History terms in Europe

The samizdat bulletin of the Soviet human rights movement, issued from 1968 to the early 1980s, which recorded arrests, trials and conditions in camps.

A system of government in which the monarch claims supreme power, unlimited by any elected assembly or written constitution, and makes law, raises taxes and commands the army in his or her own name.

The CEDA's position that the form of government, monarchy or republic, was secondary to its content, which allowed it to work within the Second Republic without declaring loyalty to it.

The Italian electoral law of 1923 that gave two-thirds of the seats in the Chamber to the list winning the most votes, provided it had at least 25 per cent.

Under the French Constitution of 1791, a man of at least 25 paying direct taxes worth three days' local wages, who could vote; poorer men and all women were passive citizens without the vote.

Charlemagne's long capitulary of 789 ordering reform of the clergy, preaching, worship and education.

A Spanish army officer who made his career in the Moroccan wars, valued promotion for bravery in battle and despised politicians; Franco was one.

The changes in farming in Britain and the Low Countries from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, including new crops and rotations, selective breeding and enclosure, that raised output; many historians stress that the change was gradual.

Hebrew for 'standing up': the historian Yehuda Bauer's term for the many forms of Jewish resistance to Nazi persecution, armed and unarmed.

A member of the radical reform groups that rejected infant baptism and baptised only adult believers; most also refused oaths, military service and state control of religion, and were persecuted by Catholics and Protestants alike.

A form of anarchism that sees trade unions as the means to overthrow capitalism and the state through strikes and a revolutionary general strike, and as the basis for organising society afterwards.

The political and social system of France before 1789: an absolute monarchy ruling a society divided into legally privileged orders.

The modern name for the lands ruled by Henry II, Richard I and John (1154–1204), stretching from England to the Pyrenees.

A treaty of June 1935 in which Britain accepted a German navy of up to 35 per cent of the size of the Royal Navy, condoning German rearmament in breach of Versailles.

The agreement of 31 August 1907 in which Britain and Russia settled their disputes over Persia, Afghanistan and Tibet, completing the Triple Entente with France.

The ceremony in which a new king was touched with holy oil by a bishop or pope, marking him as chosen by God, as the kings of the Old Testament had been.

The annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany in March 1938, forbidden by the peace treaties of 1919.

An agreement against the Communist International signed by Germany and Japan in November 1936 and joined by Italy in November 1937.

The organisation founded by Alexei Navalny in 2011 to investigate corruption among Russian officials and publish the results online.

The Soviet campaign launched in 1949 against intellectuals accused of admiring the West; it was directed mainly against Jews, who lost jobs and cultural institutions.

The official East German name for the Berlin Wall, presenting it as a defence against the West rather than a barrier to keep East Germans in.

The name given to Malenkov, Molotov, Kaganovich and their allies after their failed attempt to remove Khrushchev in June 1957.

The British and French policy of the 1930s of settling grievances, especially German ones, through negotiation and concession in order to avoid war.

Lenin's programme of April 1917, which called for no support for the Provisional Government, an end to the war and the transfer of power to the soviets.

The Spanish army in Morocco, including the Foreign Legion and Moroccan Regulares; its professional troops, commanded by Franco from July 1936, were the core of the Nationalist forces.

The article of the Spanish constitution of 1978 that allows the government, with the approval of the Senate, to force an autonomous community to meet its obligations; it was used for the first time in Catalonia in October 2017.

A body of nobles, bishops and officials chosen by the king, called in 1787 (and again in 1788) to approve financial reforms; it refused to accept Calonne's land tax.

Paper bonds issued by the French revolutionary government from December 1789, backed by nationalised Church lands, which became paper money and lost most of their value through over-issue before being abandoned in 1796.

A royal decree or legal procedure in medieval England, such as the Assize of Clarendon of 1166.

The statement of Lutheran beliefs drafted by Philipp Melanchthon and presented to Charles V at the Diet of Augsburg in 1530; it became the basic creed of the Lutheran churches.

The decrees of 4–11 August 1789 in which the National Assembly abolished the feudal system, the tithe, the sale of offices and tax privileges, ending the society of orders.

The Compromise of 1867 between the Habsburg monarchy and Hungary that created Austria-Hungary, with separate governments for Austria and Hungary under one monarch.

Government policy of cutting spending and raising taxes to reduce a budget deficit or debt.

The German law of December 1916 that required all men aged 17 to 60 not in the armed forces to work in war-related employment, while giving trade unions a role in factory committees.

The withdrawal of about 120 opposition deputies from the Italian parliament in June 1924 in protest at the murder of Matteotti; it failed to bring Mussolini down, and the deputies were expelled in 1926.

The alliance of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy announced by Mussolini in November 1936, later extended to Japan and other allies in the Second World War.

A salaried royal official appointed by Philip II of France from about 1190 to supervise justice and finance in the royal lands.

The principle that no single state should become strong enough to dominate the others, so that peace is kept by an equilibrium between the great powers.

The constitution of the Federal Republic of Germany, proclaimed on 23 May 1949.

The treaty of December 1972 in which West and East Germany recognised each other's existence and agreed to develop normal relations.

The main Basque nationalist party, Catholic and moderate, founded in 1895; it has led most Basque governments since 1980.

Mussolini’s campaign from 1925 to make Italy self-sufficient in wheat through tariffs, subsidies and propaganda; it raised wheat output at the cost of other crops and dearer bread.

The Fascist programme of land reclamation, above all the draining of the Pontine Marshes near Rome in the 1930s, used as propaganda for the regime’s energy.

Mussolini’s revaluation of the lira from 1926, fixing it at about 92 to the pound in 1927; it served national prestige but hurt exports and wages.

The supply of West Berlin by American and British aircraft during the Soviet blockade of 1948–1949, about 2.3 million tonnes in some 278,000 flights.

The Soviet closure of land routes to the western sectors of Berlin from June 1948 to May 1949, answered by a western airlift.

An Anglo-American conference on refugees held in April 1943 that produced almost no rescue measures.

A homeless or abandoned child in Soviet Russia in the 1920s; millions were left orphaned or abandoned by war, famine and family breakdown.

A British government report of December 1942 by William Beveridge that proposed a national insurance system to attack the 'five giants' of Want, Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness.

The middle-class culture of Germany and Austria between 1815 and 1848, centred on home, family, music and private life.

The left's name for the period 1933–1935 in Spain, when centre-right governments supported by the CEDA slowed or reversed the reforms of 1931–1933; the right called it the bienio rectificador.

The first period of the Second Republic (1931–1933), when governments of left Republicans and Socialists led by Azaña reformed the army, Church, land, education and regional government.

The "two red years" of 1919–1920 in Italy, a wave of strikes, land seizures and factory occupations that frightened property owners and helped the growth of Fascism.

The merged British and American occupation zones of Germany from 1 January 1947, joined by the French zone in 1949 (Trizonia); the core of the later West German state.

Russian monarchist and antisemitic groups formed after 1905 that attacked Jews, students and revolutionaries.

The German bombing of British cities between September 1940 and May 1941, which killed about 43,000 civilians.

The name given to the fast German campaigns of 1939–1941 that combined tanks, motorised infantry and aircraft to break through and advance deep into enemy territory.

The division of Spanish volunteers, about 45,000 in total, who fought for Germany against the Soviet Union in 1941–1943.

The urban middle class of merchants, professionals, officials and property owners who lived from trade, office or investment rather than manual labour or noble title.

The armed rebellion and banditry in the former Kingdom of the Two Sicilies from 1861 to about 1865, suppressed by the Italian army.

The declaration of 25 July 1792 by the Duke of Brunswick, commander of the Austrian and Prussian armies, threatening Paris with destruction if the French royal family was harmed; it helped provoke the overthrow of the monarchy.

The fifty-year defence pact signed in March 1948 by Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg, a forerunner of NATO.

A belt of territory or states between two powers that protects one of them from attack; after 1945 Stalin sought one in Eastern Europe.

The political truce in Germany from August 1914, under which parties, including the Social Democrats, and trade unions agreed to suspend conflict and support the war.

