Communist attitudes to violence have varied according to whether a given party was in power or opposition, and on the wider context in which its adherents found themselves. For communists of the Comintern generation, it was forever framed within a Bolshevik-derived paradigm centred on the experience of 1917; for the resistance movements of the second world war it was understood as part of the struggle against fascism; for those battling to liberate themselves from colonialism it was understood as part of the liberation struggle.
Two sample articles from the issue can be read in-full online:
- Communism and political violence – Matthew Worley
- The communist movement and violence in France: from the First World War to the Cold War – Sylvain Boulouque