The Many Faces of Antifascism

Across western Eurasia in the 1930s, Marxists developed, and disagreed on, the best methods to combat fascism. The literatures on this period are vast but rarely do they intersect, primarily because many studies stay within tight national or political boundaries. Conversely, The Many Faces of Antifascism explores the social and cultural reality of the interwar antifascist movement through a series of transnational micro-histories, foregrounding contingency and militants' lived experiences. Focusing simultaneously on the Soviet Union, Germany, Austria, France, England, and Spain, the book examines anew the incidents that spurred the division of Marxist antifascists, the fragmentation of the Popular Front, and the melding of antifascism and anti-communism in the late 1930s. In addition to the unique geographical and methodological foci of this synchronous transnational analysis, the book draws on and reproduces a range of unused sources. This wide-ranging approach allows the authors to unearth the diverse political practices of various Marxist parties as well as the importance of friendship, love, and trust that held together the members of intensely competing political groups that were often wracked by pervasive suspicion, distrust, and the fear of betrayal.