Ideological Storms

Vladimir Tismaneanu, Bogdan C. Iacob (eds)

Title: Ideological Storms
Subtitle: Intellectuals, Dictators, and the Totalitarian Temptation
Editors: Vladimir Tismaneanu; Bogdan C. Iacob
Price: € 188,00 excl. VAT
ISBN: 9789633863039
Format: Hardback
Number of pages: 548
Language: English
Publication date: 12 - 06 - 2019
Dimensions: 15.9 x 23.4 cm
Categories
Discipline: Social and Political Sciences
Imprint: CEU Press
Also available as: eBook PDF - € 187,99

Table of Contents

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Introduction
Vladimir Tismaneanu and Bogdan C. Iacob

Part One: Intellectuals and Communism in Europe
1. Illusions of Influence and the Mystique of Power: The Fellow-Travelers and Stalin as Philosopher-King
Michael David-Fox
2. Stalin and the Muse of History: The Dictator and His Critics on the Editing of the 1938 'Short Course'
David Brandenberger
3. Resisting the Totalitarian Temptation: The Case of Ignazio Silone
Stanislao G. Pugliese
4. Greek Intellectuals and the Fascination with Communism: The Graft that Did Not Blossom (1924–1949)
Nikos Marantzidis
5. Shadows of Paradise: Romanian Intellectuals and the Soviet Union
Angelo Mitchievici
6. National Rebirth, Intellectuals, and the Rise of the Communist Regime in Romania (1944–1947)
Bodan C. Iacob

Part Two: Revolution and Utopia
7. Dictators and Intellectuals: Attractions and Affinities
Paul Hollander
8. A "Beautiful" Dream: Mussolini's Delirium of Omnipotence and the Aesthetics of the Sublime
Simonetta Falasca-Zamponi
9. The Metapolitics of Despair: Romania's Mystical Generation and the Passions of Emil Cioran
Vladimir Tismaneanu
10. Arthur Koestler and the Temptations of Utopianism
Michael Scammell
11. Radical Engagements: Surrealism, Art, and Politics in Interwar Romania
Marius Stan

Part Three: Visions of the Nation in Eastern Europe
12. Ion Antonescu: The Temptation of Fascism
Dennis Deletant
12. Ethnopolitical Temptations Reach Southeastern Europe: Wartime Policy Papers of Vasa Čubrilović and Sabin Manuilă
Vladimir Petrović
13. Czech Communist Intellectuals and the National Road to Socialism
Michal Kopeček
14. Party Intellectuals and Romanian National Stalinism
Cristian Vasile

Part Four: Lessons at the Turn of a Century
15. At War with Israel: Anti-Zionism in East Germany from the 1960s to the 1980s
Jeffrey Herf
16. The Pathology of Arab Dictatorship: Memories of Saddam Hussein
Adeed Dawisha
17. Calming the Ideological Storms? Reflections on Cold War Liberalism
Jan-Werner Müller
18. Fear and Freedom in Contemporary China
Jeffrey Wasserstrom

Epilogue. Political Innocence and Its Modeso
Mark Lilla

Contributors
Index

Vladimir Tismaneanu, Bogdan C. Iacob (eds)

Ideological Storms

Intellectuals, Dictators, and the Totalitarian Temptation

This volume gathers authors who wrote important works in the fields of the history of ideologies, the comparative study of dictatorships, and intellectual history. The book is a state of the art reassessment and analysis of the ideological commitments of intellectuals and their relationships with dictatorships during the twentieth century. The contributions focus on turning points or moments of breakage as well as on the continuities. Though its focus is on an East–West comparison in Europe, there are texts also dealing with Latin America, China, and the Middle East giving the book a global outlook.

The first part of the book deals with intellectuals' involvement with communist regimes or parties; the second looks at the persistence of utopianism in the trajectory of intellectuals who had been associated earlier in their lives with either communism or fascism; the third tackles intellectuals' role in national imaginations from either the left or the right; and, the fourth ties late twentieth century phenomena to current phenomena such as the persistence of anti-Semitism in the West, the slow erosion of the values upon which the EU is built, the quagmire in Iraq, and China's rise in the post-Cold War era. The collection provides a comprehensive big-picture of intellectual genealogies and dictatorial developments.

Editors

Vladimir Tismaneanu

Vladimir Tismaneanu is Professor of politics and Director of the Center for the Study of Post-communist Societies at University of Maryland (College Park).