A German student fraternity of the kind founded at Jena in 1815, campaigning for a united and constitutional Germany; banned by the Carlsbad Decrees.

A person who neither takes part in persecution nor acts against it; one of the three categories (with perpetrators and victims) used by the historian Raul Hilberg.

The lists of grievances and proposals drawn up by parishes, guilds and electoral assemblies of the three estates in the spring of 1789 for their deputies to take to the Estates-General.

The form of Protestantism based on the teaching of John Calvin in Geneva, stressing God's sovereignty, predestination and the moral discipline of the church community; it spread to France, the Netherlands, Scotland and parts of Germany.

The German and Austrian science of state administration, taught in universities from the eighteenth century, which aimed to increase the ruler’s revenue, population and economic strength.

The Prussian system of recruitment (1733) that gave each regiment a district from which it conscripted peasants, who trained for part of the year and worked their land for the rest.

An economic system based on private ownership of property and businesses, markets and the pursuit of profit.

A written royal order or law of the Carolingian rulers, divided into chapters (capitula).

Secret revolutionary societies in early nineteenth-century Italy, mainly of officers and professional men, that sought constitutions and an end to foreign rule; behind the risings of 1820–1821.

A Spanish traditionalist movement that began in the 1830s in support of a rival Bourbon line and stood for an ultra-Catholic, anti-liberal monarchy; its militia, the Requetés, fought for the Nationalists in 1936–1939.

Measures passed by the German Federal Diet in September 1819 at Metternich's urging, imposing censorship, supervising universities, banning the Burschenschaften and creating a commission to investigate revolutionaries.

A clear script of separated lower-case letters developed in the Carolingian period, the ancestor of modern lower-case letters.

The revival of learning, writing and the arts sponsored by Charlemagne and his successors in the late eighth and ninth centuries.

A member of a heretical movement strong in southern France in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, which believed in two principles of good and evil.

The Spanish Confederation of Autonomous Right-wing Groups, a mass Catholic party founded in 1933 under José María Gil-Robles; the largest party in the Cortes after the 1933 election.

The Czechoslovak human rights movement founded in January 1977 by Václav Havel, Jan Patočka and others, which called on the government to respect the rights it had accepted at Helsinki.

The Fascist declaration of April 1927 that set out the principles of the corporate state: labour as a social duty, private enterprise as the most efficient means of production, and state intervention where it failed.

Henry I's charter of 1100 promising to end abuses of royal power; it served as a model for Magna Carta.

Catherine II’s charter of 1785 confirming Russian nobles’ freedom from compulsory service, personal taxation and corporal punishment, their right to own land and serfs, and their corporate assemblies.

The form of humanism, strongest in northern Europe, that used classical scholarship and the study of texts in their original languages to reform Christian life and return to the Bible and the early Church.

The rising of unskilled wool workers in Florence in 1378, who briefly took over the government and demanded their own guilds before the elite regained control.

The humanism of Florentine chancellors such as Salutati and Bruni, which praised active participation in the life of a free republic on Roman models; the term was made famous by the historian Hans Baron.

The code of French civil law issued by Napoleon in 1804, which confirmed equality before the law, secular civil status and property rights while strengthening the authority of fathers and husbands; introduced across much of Europe.

The law of 12 July 1790 that reorganised the Catholic Church in France, with dioceses matching the departments and elected, state-paid clergy; the oath to it, required from November 1790, split the clergy.

The National Confederation of Labour, the Spanish anarcho-syndicalist trade union founded in 1910, strongest in Barcelona and among Andalusian labourers; it rejected parties and elections in favour of direct action.

Cooperation with the German occupiers in the Second World War by governments, organisations or individuals, from administrative and economic cooperation to taking part in persecution.

Rule by a group of leaders sharing the top posts, instead of one dictator; the principle proclaimed after Stalin's death in 1953 and again after Khrushchev's fall in 1964.

The Communist Information Bureau (1947–1956), which linked the ruling communist parties of Eastern Europe with the French and Italian parties under Soviet direction.

Clandestine workers' committees formed in Spain in the 1960s, led largely by Communists, which used the official union elections to organise strikes; a major union in democratic Spain.

The German order of 6 June 1941 that Soviet political commissars captured in the war against the USSR were to be shot.

The committee of twelve members of the French National Convention that directed the war, the economy and the Terror in 1793–1794; its members included Robespierre, Saint-Just and Carnot.

The EEC's farm policy from 1962, which guaranteed prices for farmers and became the largest item in the Community budget.

The law common to the whole of England, developed by the royal courts from the twelfth century through writs, juries and judges' decisions.

A type of regime in which elections and opposition parties exist but the rulers tilt the playing field so heavily, through the media, courts and state resources, that they cannot realistically lose.

The arrangement under which the Basque Country and Navarre collect almost all their own taxes and pay an agreed sum to the Spanish state for shared services.

The theory, strongest in the early fifteenth century, that a general council of the Church held authority above the pope and could reform or depose him.

The agreement of 1122 between Emperor Henry V and Pope Calixtus II that ended the Investiture Contest in the empire.

The German air and ground force sent by Hitler to help Franco in 1936–1939; about 19,000 men served in it in rotation, and it bombed Guernica in April 1937.

The leader of a band of mercenary soldiers hired by an Italian state under a contract (condotta); some, such as Francesco Sforza, became rulers themselves.

The league of German states, eventually about 39, formed under Napoleon's protection in 1806; its members left the Holy Roman Empire and supplied troops to France until 1813.

The process after about 1550 by which Lutheran, Calvinist and Catholic states each imposed a defined confession of faith on their subjects through catechisms, visitations, schools and discipline, strengthening the state.

Internal exile imposed on opponents of Fascism by administrative commissions without trial, in remote villages or on islands, for up to five years.

An association of lay people who met for shared prayer, charity and religious ceremonies, often under the patronage of a saint.

The conference of European powers (September 1814 to June 1815) that redrew the map of Europe after Napoleon, restoring many old dynasties and creating the German Confederation.

The series of meetings of the great powers between 1818 and 1822 (Aix-la-Chapelle, Troppau, Laibach, Verona) held to uphold the 1815 settlement and deal with revolutions.

The alliance of 1852 between Cavour's centre-right and Rattazzi's centre-left in the Piedmontese parliament, which gave Cavour a secure majority; the word means "marriage".

A political outlook that defends established institutions such as monarchy, the Church and the nobility, and prefers slow change to reform or revolution.

The plot of 1796 led by Gracchus Babeuf to overthrow the Directory and establish common ownership of property; betrayed, it ended with Babeuf's execution in 1797.

The government of France from 1799 to 1804 under the Constitution of the Year VIII, in which the First Consul, Napoleon Bonaparte, held almost all executive power.

Napoleon's attempt from 1806 to defeat Britain economically by closing the ports of continental Europe to British trade.

The conditions for joining the EU set in 1993: stable democracy, the rule of law and minority rights; a functioning market economy; and the ability to adopt EU law.

The Italian force of about 70,000–80,000 troops sent by Mussolini to fight for Franco in 1936–1939; it was defeated at Guadalajara in March 1937.

The Fascist system in which employers and workers in each branch of the economy were organised in state-run corporations instead of independent unions; largely a façade that controlled labour.

A member of the self-governing, semi-military communities of the southern and eastern frontiers of Russia and Ukraine, who served the state as soldiers in return for land and privileges.

The meeting of the leaders of the United States, Britain, France and Italy (Wilson, Lloyd George, Clemenceau and Orlando) that took the main decisions at the Paris Peace Conference from March 1919.

In the Carolingian Empire, a royal official drawn from the aristocracy who ran a county, holding courts, raising troops and keeping order; later a hereditary noble title.

The coup of 18–19 Brumaire Year VIII (9–10 November 1799) in which Napoleon Bonaparte, Sieyès and their allies overthrew the Directory and set up the Consulate.

The founding document of the League of Nations, written into the peace treaties of 1919–1920, which set out its aims, its organisation and its members' obligations, including collective security (Article 10) and sanctions (Article 16).

Serious crimes such as murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and persecution committed against a civilian population, first defined in the charter of the International Military Tribunal in 1945.

