To understand the savage repressions that took place in Spain, the character of the revolutionary civil wars of the first half of the twentieth century must be kept in mind. These were conflicts of the transition to “classical modernity,” a process of massive cultural and social transformation that in some countries generated unprecedented tensions and hatreds. The only direct precursors would be found in the French Revolution and in the Paris Commune of 1871. Murderous mass repressions, first using the word “terror,” were a major feature of those earlier conflicts, and then reappeared in all the revolutionary civil wars of the first half of the twentieth century, first in Finland, then immediately afterward in Russia and elsewhere. Later, during the 1940s, they would reappear in the civil wars in Yugoslavia and Greece.

The bloodlust in revolutionary civil wars stems from the apocalyptic nature of such contests, the attempt on each side to create a new society and cultural order, not merely a different political system, totally purged of antagonistic elements. In these conflicts the enemy is perceived not as an ordinary political rival, but as a kind of metaphysical incarnation of evil that must be eradicated before it infects, or imposes the same terror on, one's own side. A revolutionary civil war is not an ordinary political contest, but a conflict of ultimates about society, religion, and culture, perceived to demand a total and uncompromising solution.