An anti-communist Consensus: The Black Book of communism in Pan-European Perspective

Valentin Behr, Muriel Blaive, Anenoma Constantin, Laure Neumayer and Máté Zombory

Revue d'études comparatives Est-Ouest, 2020, vol. N° 2-3, issue 2, 55-88

Abstract: The Black Book of Communism (1997) has served as evidence that communism was a criminal ideology as ?evil? as Nazism. To understand the book?s remarkable impact throughout Europe, the article situates its production and circulation in a transnational history of anti-communism. We focus on the previously neglected yet constitutive period in-between the collapse of the Soviet bloc and the enlargement of the European Union. On the basis of a biographical approach centred on the actors engaged in the production and promotion of the volume in five countries (France, Poland, Romania, Hungary and the Czech Republic), we argue that the book was a turning point in the emergence of a consensual historical narrative across the former East-West divide as it enabled the formation of a revamped pan-European anti-communist movement.

Keywords: Book of Communism; Totalitarianism; anti-communism; Czech Republic; Hungary; Poland; Romania (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cai:recpuf:receo1_512_0055

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