Anna Geifman | |
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| Born | October 31, 1962 |
| Citizenship | United States, Israel |
| Alma mater | Boston University, Harvard University |
| Known for | origins of terrorism, history of Russian revolutionary movements |
| Spouse | Divorced |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | History |
| Institutions | Boston University, Bar-Ilan University |
| Doctoral advisor | Richard Pipes |
Anna Geifman is an American historian. Her fields of interest include political extremism, terrorism, and the history of Russian revolutionary movements.
Geifman was born in 1962 in Leningrad, Soviet Union, and moved to Boston, Massachusetts, with her parents in 1976. She received her BA from Boston University in 1984 and her PhD from Harvard University in 1990 under Professor Richard Pipes.
She is a professor of history at Boston University, where she teaches undergraduate and graduate classes on the history of imperial Russia, the Soviet Union, psychohistory, and modern terrorism.
Geifman researches and writes on 20th- and 21st-century fundamentalist terrorism, emphasizing psychological patterns of political violence through comparative analysis. As psychohistorian, she focuses on incentives for extremist behavior and the impact of organized brutality on the daily lives and emotional conditions of civilians in areas that are affected by terrorism.
She has lived in Israel since 2007 and works at Bar-Ilan University.
Geifman has introduced the comparison between the pre-revolutionary Russian terrorist groups and the contemporary perpetrators of Islamist violence into the conversation on terrorism. [1] [2] She maintains that in various parts of the world, including the Middle East, the decentralized, informal network of combat cells is very much like the network of pre-revolutionary Russian terror organizations that often operated without strong connections with one another, beyond the fact that all were inspired by similar nihilist, destructive (and self-destructive) attitudes. [3]
Geifman downplays the importance of revolutionary ideologies, focusing not on the intellectual but on the psychological aspects of terrorism, which she relates to the perpetrators' difficulties in dealing with identity crises of modernity and post-modernity. She also underscores criminal tendencies both among the Russian radicals and the contemporary terrorists worldwide.
In Geifman's opinion, the idea that taking on the responsibilities of government will moderate groups like Hamas and Hezbollah is a fallacy. A better understanding of how ideologically driven groups that use terrorism as a tactic operate may be gained by looking at the Bolshevik Revolution. She points to the parallel between Hamas’ commitment to building up its “security forces,” and the Bolshevik establishment and funding of the Cheka (first Soviet secret police, precursor to the KGB) as its first priority upon gaining power. [3]
According to Geifman, Hamas's first victims are the Palestinian civilians, just like the earliest victims of the Bolshevik regime were its own citizens. [3] “You want to know what happens when terrorists come to power? As soon as terrorists take control of the government, they begin building on what they had done in the underground. Look at the Bolsheviks, who were terrorists before they came to power in 1917". They used their extensive experience in violence to build a terror-based state. [3]
Terrorism, in its broadest sense, is the use of intentional violence and fear to achieve political or ideological aims. The term is used in this regard primarily to refer to intentional violence during peacetime or in the context of war against non-combatants. The terms "terrorist" and "terrorism" originated during the French Revolution of the late 18th century but became widely used internationally and gained worldwide attention in the 1970s during the Troubles in Northern Ireland, the Basque conflict, and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. The increased use of suicide attacks from the 1980s onwards was typified by the 2001 September 11 attacks in the United States.
Religious terrorism is a type of religious violence where terrorism is used as a strategy to achieve certain religious goals or which are influenced by religious beliefs and/or identity.
A suicide bombing of a crowded public bus in the Shmuel HaNavi quarter in Jerusalem took place on August 19, 2003. Twenty-four people were killed and over 130 wounded. Many of the victims were children, some of them infants. The Islamist militant group Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack.
The Red Terror in Soviet Russia was a campaign of political repression and executions which was carried out by the Bolsheviks, chiefly through the Cheka, the Bolshevik secret police. It officially started in early September 1918 and lasted until 1922.
Maria Alexandrovna Spiridonova was a Narodnik-inspired Russian revolutionary. In 1906, as a novice member of a local combat group of the Tambov Socialists-Revolutionaries (SRs), she assassinated a security official. Her subsequent abuse by police earned her enormous popularity with the opponents of Tsarism throughout the empire and even abroad.
