Introduction

This chapter is a more complicated task to write than would have been the case twenty or thirty years ago. In the age that we can perhaps now define as the ‘classic’ era in the historiography of the European twentieth century from the 1960s to the 1980s, the interconnection of revolutionary causes (of left and right) and violence seemed relatively uncomplicated. Revolutionary causes – perceived as secular, millenarian and intransigent – engaged in violence as a consequence of the radicalism of their rhetoric, dreams and ambitions and the intensity of the struggle that their actions generated for political power.

Nowadays, however, matters no longer seem so straightforward. Much of the literature on revolutionary movements over the last twenty years has watered down the centrality of ideological dynamics within revolution and complicated such dynamics with a heightened recognition that much which might appear political in fact had other causes. Ethnic antipathies, the impact of imperialist projects both within and beyond Europe and what one might term the psycho-underground of masculinities and local community conflicts now seem at least as important, if not more so, as politico-ideological dynamics in explaining the surges of revolutionary violence that took place across Europe during the twentieth century.

The purpose of this chapter is therefore to think afresh about the interconnectedness of violence and revolutionary movements (of the left and right) during Europe's long twentieth century. In doing so, three complexities immediately arise. First, there is the challenge of chronological scope.