The confrontation of October 1962 between the USA and the USSR over Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba, which ended when Khrushchev withdrew them in return for an American promise not to invade Cuba.

The principle, agreed at the Peace of Augsburg in 1555, that the ruler of each territory in the Holy Roman Empire decided whether it would be Catholic or Lutheran.

The civic religion promoted by Robespierre in 1794, based on belief in God and the immortality of the soul, celebrated in a festival in Paris on 8 June 1794.

Hans Mommsen’s term for the way competition between rival Nazi agencies pushed policy to ever more extreme measures.

The replacement of the Reichsmark by the Deutschmark in the western zones of Germany on 20 June 1948, which started West German recovery and led to the Berlin Blockade.

An agreement between states to abolish customs duties on trade between them and to charge a common tariff on imports from outside.

Tribute paid by English kings to Viking raiders in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries; the name was later given to the land tax.

The Bolshevik policy of 1919 of mass terror against Cossacks who had fought against Soviet power, including executions and deportations.

The Soviet policy, begun after Stalin's death in 1953 and made public by Khrushchev's Secret Speech in 1956, of ending mass terror, releasing and rehabilitating many victims and dismantling the cult of Stalin, while keeping the one-party state.

The forced marches of concentration camp prisoners away from the advancing Allied armies in 1944–1945, on which many thousands died.

The campaign of 1793–1794 in revolutionary France to remove Christianity from public life: closing churches, pressing priests to give up their vocation and replacing worship with civic cults.

A Soviet decree of 2 (15) November 1917 that promised equality and self-determination, including the right to secede, to all the peoples of the former Russian Empire.

The statement agreed at Yalta in February 1945 in which the Allies promised to help the liberated peoples of Europe form governments through free elections.

Belief in a creator God who made the universe as a rational system governed by natural laws, combined with rejection of miracles, revelation and the authority of churches.

The part of a manor kept by the lord for his own use and worked by the labour services of his peasants.

The criticism that EU decisions are made by bodies that are too remote from, or not accountable enough to, voters.

The Allied policy after 1945 of removing Nazis from public life and Nazi ideas from German society, through trials, questionnaires and tribunals.

The period of rapid, state-guided economic growth in Spain from about 1959 to 1973, when the Franco regime sought legitimacy through prosperity.

The Brezhnev-era doctrine that the USSR had reached a long, stable stage of socialism before full communism, which replaced Khrushchev's promise of communism by 1980.

A religious movement in the Netherlands and Germany from the late fourteenth century that stressed personal prayer, moral life and education, through communities such as the Brethren of the Common Life.

The name given to General Berenguer's government of 1930–1931, which relaxed Primo de Rivera's dictatorship without restoring full constitutional rule; a pun on dictadura (dura, hard; blanda, soft).

Meetings of the imperial Diet in 1526, which let each ruler act on religion as he would answer to God and the emperor, and in 1529, which reversed this and provoked the protest that gave Protestants their name.

The assembly of the estates of the Holy Roman Empire (the electors, the other princes and the imperial cities), whose consent the emperor needed for imperial taxes and laws.

The reversal of alliances in 1756, when Austria allied with its old enemy France and Britain allied with Prussia, shortly before the Seven Years’ War.

The government of France from November 1795 to November 1799 under the Constitution of the Year III, with five Directors as the executive and two elected councils as the legislature.

The doctrine that monarchs receive their authority directly from God and are answerable to God alone, so that resistance to a king is resistance to God.

The splitting of production into separate tasks, each done by a different worker, which Adam Smith argued greatly increases productivity.

The false accusation, announced in January 1953, that leading Kremlin doctors, most of them Jewish, had plotted to kill Soviet leaders; it was dropped after Stalin's death.

The record of the survey of England ordered by William I in 1085 and carried out in 1086, listing landholders, land, resources and values.

A forged document, claimed to be from the fourth-century emperor Constantine, granting the pope authority over the western Roman Empire; Lorenzo Valla proved it a forgery in 1440.

Pippin III's grant to the pope in 756 of lands in central Italy taken from the Lombards, usually seen as the origin of the Papal States.

A battleship of the type introduced by the British HMS Dreadnought in 1906, with a single calibre of heavy guns and turbine engines, which made earlier battleships obsolete.

The understanding of 1873 between the emperors of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Russia to consult on common problems and resist revolution, revived as a secret alliance in 1881 and ended in 1887.

The division of authority in Russia between March and October 1917 between the Provisional Government, which held legal power, and the Petrograd Soviet, which controlled the soldiers and workers.

NATO's decision of December 1979 to deploy new US medium-range nuclear missiles in Western Europe while offering the Soviet Union talks to limit such weapons.

"Leader": the title of Mussolini as head of the Fascist movement and regime, at the centre of his cult of personality.

The Polish state created by Napoleon in 1807 from Prussian (and in 1809 Austrian) partition lands, with the king of Saxony as duke; occupied by Russia in 1813.

Local associations founded in Spain from 1765, with royal encouragement, in which nobles, clergy and professionals promoted better farming, crafts, trade and schools.

The decree of Emperor Ferdinand II in March 1629 ordering the return to the Catholic Church of all Church lands secularised since 1552; it threatened the Protestant settlement and helped to bring Sweden into the Thirty Years' War.

The decree of Emperor Charles V in May 1521 that declared Martin Luther an outlaw and banned his writings in the Holy Roman Empire.

The European Free Trade Association, formed in 1960 by Britain and six other states as a free-trade area without the common policies of the EEC.

Mobile killing units of the SS security police and SD that carried out mass shootings of Jews, communists, Roma and others behind the German front, above all in the USSR in 1941–1943.

A person, usually a noble or a priest, who left France during the revolution, often to work for counter-revolution from abroad; émigrés' property was confiscated from 1792.

The view that knowledge comes from experience, observation and experiment, associated with Francis Bacon and John Locke.

France's boycott of EEC meetings in 1965–1966 over majority voting and farm finance, ended by the Luxembourg Compromise, which allowed a national veto on vital interests.

The report of 13 July 1870 of King William I's meeting with the French ambassador at Ems, which Bismarck shortened and published to provoke France into declaring war.

The encyclopaedia edited by Denis Diderot and Jean d’Alembert and published in 28 volumes (1751–1772), which presented all knowledge, including trades and crafts, as useful and open to criticism.

Rule by an absolute monarch who claims to govern by Enlightenment principles, carrying out reforms from above for the good of subjects without sharing power with them; a term coined by nineteenth-century historians.

The purge of collaborators in France at and after the Liberation of 1944, including both killings without trial and trials in special courts.

The Republican Left of Catalonia, a left-wing Catalan nationalist party founded in 1931 that led the Generalitat in the 1930s and was a main party of the independence movement after 2010.

The system created by the Spanish constitution of 1978 under which Spain is divided into 17 autonomous communities with their own parliaments and governments.

One of the three legal orders of pre-revolutionary French society: the clergy (First Estate), the nobility (Second Estate) and everyone else (Third Estate), each with its own rights, duties and tax obligations.

The representative assembly of the three estates of France, which met at royal summons; called in 1789 for the first time since 1614.

A Basque separatist organisation founded in 1959 that used terrorism to seek independence; it killed about 850 people, most after 1977, ended its armed campaign in 2011 and dissolved in 2018.

The forced removal of an ethnic or religious group from an area by violence and terror, as in the wars in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

The single currency of the EU states in the eurozone, launched in 1999, with notes and coins from 2002.

The independent line of Western European communist parties in the 1970s, above all the Italian, which accepted parliamentary democracy and criticised the Soviet Union.

The protests in Ukraine from November 2013 to February 2014, begun when President Yanukovych suspended an agreement with the EU, which ended with his flight to Russia.

The organisation created by the Treaty of Paris (1951) that placed the coal and steel industries of six Western European states under a common High Authority.

A plan for a European army including West German troops, signed in 1952 but rejected by the French parliament in August 1954.

The customs union and common market created by the Treaty of Rome in 1957 by six Western European states; it became part of the European Union in 1993.

Opposition to or doubt about European integration and the powers of the EU.