Jewish religious terrorism is religious terrorism committed by extremists within Judaism.
The history of terrorism is a history of well-known and historically significant individuals, entities, and incidents associated, whether rightly or wrongly, with terrorism. Scholars agree that terrorism is a disputed term, and very few of those labeled terrorists describe themselves as such. It is common for opponents in a violent conflict to describe the other side as terrorists or as practicing terrorism.
Terrorism in Russia has a long history starting from the time of the Russian Empire. Terrorism, in the modern sense, means violence against civilians to achieve political or ideological objectives by creating extreme fear.
Union of Socialists-Revolutionaries Maximalists was a political party in the Russian Empire, a radical wing expelled from the Socialist-Revolutionary Party in 1906.
Communist terrorism is terrorism perpetrated by individuals or groups which adhere to communism and ideologies related to it, such as Marxism–Leninism, Maoism, and Trotskyism. Historically, communist terrorism has sometimes taken the form of state-sponsored terrorism, supported by communist nations such as the Soviet Union, China, North Korea and Cambodia. In addition, non-state actors such as the Red Brigades, the Front Line and the Red Army Faction have also engaged in communist terrorism. These groups hope to inspire the masses to rise up and start a revolution to overthrow existing political and economic systems. This form of terrorism can sometimes be called red terrorism or left-wing terrorism.
A suicide attack is any violent attack, usually entailing attackers detonating an explosive, where any attackers have accepted their own death as a direct result of the attacking method used. Suicide attacks have occurred throughout history, often as part of a military campaign, and more recently as part of Islamic terrorist campaigns. Although generally not regulated under international law by themselves, many suicide attacks violate international laws of war such as perfidy or targeting civilians.
Terror is a policy of political repression and violence intended to subdue political opposition. The term was first used for the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution.
A twin suicide bombing of an Egged bus occurred in the French Hill neighborhood of Jerusalem on 18 May 2003. Seven passengers were killed in the attack, and 20 injured. A few minutes after the first attack, a second suicide bomber blew himself up at the entrance to the village of Dahiya el-Barid, near Jerusalem. Only the bomber was killed in what appeared to be a premature detonation.
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine is a secular Palestinian Marxist–Leninist and revolutionary socialist organization founded in 1967 by George Habash. It has consistently been the second-largest of the groups forming the Palestine Liberation Organization, the largest being Fatah.
The Socialist Revolutionary Party, also Party of Socialist-Revolutionaries or Social Revolutionary Party, was a major political party in late Imperial Russia, both phases of the Russian Revolution, and early Soviet Russia.
Revolutionary terror, also referred to as revolutionary terrorism or a reign of terror, refers to the institutionalized application of force to counterrevolutionaries, particularly during the French Revolution from the years 1793 to 1795. The term "Communist terrorism" has also been used to describe the revolutionary terror, from the Red Terror in the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) to the reign of the Khmer Rouge and others. In contrast, "reactionary terror", such as White Terror, has been used to subdue revolutions.
There is a long history of terrorism in Europe. This has often been linked to nationalist and separatist movements, while other acts have been related to politics, religious extremism, or organized crime. Terrorism in the European sections of the intercontinental countries of Turkey and Russia are not included in this list.
The June 2016 Tel Aviv shooting, which occurred on 8 June 2016 in Tel Aviv, Israel, was a terrorist attack in which two Palestinian gunmen opened fire on patrons at the Max Brenner Cafe in the Sarona Market, killing four people and injuring seven others. The perpetrators were caught alive by the security forces and put in custody. According to an official indictment filed by the Tel Aviv District Prosecutor's Office the perpetrators were inspired by the Islamic State group.
Anastasia Alekseevna Bitsenko, née Kameristaya was a Narodnik-inspired, later Communist, Russian revolutionary. As a member of a socialist revolutionary (SR) flying combat detachment, she came to fame for assassinating the former Russian Minister of War Viktor Sakharov in 1905. After being held in detention for over 11 years, she was freed during the February Revolution and joined the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries. For her achievements, the party designated her as their representative within the Soviet delegation for the German-Russian peace negotiations in World War I, which resulted in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. She eventually sided with the Soviet regime for good, adhering to the Communist ideology.
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