| Publication |
2014.
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| Summary/Abstract |
INTELLECTUALS HAVE HISTORICALLY BEEN AMONG the foremost advocates of political reform in repressive autocratic states. During the early decades of the twentieth century, scholars and writers served as chief witnesses to the atrocities arising from events such as the Spanish Civil War, Nazism, and the Stalinist purges. Later, they formed the basis of the samizdat movement that played an integral part in the destruction of European communism.1 Indeed, the leftist intelligentsia of the former USSR and its satellites became some of those regimes' most ardent critics and the instigators of revolutionary political change.2 More recently, intellectuals have led calls for liberalization in the Color Revolutions of central and southern Europe, as well as sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, in some cases even transitioning from academic life into new roles as politicians.3 The late Václav Havel in Czechoslovakia and Kosovo's Ibrahim Rugova are just two of the most ready examples.
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