9/11 and its aftermath demonstrate the urgent need for political scientists and historians to unravel the tangled relationship of secular ideologies and organized religions to political fanaticism.

This major new volume uses a series of case studies by world experts to further our understanding of these complex issues. They examine the connections between fascism, political religion and totalitarianism by exploring two inter-war fascist regimes, two abortive European movements, and two post-war American extreme right-wing movements with contrasting religious components.

Stalinism surveys the efforts made in recent years by professional historians, in Russia and the West, to better understand what really went on in the USSR between 1929 and 1953, when the country's affairs were shrouded in secrecy.

The opening of the Soviet archives in 1991 has led to a profusion of historical studies, whose strengths and weaknesses are assessed here impartially though not uncritically. While Joseph Stalin now emerges as a less omnipotent figure than he seemed to be at the time, most serious writers accept that the system over which he ruled was despotic...