ABSTRACT
Specific theories and concepts are devised to conceptualize and understand Nazi murderousness and repression, such as "the banality of evil", "desk murderers", "authoritarian personality", and "obedience to authority". By any measure, corresponding information about the specialists in coercion and organizers of mass violence in Communist systems has been far more limited. Even more striking that some Western visitors to Communist societies formed favorable impressions of their leading specialists in coercion and political violence, and of their penal institutions just as grotesquely misperceiving them as they did the political system as a whole. Political violence and its perpetrators in the now defunct Communist systems are also of interest because better information about them -increasingly available - sheds further light on the issue of the "banality of evil" as opposed to other theories of causation. Those involved in the planning and execution of political violence in Communist Hungary, and especially the notorious Hungarian show trial of Laszlo Rajk, clung to similar rationalizations.
