With the demise of the Soviet Union and the collapse of
Communism in Eastern Europe, a number of questions regarding the
conventional understanding of totalitarianism could now be viewed in the new
light. The classical studies of totalitarianism were undertaken when Nazism
and Fascism had been vanquished, while the Soviet system still existed: this
created an asymmetry which could now be overcome. The ideological Cold War
edge which sometimes accompanied debates about totalitarianism was similarly
blunted.
The impetus which these developments could give to new
angles of research and historical perspective was the focus of the conference
"Reflections on Europe's Century of
Discontent", held at the Institute for European Studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. More than a dozen
participants from eight countries - political scientists, historians, lawyers
as well as political activists - took part in what was an exciting exercise
in re-evaluation and re-assessment. The results are presented in this volume.
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