The debt crisis of 2009–2012 in which Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Cyprus and Spain needed rescue loans and investors feared the euro might break up.

An international conference of July 1938 on Jewish refugees from Germany and Austria; thirty-two countries attended, but almost none agreed to take more refugees.

The royal financial office of England, first recorded under Henry I, which audited the accounts of sheriffs on a chequered cloth.

The royal department set up in England in the 1190s to record loans by Jews and collect royal revenue from them.

Garibaldi's volunteer expedition of about 1,089 men that sailed from Quarto in May 1860 and conquered Sicily and Naples.

A Nazi camp built to murder people, mostly Jews, on arrival, usually by gas: Chełmno, Bełżec, Sobibór, Treblinka, Majdanek and Auschwitz-Birkenau.

The Iberian Anarchist Federation, founded in 1927, a radical anarchist group that sought to keep the CNT on a revolutionary path.

The Spanish fascist party founded in 1933 by José Antonio Primo de Rivera, merged with the JONS in 1934; Franco absorbed it into the single party FET y de las JONS in 1937.

The Soviet law of 1918 that made marriage a civil matter, allowed divorce on request, gave women equal rights in marriage and gave children born outside marriage the same rights as others.

The movement founded by Mussolini in Milan on 23 March 1919, which became the National Fascist Party in November 1921.

The supreme body of the Fascist Party, created by Mussolini in December 1922; from 1928 an organ of the state that chose candidates for parliament. It voted against Mussolini in July 1943.

An oath of loyalty sworn by a vassal to his lord, usually with homage.

The assembly of envoys of the member states of the German Confederation, meeting at Frankfurt under Austrian presidency from 1815 to 1866.

The West German state founded in May 1949 from the three western zones, a parliamentary democracy; it absorbed the GDR in 1990.

The single party of Franco's Spain, created by the Decree of Unification of April 1937 from the Falange and the Carlists; later called the National Movement.

The division of a kingdom into separate duchies or lordships, as in Poland between 1138 and 1320.

A modern term for medieval society organised through lordship, vassalage and fiefs. Historians disagree about whether it describes a real system or imposes a false pattern on varied local customs.

Moderate constitutional monarchists who left the Jacobin Club in July 1791 to defend Louis XVI and the Constitution of 1791.

Land or another source of income granted by a lord to a vassal in return for service, usually military; over time fiefs became hereditary.

A military court set up in Russia in August 1906 to try civilians within days of an offence without defence lawyers; it sentenced about 1,100 people to death before it lapsed in 1907.

The Nazi euphemism for the plan to murder all the Jews of Europe, carried out from 1941 to 1945.

Finland's Cold War policy of keeping its democracy and independence while avoiding actions the Soviet Union opposed; also used critically for appeasing a powerful neighbour.

A state organised above all to raise taxes and borrow money in order to pay for large armies and navies; used by historians for the great powers of the eighteenth century.

NATO's strategy from 1967 of answering an attack with conventional or nuclear force as the situation required, instead of immediate massive nuclear retaliation.

In Russia since a law of 2012, the official label given to organisations, and later individuals, accused of receiving foreign money and engaging in politics, bringing heavy reporting duties and stigma.

The law that reserved large areas of England for royal hunting under harsh penalties, introduced by William I.

A participant in the revolutions of 1848–1849 who emigrated after their defeat, especially the German radicals who settled in the United States.

The Church council of 1215 called by Innocent III, which required annual confession and ordered Jews and Muslims to wear distinctive dress.

The French silver franc defined by the law of 7 Germinal Year XI (March 1803), which remained stable in value until 1914.

The alliance between France and Russia agreed in 1892 and ratified in 1893–1894, by which each promised to mobilise and fight if the other was attacked by Germany or its allies.

The elected German National Assembly that met in St Paul's Church, Frankfurt, from May 1848 to 1849 to write a constitution for a united Germany.

The forces and movement led by Charles de Gaulle from London from June 1940 that continued the war against Germany and rejected Vichy.

A fraternal society organised in lodges, spreading from London after 1717, whose members met as equals under rules of reason and brotherhood; many Enlightenment figures were Masons.

Volunteer paramilitary units of former soldiers in Germany after 1918, used by the government against left-wing risings and in border fighting, many of whose members joined the extreme right.

A series of revolts in France (1648–1653) by nobles and the Parlement of Paris against royal power during the childhood of Louis XIV.

A conflict in which fighting has stopped without a peace settlement, leaving a breakaway territory outside the control of the state it legally belongs to, usually protected by an outside power.

The Weimar Republic's policy, associated with Gustav Stresemann, of meeting the obligations of the Treaty of Versailles in order to win concessions and revise it by negotiation.

The Russian constitution of April 1906, which kept the tsar's 'supreme autocratic power', control of ministers, the army and foreign policy, and the right to issue decrees when the Duma was not sitting (Article 87).

The eight laws (1938–1977) that served as Franco's Spain's constitution, from the Labour Charter of 1938 to the Law for Political Reform of 1977.

The French royal tax on salt before 1789, which varied greatly between regions and was among the most hated taxes of the Ancien Régime.

Death squads organised by members of the Spanish security forces that killed 27 people in a 'dirty war' against ETA in 1983–1987.

Foreign workers recruited by West Germany from 1955 to 1973 under agreements with states such as Italy, Türkiye and Yugoslavia, expected at first to return home.

The English land tax of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, which developed from payments to Viking raiders and armies.

The central government department of Prussia, created by Frederick William I in 1723, which ran finances, army supply and domestic administration.

The French law of 29 September 1793 that fixed maximum prices for essential goods and maximum wages; abolished in December 1794.

A body of trained officers who plan military operations, mobilisation and transport; the Prussian General Staff under Moltke became a model for other armies.

In Rousseau’s Social Contract (1762), the common good that every citizen would choose if he thought as a member of the community; Rousseau argued that only laws expressing it were legitimate.

The government of Catalonia, restored in 1931–1939 and again from 1977, with powers set by the Catalan statute of autonomy.

The Nazi plan for the German colonisation of eastern Europe, which assumed the expulsion, enslavement or death of tens of millions of Slavs.

A League of Nations proposal of 1924 to make arbitration of disputes compulsory and to treat any state that refused it as the aggressor; it lapsed when Britain rejected it in 1925.

The UN convention adopted on 9 December 1948 that defined genocide as a crime under international law and obliged states to prevent and punish it.

The league of 39 sovereign German states and free cities created in 1815 under Austrian presidency, with a Federal Diet at Frankfurt; dissolved in 1866.

The East German state founded in October 1949 from the Soviet zone and ruled by the SED until 1990.

The liberal organisation founded in 1859 to campaign for a kleindeutsch German federal state under Prussian leadership with an elected parliament.

The risings of 1524–1525 across southern and central Germany by peasants and townspeople against rising dues, lost common rights and serfdom, often justified from the Bible; crushed by the princes with 70,000–100,000 deaths.

A district of a city in which Jews were compelled to live, first in Venice in 1516 and in Rome from 1555; in the Second World War the Nazis forced Jews into sealed ghettos in occupied eastern Europe, such as Warsaw and Łódź.

A group of deputies around Brissot and Vergniaud, several from the Gironde, who led France into war in 1792 and favoured the provinces against Paris; purged from the Convention on 2 June 1793 and many executed.

An anti-Fascist movement founded in Paris in 1929 by Carlo Rosselli and other exiles, combining liberal and socialist ideas; it smuggled propaganda into Italy and later fought in the Resistance.

The decree of Emperor Charles IV in 1356 fixing the election of the German king by seven prince-electors by majority vote.

The relatively consumer-friendly communism of Hungary under Kádár, especially after the economic reforms of 1968, which allowed some market mechanisms and small private businesses.

The wartime alliance of Britain, the USSR and the USA against Nazi Germany, 1941–1945.

The assembly of rabbis and Jewish laymen called by Napoleon in 1807, which declared that Jewish law accepted the civil laws of the French state.

The main field army of Napoleon's empire from 1805, which by 1812 included large contingents from allied and dependent states.

The wave of rumour and panic that swept the French countryside from about 20 July to 6 August 1789, during which peasants armed themselves and attacked châteaux and the records of their dues.

