2026/01/01 by Michael David-Fox, Michael David‐Fox
Social Sciences · Psychology · #Soviet and Russian History #Eastern European Communism and Reforms #Memory, Trauma, and Commemoration
paper · pdf · doi:10.1017/slr.2026.10379
Abstract In this response to the four contributions to the Critical Forum on Crucibles of Power: Smolensk Under Stalinist and Nazi Rule , Michael David-Fox reflects on how our own twenty-first century crisis of liberalism may provoke new engagements with the twentieth-century age of extremes. His dialogue with commentators and critics is grouped into four areas. The first concerns how to reconceive the old comparison between Stalinism and Nazism in terms of entanglements and the non-synchronous life cycles of revolutionary regimes of far Left and far Right. The second is an explanation and defense of power and power relations as the work’s overarching focus, acknowledging decisions that entailed in terms of the research agenda. The third represents an intervention into a controversy over evidence, the Mints Commission interviews on the Great Patriotic War, and the utility of memoirs. The last section unpacks and refines the author’s approach to the concepts of choice, decision-making, and agency.