The success of fascist and communist regimes has long been explained by their ability to turn political ideology into a type of religion. These innovative essays explore the notion that all forms of modern mass-politics, including democracies, need a form of sacralization to function.

This book offers a fresh and original approach to the study of one of the dominant features of the twentieth century. Adopting a truly global approach to the realities of modern dictatorship, this handbook examines the multiple ways in which dictatorship functions - both for the rulers and for the ruled - and draws on the expertise of more than twenty five distinguished contributors coming from European, American, and Asian universities. While confronting the immense complexities of repression and popular response under dictatorship, the volume also poses a series of wide-ranging questions about the political organization of present-day mass society.

In contrast with the conventional approach, this volume explores the dynamic interplay and intersection of law and religion.

September 11th 2001 brought the entire question of religion's place in modern political ideology into sharp focus. Yet in effect this dysfunctional symbiosis had already been a feature of the international landscape for many decades. Scholars such as Eric Voeglin and Raymond Aron, to name but a few, delineated and assessed the way in which regime types such as Stalin's Soviet Union, Mussolini's fascist Italy and Hitler's Nazi Germany assumed quasi religious forms, substituting an omnipotent divine being with a corporeal and illuminated leader, as early as the 1920s and 1930s. But it is only recently that academic attention has returned with a vengeance to examine the manner in which revolutionary movements frequently adopt a religious form, or even hijack existing mainstream faiths in order to pursue a frequently brutal and violent political agenda based on sweeping social and individual transformation along the lines of official dogma and doctrine. This volume, dedicated to the great scholar of fascism and the Iberian world, Professor Stanley G. Payne, aims to emulate his spirit of enquiry by offering a new series of theoretical and case study analyses of the 'sacred' dimension of politics in the modern era.

This unique work concentrates on Soviet Communism as a religious phenomenon. The author argues that communism is a religion which was undermined by a crisis of faith. Klinghoffer traces the evolution of this communist religion from Marx through Gorbachev, covering Lenin, Stalin, and Krushchev. His focus is on the parallels between the Soviet communist religion and the development of Christianity. This thoroughly researched and carefully written book will be highly beneficial to students in courses on Soviet politics, Soviet history, Marxism, and religion. Contents: Thy Religious Come; Historic Redemption; The Prophetic Jew; The End of Days; The Religious Atheist; The Russified Mission; Bolshevik on the Cross; The Communist Religion; Tenets of Faith; The Spiritual Quest; The Social Gospel; The Soviet Church; Laying the Foudations; The Medieval Edifice: From Renaissance to Secularization and Religious Evolution; Index.