The rapid, state-led industrial growth of Russia in the 1890s under the finance minister Sergei Witte, funded by foreign loans, tariffs and taxes.

The movement of the eleventh-century Church, named after Pope Gregory VII, against simony and clerical marriage and for the Church's freedom from lay control.

The "greater German" solution to the German question: a united Germany including the German-speaking lands of the Austrian Empire.

An association of merchants or craftsmen in the same trade that regulated prices, quality and training and, in cities such as Florence, gave its members a share in government.

West Germany's policy from 1955 of refusing diplomatic relations with any state (except the USSR) that recognised the GDR; abandoned under Ostpolitik.

William I's systematic destruction of crops, livestock and settlements in northern England in the winter of 1069–1070 to crush rebellion.

The Jewish Enlightenment of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, led at first by Moses Mendelssohn in Berlin, which encouraged Jews to combine their faith with secular learning and European culture.

The Calvinist catechism issued in 1563 for the Palatinate by Elector Frederick III, which became one of the standard statements of Reformed faith.

The agreement signed by 35 states in August 1975 that recognised Europe's post-war borders and committed signatories to respect human rights.

In Spain, the movement since about 2000 to recover, recognise and compensate the victims of the Civil War and the Franco dictatorship, including the exhumation of mass graves.

The Spanish law of December 2007 that declared Francoist political sentences unjust, helped families exhume victims and ordered the removal of Francoist symbols; it was extended by the Democratic Memory Law of 2022.

Ian Kershaw’s term for the image of Hitler as a leader above everyday politics and criticism, which made him far more popular than his party and held the regime together.

A secret British and French plan of December 1935 to end the Abyssinian war by giving Italy large parts of Ethiopia; its leak discredited both governments and the League.

The agreement of September 1815 between the rulers of Russia, Austria and Prussia to govern by Christian principles and support each other; the name was used for the cooperation of the three conservative monarchies.

The ceremony in which a man became the vassal of a lord, kneeling and placing his hands between the lord's hands.

The minutes, written by Colonel Friedrich Hossbach, of a meeting on 5 November 1937 at which Hitler told his military leaders that Germany's need for living space would have to be solved by force by 1943–1945.

A French Protestant (Calvinist). Huguenots were tolerated under the Edict of Nantes (1598) until Louis XIV revoked it in 1685, when around 200,000 fled abroad.

The Renaissance educational and intellectual movement centred on the study of classical Latin and Greek literature, history and moral philosophy, which aimed to produce virtuous and eloquent people able to serve the community.

Napoleon's return to power in France from his landing on 1 March 1815 to his second abdication after Waterloo on 22 June 1815.

Warfare that combines regular forces with deniable irregular fighters, local proxies, cyber attacks, propaganda and economic pressure, as Western analysts described Russian tactics in Ukraine from 2014.

A city of the Holy Roman Empire subject only to the emperor rather than a territorial prince, which governed itself through its council and was represented at the Diet.

The law of September 1866 by which the Prussian parliament approved, after the event, the government's spending without a budget since 1862.

The Spanish protest movement that began with the occupation of the Puerta del Sol in Madrid on 15 May 2011 against austerity, unemployment and corruption, and later fed into new parties such as Podemos.

One of Napoleon's decrees on the Jews of March 1808, which for ten years restricted Jews' money-lending, trade and settlement in Alsace and their right to hire substitutes for military service.

A person who secretly informed for the Stasi while living an ordinary life, reporting on colleagues, friends or family.

The position of the hard-line Francoists who opposed any change to the regime after Franco; their supporters were also called the 'bunker'.

The Italian state holding company created in January 1933 to take over the industrial shares of failing banks; by the late 1930s it controlled a large part of Italian industry.

The Spanish state holding company founded in 1941 to build heavy industry under autarky; it owned large parts of Spanish industry until privatisation in the 1980s and 1990s.

The educated class in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Russia that saw itself as responsible for the welfare of the people and was often opposed to the autocracy.

The German operation of 1939–1940 to murder members of the Polish elite, such as teachers, priests and officials.

A papal punishment that suspended most church services in an area or kingdom, such as England in 1208–1214.

Units of foreign volunteers, about 35,000 from some 50 countries, recruited mainly by the Communist International to fight for the Spanish Republic in 1936–1938.

The court set up by the USA, Britain, the USSR and France that tried the major German war criminals at Nuremberg in 1945–1946.

Churchill's phrase of 1946 for the line dividing Soviet-controlled Eastern Europe from the West, later used for the fortified border between the two blocs.

The demand to annex territories outside a state that are seen as belonging to the nation; in Italy, the claim to the Trentino, Trieste and other lands left under Austrian rule after 1866.

The Italian film institute founded in 1924 and taken over by the state, which produced the newsreels and documentaries that cinemas had to show.

The organisation founded in 1857 by La Farina, Manin and others to win support across Italy for unification under Piedmont and Victor Emmanuel II.

The Catholic mass party founded by the priest Luigi Sturzo in 1919; the second-largest party in 1919–1921, it was dissolved by the Fascist regime in 1926.

The laws of September–November 1938 that expelled Jews from Italian schools, the civil service, the army and many professions, banned marriages between Jews and "Aryans" and ordered foreign Jews to leave.

Italy’s main Marxist party, founded in 1892; the largest party in the Chamber in 1919, it talked of revolution but refused to join governments, and was banned in 1926.

The wars of 1494–1559 in which France, Spain and the Holy Roman Empire fought for control of Italy, beginning with the French invasion of Charles VIII and ending with Spanish dominance.

Members of the Society of the Friends of the Constitution, which met in a former Jacobin monastery in Paris, with clubs across France; after 1791 increasingly republican and radical, led by Robespierre, until the club was closed in November 1794.

A strict reforming movement within the Catholic Church, influential in France in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, condemned by the papacy and hostile to the Jesuits.

The census of Jews in the German army ordered in October 1916 in response to antisemitic claims that Jews avoided front-line service; its results were never published.

A Soviet organisation set up in 1942 to win foreign Jewish support for the war effort; it was closed in 1948, and thirteen of its leading members were shot in August 1952.

Joseph II’s programme of reform, especially in religion: subordination of the Catholic Church to the state, toleration of other faiths and reshaping of church institutions for useful ends.

A Jewish council set up on German orders to run a Jewish community or ghetto and carry out German demands.

A member of the landowning nobility of Prussia, especially east of the Elbe, who ruled serfs on large estates and served as army officers and officials.

Committees formed by Spanish army officers in 1916–1917 to defend their pay and promotion by seniority, which forced governments to give way and showed the army's power over politics.

Royal judges who travelled around the shires of England on circuits to hear cases.

A member of the Constitutional Democratic Party, the main Russian liberal party founded in 1905 and led by Pavel Milyukov, which wanted a parliamentary government.

The attempt by Freikorps units and nationalists under Wolfgang Kapp to seize power in Berlin in March 1920; it collapsed after four days because of a general strike.

A treaty of August 1928, eventually signed by more than sixty states, renouncing war as an instrument of national policy; it had no means of enforcement.

The Soviet political police and intelligence service from 1954 to 1991, responsible for internal security, surveillance of dissent and foreign intelligence.

A cheap, prefabricated five-storey block of flats built in the USSR from the late 1950s, which gave millions of families their own flat for the first time.

The rescue of about 10,000 mainly Jewish children from Nazi Germany and the lands it controlled to Britain in 1938–1939.

The German kingdom created by Napoleon in 1807 and ruled by his brother Jérôme from Kassel, intended as a model state of French reforms; it collapsed in 1813.

A memorandum dictated by Bismarck in June 1877 that set out his foreign-policy ideal: a Europe in which every power except France needed Germany and was kept from combining against it.

The "smaller German" solution to the German question: a united Germany excluding Austria and led by Prussia.

The obligation of a landholder to provide a fixed number of armed mounted warriors for the king's army in return for land.

The failed move of troops on Petrograd by General Lavr Kornilov in August 1917, which discredited Kerensky and led to the arming of the Red Guards and a rise in Bolshevik support.

