Naming the Enemy: Anti-communism in Transnational Perspective

Abstract

In this introduction to the special issue on transnational anti-communism, Marla Stone and Giuliana Chamedes present the contours of a comparative approach to the study of anti-communism, raising issues of its origins and impact, and calling for attention to anti-communism as a discrete ideology with a defined set of beliefs and practices. The special issue of six articles, edited by Stone and Chamedes, focuses on anti-communism in the interwar period in a range of locations, including India under British rule, colonial Madagascar, Italy, France, Britain and the United States of America. The essays emphasize comparative issues regarding the emergence and consolidation of anti-communist movements and practices in the 1920s and 1930s, and they argue for the transnational and international character of interwar anti-communism, and for its profound implications for both national and global politics.