Remarks by Alexander Dallin

Soviet anti-fascism: Theory and practice, 1921-45

“…All communists must expose the imperialist war by struggle against the British and .rench war effort. 73 But communists were not to oppose the German war effort, which was directed against the dominant forces of capitalism. As Molotov explained in an address to the Supreme Soviet, one must dispense with outmoded concepts of aggression and aggressor.…”

Can the state be terrorist?

“…32 Such qualifications provide a certain amount of precision that differentiates this definition of state terrorism from previous ones, including Dallin and Breslauer's view that state terrorism is the arbitrary use (or credible threat of such use) of severe coercion or even extermination against individuals or groups by the organs of political authority. 33 Thus, at the end of the sieving process, one is left with a definition that is much qualified in terms of motive (political rather than private), intention (to instill fear rather than merely to destroy), and status (that allows certain legal violent activities of the state at home, which, if committed aboard, would qualify as terrorism to exist as legitimate punishment), while enabling particular arbitrary and/or indiscriminate actions to be labelled as domestic state terrorism. Thus, terrorism can be identified as the deliberate threat or use of violence for political purposes by either nonstate actors or the state abroad, when such actions are intended to influence the victim(s) and/or target(s) wider than the immediate victim(s); or the use of such purposive violence by the state within its own borders when such actions either fail to allow the victim prior knowledge of the law and/or distinguish between the innocence and guilt of the individual victim.…”