A nation united by language, literature and culture rather than by a state; the term describes how many Germans saw their nation before unification.

A secret Russian Populist organisation founded in 1876, which split in 1879 into People's Will (terror) and Black Repartition (propaganda).

An official chosen from the local nobility from 1889 with wide powers over Russian peasant communes and courts.

The Prussian reserve militia of older men, with its own officers, created in 1813; liberals saw it as a citizens' army and opposed its reduction in the army reforms of 1860.

The agreements of 11 February 1929 between Mussolini’s government and the papacy, which created the Vatican City, made Catholicism the state religion and compensated the Church for its lost lands.

A very large landed estate, worked by landless day labourers; in Spain typical of Andalusia, Extremadura and La Mancha.

The Spanish law of 1976, approved by the Francoist Cortes and by referendum, that created a parliament elected by universal suffrage and opened the way to the elections of 1977.

The Nazi law of July 1933 that ordered the compulsory sterilisation of people with conditions judged hereditary, such as schizophrenia and epilepsy; about 400,000 people were sterilised.

The Italian law of May 1871 offering the Pope sovereign status, the Vatican and an annual payment after the capture of Rome; Pius IX rejected it.

The Francoist law of February 1939 that made support for the Republic since October 1934 a crime punishable by fines, confiscation of property and loss of jobs.

The Spanish Fundamental Law of 1947, approved by referendum, that declared Spain a kingdom with Franco as head of state for life and able to name his successor.

The French law of 17 September 1793 that defined broad categories of "suspects", by conduct, words, birth or family, to be arrested; a legal basis of the Terror.

An alliance proclaimed by Catherine II in 1780 and joined by other neutral states to protect their shipping from searches by the British navy during the American War of Independence.

The "most Fascist laws" of 1925–1926 that turned Mussolini’s government into a one-party dictatorship: press control, rule by decree, appointed mayors, the ban on parties, the Special Tribunal and confino.

The order of merit created by Napoleon in 1802 to reward military and civil service, open to people of every social rank.

The assembly of about 560 elected deputies, without serfs, called by Catherine II in 1767 to draft a new law code for Russia; adjourned in 1768 and never reconvened in full.

The mass recruitment of new, mainly young working-class members into the Soviet Communist Party in 1924 after Lenin’s death; they owed their advancement to the apparatus Stalin controlled.

The fabricated case of 1949–1950 in which leaders of the Leningrad party organisation, including Nikolai Voznesensky and Aleksei Kuznetsov, were accused of plotting against the centre and shot.

A letter signed by the French king that could order a person's imprisonment or exile without trial; a symbol of arbitrary royal power, abolished in 1790.

The decree of 23 August 1793 that placed all French people in "permanent requisition" for the war, in practice conscripting unmarried men aged 18 to 25.

A political system with free and competitive elections, the rule of law, and protected rights such as freedom of speech, the press and association.

The Soviet campaign for mass literacy launched in 1919, which required all illiterate people aged 8 to 50 to learn to read and write.

A mathematical method of drawing in which parallel lines meet at a single vanishing point, giving a flat picture the illusion of three-dimensional space; developed by Brunelleschi and explained by Alberti.

The EU treaty in force from December 2009 that reformed the Union's institutions and set out, in Article 50, how a state could leave.

A person deprived of voting rights under the Soviet constitution of 1918, such as former nobles, clergy, private traders and employers of hired labour; lishentsy also lost access to rations, housing and education.

A special session in which the French king attended a parlement in person to force it to register a law it had refused.

The alliances of 1920–1921 between Czechoslovakia, Romania and Yugoslavia, aimed mainly at preventing Hungary from recovering territory lost at Trianon, and supported by France.

The improved relations between Germany and the western powers after the Locarno treaties of 1925, associated with Stresemann, Briand and Austen Chamberlain.

A follower of the ideas of John Wyclif in late medieval England, who stressed the authority of the Bible, criticised the wealth and power of the clergy and was persecuted as a heretic.

A state secondary school for boys created by Napoleon in 1802, with a uniform curriculum and military discipline, to train officers and officials.

The official backing given in the USSR, above all from 1948 to the mid-1960s, to the theories of the agronomist Trofim Lysenko, which rejected genetics; geneticists were dismissed and Soviet biology and farming suffered.

The treaty signed in February 1992 that created the European Union, EU citizenship and the plan for a single currency; in force from November 1993.

A state depot that owned tractors and other farm machinery and worked the fields of Soviet collective farms for payment in kind, while its officials supervised the villages; abolished in 1958.

The bombings of four commuter trains in Madrid on 11 March 2004 by an Islamist cell, which killed 191 people three days before a general election.

A line of fortifications built by France along its border with Germany from 1929, reflecting a defensive military strategy.

The charter agreed between King John and his rebel barons in June 1215, limiting royal power; annulled within months but reissued from 1216.

A system in which elections and parties exist but the government controls their results through the media, state resources and the choice of permitted candidates.

The statement published in July 1938 under the regime’s sponsorship declaring that Italians were an Aryan race and that Jews did not belong to it; it prepared the racial laws.

The organisation of rural life in estates (manors) worked by dependent peasants, who owed the lord labour, dues and obedience to his court.

Rural guerrilla groups of the French Resistance, many formed by young men escaping compulsory labour in Germany from 1943.

Rule by the armed forces in place of normal civil law; in Poland it was imposed on 13 December 1981 to suppress Solidarity.

A Russian state payment introduced in 2007 for families on the birth of a second child, usable for housing, education or pensions, to raise the birth rate.

The street fighting in Barcelona on 3–8 May 1937 between anarchists and the POUM on one side and government forces and Communists on the other, which led to the fall of Largo Caballero and the suppression of the POUM.

Russian decrees of May 1882, issued as temporary rules, that barred Jews from settling in rural areas and restricted their property rights and trade.

The chief official of the Merovingian Frankish kings, who by the early eighth century held real power; the Carolingian family held the office before taking the throne in 751.

The Florentine bank founded by Giovanni di Bicci de' Medici in 1397, which became banker to the papacy and had branches across Europe; its profits paid for the Medici family's political power and patronage.

Agreements of 1887 between Britain, Italy and Austria-Hungary (with Spain) to preserve the status quo in the Mediterranean and the Near East, which in practice meant blocking Russia at the Straits.

Credit notes issued in Germany from 1934 by a dummy company, Mefo, and accepted by the Reichsbank, to pay arms manufacturers secretly and hide the cost of rearmament.

A member of the moderate faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, led by Julius Martov, which expected a long period of liberal rule before socialism and favoured a broad, open party.

The committee set up by the Petrograd Soviet in October 1917 and directed by Trotsky, which organised the Bolshevik seizure of power.

A purge of party officials in Georgia in 1951–1952, based on a fabricated nationalist plot, which weakened the security chief Beria, himself a Mingrelian.

An unfree knight or official in the Holy Roman Empire who served the emperor or a prince as a soldier and administrator.

The Fascist ministry created in 1937 from the press office to direct the press, radio, cinema, theatre and tourism in Italy.

Agreements of 1919–1923 by which the new and enlarged states of central and eastern Europe and the defeated states promised equal rights to minorities, under League of Nations supervision.

Royal inspectors sent out by Charlemagne, usually in pairs of a layman and a churchman, to hear complaints, check on counts and announce royal orders.

The encyclical of Pope Pius XI of March 1937, smuggled into Germany and read in Catholic churches, which condemned Nazi breaches of the Concordat and the worship of race and state.

The agreements of October 1977 between the Spanish government and the main parties, backed by the unions, to limit wage rises and fight inflation in return for reforms and political freedoms.

A group of Soviet dissidents founded in 1976 by Yuri Orlov to monitor Soviet compliance with the human rights terms of the Helsinki Final Act of 1975.

A castle of an earth mound (motte) with a wooden tower, beside an enclosed courtyard (bailey), quickly built by the Normans after 1066.

The agreement of 29–30 September 1938 between Germany, Britain, France and Italy that transferred the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia to Germany without Czechoslovak participation.

The nationalist claim, popularised by D’Annunzio, that Italy had been cheated of its rightful gains at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, above all Dalmatia and Fiume.

