Freedom fighters. Guerrilla warriors. Soldiers of fortune. The many civil wars and rebellions against communist governments drew heavily from this cast of characters. Yet from Nicaragua to Afghanistan, Vietnam to Angola, Cuba to the Congo, the connections between these anticommunist groups have remained hazy and their coordination obscure. Yet as Kyle Burke reveals, these conflicts were the product of a rising movement that sought paramilitary action against communism worldwide. Tacking between the United States and many other countries, Burke offers an international history not only of the paramilitaries who started and waged small wars in the second half of the twentieth century but of conservatism in the Cold War era. From the start of the Cold War, Burke shows, leading U.S. conservatives and their allies abroad dreamed of an international anticommunist revolution. They pinned their hopes to armed men, freedom fighters who could unravel communist states from within. And so they fashioned a global network of activists and state officials, guerrillas and mercenaries, ex-spies and ex-soldiers to sponsor paramilitary campaigns in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Blurring the line between state-sanctioned and vigilante violence, this armed crusade helped radicalize right-wing groups in the United States while also generating new forms of privatized warfare abroad.

Certain to engender debate in the media, especially in Ukraine itself, as well as the academic community. Using a wide selection of newspapers, journals, monographs, and school textbooks from different regions of the country, the book examines the sensitive issue of the changing perspectives ? often shifting 180 degrees ? on several events discussed in the new narratives of the Stalin years published in the Ukraine since the late Gorbachev period until 2005. These events were pivotal to Ukrainian history in the 20th century, including the Famine of 1932?33 and Ukrainian insurgency during the war years. This latter period is particularly disputed, and analyzed with regard to the roles of the OUN (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists) and the UPA (Ukrainian Insurgent Army) during and after the war. Were these organizations "freedom fighters" or "collaborators"? To what extent are they the architects of the modern independent state? "This excellent book fills a longstanding void in literature on the politics of memory in Eastern Europe. Professor Marples has produced an innovative and courageous study of how postcommunist Ukraine is rewriting its Stalinist and wartime past by gradually but inconsistently substituting Soviet models with nationalist interpretations. Grounded in an attentive reading of Ukrainian scholarship and journalism from the last two decades, this book offers a balanced take on such sensitive issues as the Great Famine of 1932-33 and the role of the Ukrainian nationalist insurgents during World War II. Instead of taking sides in the passionate debates on these subjects, Marples analyzes the debates themselves as discursive sites where a new national history is being forged. Clearly written and well argued, this study will make a major impact both within and beyond academia." - Serhy Yekelchyk, University of Victoria

A provocative, sometimes chilling expose of domestic fascist networks, which include Nazi collaborators within the Republican Party.

The first English-language biography of Dmytro Dontsov, the “spiritual father” of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, this book contextualizes Dontsov’s works, activities, and identity formation diachronically, reconstructing the cultural, political, urban, and intellectual milieus within which he developed and disseminated his worldview.