaughter -- in Indonesia, Latin America, and around the world -- backed by the United States. In 1965, the U.S. government helped the Indonesian military kill approximately one million innocent civilians. This was one of the most important turning points of the twentieth century, eliminating the largest communist party outside China and the Soviet Union and inspiring copycat terror programs in faraway countries like Brazil and Chile. But these events remain widely overlooked, precisely because the CIA's secret interventions were so successful. In this bold and comprehensive new history, Vincent Bevins builds on his incisive reporting for the Washington Post, using recently declassified documents, archival research and eye-witness testimony collected across twelve countries to reveal a shocking legacy that spans the globe. For decades, it's been believed that parts of the developing world passed peacefully into the U.S.-led capitalist system. The Jakarta Method demonstrates that the brutal extermination of unarmed leftists was a fundamental part of Washington's final triumph in the Cold War.