The Voluntary Militia for National Security, created in January 1923 from the Fascist squads; a party army paid by the state and loyal to Mussolini.

Catherine II’s Instruction (1767) to the Legislative Commission, over 500 articles drawing heavily on Montesquieu and Beccaria, which set out principles for a new Russian law code that was never completed.

An identity and travel document for stateless refugees introduced in 1922 by the League's High Commissioner for Refugees, Fridtjof Nansen, and recognised by more than fifty governments.

A Serbian nationalist organisation founded in 1908, after the annexation of Bosnia, to spread propaganda and train volunteers for the cause of uniting the South Slavs.

A Russian Populist revolutionary of the 1860s–1880s who believed that socialism could be built on the peasant commune and tried to rouse the peasants to revolution.

The assembly formed when the Third Estate deputies to the Estates-General declared on 17 June 1789 that they represented the nation; as the National Constituent Assembly it governed France and wrote the Constitution of 1791.

The electoral alliance of government candidates organised by Giolitti for the Italian election of May 1921, which included the Fascists and gave them 35 seats.

The official identity of Franco's Spain, fusing Spanish patriotism with Catholicism; the Church gained control over much of education and morality and gave the regime religious legitimacy.

The assembly elected by universal male suffrage that governed France from September 1792 to October 1795, abolished the monarchy, tried Louis XVI and presided over the Terror.

The party founded by Mussolini in November 1921 from the Fasci di Combattimento; from 1926 the only legal party in Italy.

The Vichy regime's programme of conservative, Catholic and authoritarian renewal, under the motto 'Work, Family, Fatherland'.

A moral law believed to apply to all people everywhere and to be knowable by human reason, independent of the laws made by any government.

A German pressure group founded in 1898, partly funded by industry, that campaigned for a large battle fleet and became one of the largest nationalist associations in Wilhelmine Germany.

The non-aggression treaty between Germany and the USSR of 23 August 1939, whose secret protocol divided Poland and eastern Europe into German and Soviet spheres of influence.

The Prussian Dreyse breech-loading rifle, adopted in the 1840s, which could be fired much faster than muzzle-loaders and reloaded lying down.

The system of government in the Austrian Empire in the 1850s, after the constitution was abolished in 1851, based on the army, the bureaucracy and the Catholic Church.

The programme, associated with Vincenzo Gioberti (1843), of a confederation of the Italian states under the presidency of the Pope.

A philosophy revived in fifteenth-century Florence by Marsilio Ficino that combined Plato's ideas with Christianity and taught that earthly beauty and love could lead the soul towards God.

A private trader or small businessman who prospered under the New Economic Policy in Soviet Russia in the 1920s.

The practice of giving offices, wealth and favours to one's relatives; the word comes from the Italian for nephew, because popes often promoted nephews.

Georgy Malenkov's policy of 1953–1955 that shifted Soviet investment towards consumer goods, housing and light industry.

A committee set up in London in 1936 by Britain and France to stop foreign help reaching either side in the Spanish Civil War; Germany, Italy and the USSR ignored it.

The combination in Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland of a market economy with universal welfare, high taxes and strong agreements between employers and unions.

A farming system that rotated wheat, turnips, barley and clover, so that no field had to lie fallow and animals had fodder through the winter.

The federal state of 22 states north of the river Main created under Prussian leadership in 1867, after Austria's defeat in 1866; the basis of the German Empire.

The wealthy landowners, officials, professionals and businessmen who dominated public life in Napoleonic and nineteenth-century France, chosen for office from lists of the richest taxpayers.

The insulting name used by German nationalists for the politicians who signed the armistice of November 1918 and accepted the peace treaty, whom they blamed for defeat.

The revolution of November 1918 in Germany, beginning with a naval mutiny at Kiel, that brought the abdication of the Kaiser on 9 November and the proclamation of a republic.

The shooting of striking workers and protesters by Soviet troops in Novocherkassk on 2 June 1962, after rises in food prices; 26 people were killed and the event was kept secret until 1989.

A rule limiting the number of members of a group admitted to an institution; the Hungarian law of 1920 restricted the number of Jewish students at universities.

The march of Parisian women and the National Guard to Versailles on 5–6 October 1789 that forced Louis XVI to accept the August Decrees and the Declaration of Rights and to move to Paris.

The declaration by Nicholas II on 17 (30) October 1905 that promised civil liberties and an elected Duma with power over legislation, issued to end the general strike.

A member of the moderate liberal party founded in 1905 that accepted the October Manifesto as a basis for cooperation with the tsar; it led the Third Duma.

The Organisation for European Economic Co-operation, set up in 1948 by the states receiving Marshall aid to share it out and coordinate recovery; later the OECD.

The ideology of the Russian state from the 1830s, summed up as Orthodoxy, Autocracy and Nationality: loyalty to the Orthodox Church, the unlimited power of the tsar and Russian traditions.

The Fascist youth organisation founded in 1926 for children and teenagers, combining sport, drill and political teaching; in 1937 it became part of the party’s Italian Youth of the Lictor.

The Fascist leisure organisation founded in 1925, which ran clubs, sports, excursions and cheap holidays for workers and became the regime’s most popular mass organisation.

The Soviet offensive of June–August 1944 in Belarus that destroyed the German Army Group Centre.

The Nazi programme of 1942–1943 to murder the Jews of the Government General in occupied Poland in the killing centres of Bełżec, Sobibór and Treblinka.

A Catholic organisation founded in Spain in 1928 whose members included the technocrats who ran the Spanish economy from 1957 and designed the Stabilisation Plan and the Development Plans.

The mass protests in Ukraine in November 2004 – January 2005 against a fraudulent presidential election, which led to a re-run won by Viktor Yushchenko.

The order of the Petrograd Soviet of 1 (14) March 1917 that put soldiers under their elected committees and the Soviet in political matters and took weapons out of officers' control.

Stalin's order of 16 August 1941 that declared Soviet officers who surrendered to be traitors and made their families liable to arrest.

Louis the Pious's plan of 817 for the succession, making his eldest son Lothar co-emperor and heir to the whole empire, with his younger sons as subordinate kings.

The regulations Napoleon added in 1802 to the Concordat without the pope's agreement, placing the Catholic Church under closer state control and organising the Protestant churches.

Nostalgia among some former East Germans after 1990 for aspects of life in the GDR, such as job security, childcare and community.

Willy Brandt's policy from 1969 of improving relations with the Soviet Union, Poland and the GDR by accepting the post-war borders.

The political secret police of Fascist Italy, set up in 1927, which watched and arrested opponents through a network of informers.

The secret archive of the Warsaw ghetto organised by Emanuel Ringelblum to record Jewish life and Nazi persecution; parts were recovered in 1946 and 1950.

The agreements of September 1953 by which the USA gave Franco's Spain economic and military aid in return for air and naval bases, ending its post-war isolation.

The agreement of August 1930 among Spanish Republicans, Catalan nationalists and later the Socialists to overthrow the monarchy and found a republic.

The military alliance between Germany and Italy signed on 22 May 1939.

The unwritten agreement of the Spanish transition not to prosecute the crimes of the Civil War and the dictatorship or use them in political debate, expressed in law by the Amnesty Law of 1977.

The agreement of October 1925 in which Italy’s main employers’ organisation, Confindustria, recognised only Fascist unions as representatives of workers.

The western provinces of the Russian Empire, from Lithuania to Ukraine, where most Jews were legally required to live from the late eighteenth century until 1917.

A German nationalist pressure group founded in 1891 that demanded colonies, a large fleet and German expansion in Europe, and attacked governments it thought too weak.

The territory in central Italy ruled by the popes as secular princes from the eighth century until 1870.

One of the thirteen high law courts of pre-revolutionary France, staffed by nobles, which registered royal laws and could delay them by refusing to do so.

The custom of dividing an inheritance, including a kingdom, among all the sons of a ruler, as the Franks did.

The three divisions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth by Russia, Prussia and Austria in 1772, 1793 and 1795, after which Poland did not exist as an independent state until 1918.

Joseph II’s decree of 13 October 1781 allowing Lutherans, Calvinists and Orthodox Christians in the Habsburg lands to worship privately, own property, enter guilds and hold public office.

Mass poverty, especially among landless labourers and craftsmen, in the German states and elsewhere in Europe in the 1830s and 1840s.

The failed plot of 1478, backed by Pope Sixtus IV, in which the Pazzi banking family tried to murder Lorenzo and Giuliano de' Medici in Florence Cathedral; Giuliano was killed and the plotters were executed.

An unofficial national survey of 1934–1935 organised by the League of Nations Union in Britain, in which 11.6 million people voted, mostly in favour of the League, disarmament and sanctions.

The peace made between Milan and Venice in 1454, followed by the Italian League of 1455, which kept a rough balance of power among the main Italian states until 1494.

The treaties signed at Osnabrück and Münster in 1648 that ended the Thirty Years' War; they recognised Calvinism in the Empire, fixed Church property at its 1624 position, strengthened the princes and recognised Dutch and Swiss independence.

Khrushchev's doctrine that the socialist and capitalist systems could compete without war, which he presented as necessary in the nuclear age.

The war of 1808–1814 in Spain and Portugal between Napoleon's armies and British, Spanish and Portuguese forces and guerrillas, which drained French resources.

The official name for the communist-led states of Eastern Europe after 1945, in practice one-party states controlled by Moscow.

The main Spanish party of the centre-right, founded as Alianza Popular by Manuel Fraga in 1976 and renamed in 1989; in government 1996–2004 and 2011–2018.

A Russian revolutionary organisation founded in 1879 that used terror to bring down the autocracy and assassinated Alexander II in March 1881.

The informal agreement made by Churchill and Stalin in Moscow in October 1944, dividing influence in south-eastern Europe by percentages, with the Soviet Union predominant in Romania and Bulgaria and Britain in Greece.

The attempt of Wilhelm II, from the 1890s, to direct German government himself through ministers he chose, rather than leaving policy to a powerful chancellor.

A French Enlightenment writer, such as Voltaire, Diderot or Montesquieu, who used reason to criticise religion, society and government for a wide reading public.

The period from October 1939 to April 1940 when Britain and France were at war with Germany but there was almost no fighting in the west.

An eighteenth-century French school of economics led by François Quesnay, which held that land was the only source of new wealth and called for a single tax on land and free trade in grain.

The extension of Piedmont's laws, taxes, administration and officials to the rest of Italy after unification.

The annual record of the accounts of sheriffs and others at the English Exchequer; the earliest surviving roll is for 1130.

The wave of political assassinations in Barcelona between about 1917 and 1923, in which anarchist activists and gunmen hired by employers killed each other's leaders.

The French war plan of 1913, which called for an immediate offensive into Alsace-Lorraine at the start of a war with Germany; it failed with heavy losses in August 1914.

In the Church, holding more than one office (and its income) at the same time, which usually meant absenteeism: not living where the office required.

An official appointed by the Fascist government from 1926 to run an Italian town in place of the elected mayor and council.

The strip of former German territory in West Prussia and Posen given to Poland in 1919 to give it access to the Baltic Sea, which separated East Prussia from the rest of Germany.

"Rule by many": a description of the Nazi state as a set of rival power centres with overlapping responsibilities, held together by their loyalty to Hitler.

A detailed survey of a great estate in the Carolingian period, listing peasant households, their holdings and the dues and labour they owed.

A quick royal procedure under Henry II, using a writ and a jury, by which a free man could recover land of which he had been dispossessed.

The Workers' Party of Marxist Unification, a small anti-Stalinist Marxist party founded in Catalonia in 1935; it was outlawed after the May Days of 1937 and its leader Andreu Nin was murdered by Soviet agents.

Putin's term for a chain of command in which the president controls the regions, parliament and state bodies from the top down.

The decree of Emperor Charles VI (1713) that allowed his daughter Maria Theresa to inherit all the Habsburg lands; Prussia's invasion of Silesia in 1740 broke it.

The doctrine, central to Calvinism, that God has decided from eternity which people will be saved, so that salvation depends wholly on God's choice and not on human effort.

The official appointed by the central government to run a French department, created by Napoleon in 1800 to control taxation, conscription, policing and local government.

The interpretation, associated with Eckart Kehr and Hans-Ulrich Wehler, that domestic political and social pressures, not international ones, mainly shaped German foreign policy before 1914.

One of the seven princes who elected the German king under the Golden Bull of 1356.

The campaign for Catalan independence led by the Generalitat from 2012, which culminated in the referendum of 1 October 2017 and the unilateral declaration of independence of 27 October 2017.

An alliance formed in August 1915 by most deputies of the Fourth Duma, which demanded a government that had the confidence of the country; Nicholas II refused.

In Marxist theory, the class of industrial workers who own no property and sell their labour, and who would overthrow capitalism.

A Soviet movement of 1917–1920s that aimed to create a new culture by and for the working class, brought under state control in 1920.

A military coup in the Spanish tradition, in which a general declares against the government in the name of the nation and waits for other units and the crown to join him.

The growth of manufacturing in the countryside before factories, mostly through merchants supplying rural households with raw materials to spin and weave at home for distant markets.

Catherine II’s reorganisation of Russian local government after Pugachev’s rebellion, dividing the empire into provinces of 300,000–400,000 people run by governors and officials, many chosen by local nobles.

The Spanish Socialist Workers' Party, founded in 1879; a Marxist party until 1979 and the main party of the centre-left in democratic Spain, in government 1982–1996, 2004–2011 and from 2018.

The space between private life and the state in which private individuals discussed public matters through print, coffee houses, salons and clubs; a term made influential by Jürgen Habermas.

The rising of 1773–1775 in Russia led by the Cossack Emelian Pugachev, who claimed to be Peter III and drew Cossacks, non-Russian peoples, workers and serfs into revolt against serfdom and the state.

The agreement of 29 November 1850 by which Prussia, under Austrian and Russian pressure, abandoned its Erfurt Union and accepted the restoration of the German Confederation.

The Soviet use of psychiatric diagnoses and compulsory detention in special psychiatric hospitals against people whose only 'symptom' was political or religious dissent.

In Catholic teaching, a state after death in which the souls of those who will be saved are purified of the remaining punishment for their sins; prayers, Masses and indulgences were believed to shorten it.

The principle that the security and power of the state come before every private interest or moral rule; used to justify actions such as unprovoked wars.

The view that reason, rather than tradition, revelation or the senses alone, is the main source of knowledge, associated with René Descartes.

Politics based on practical calculations of power and interest rather than moral or ideological principles; the term was coined by Ludwig von Rochau in 1853.

A West German far-left terrorist group active from 1970 to 1998, responsible for bombings, kidnappings and murders, above all in the German Autumn of 1977.

Annual payments that freed Russian serfs made to the state for 49 years to repay the cost of the land they received in 1861; they were cancelled from 1907.

The campaign of 1937–1938 to make Italians more Fascist in daily life, replacing the polite form Lei with voi, the handshake with the Roman salute, and introducing the goose-step.

A French priest who refused the oath to the Civil Constitution of the Clergy in 1790–1791, and was therefore removed from office and later persecuted.

A Soviet citizen, usually Jewish, who was refused permission to emigrate and often lost their job as a result.

The doctrine that the monarch has authority over the Church in his kingdom in all matters except doctrine, including appointments, church property and the limits of papal power.

A Spanish reform movement after the defeat of 1898, associated with Joaquín Costa, that called for honest government, education and economic modernisation to end the rule of oligarchy and caciquismo.

The official clearing of a person who had been wrongly convicted or punished, restoring their good name and some rights, often after their death; carried out on a large scale in the USSR after 1956 and again from 1987.

The German parliament of the North German Confederation (1867), the German Empire (1871–1918) and the Weimar Republic (1919–1933), elected by universal male suffrage and, from 1919, by men and women.

A secret treaty of June 1887 between Germany and Russia in which each promised neutrality if the other went to war, unless Germany attacked France or Russia attacked Austria-Hungary. Germany did not renew it in 1890.

The revival of classical learning and the new styles in art, architecture and literature that began in Italy in the fourteenth century and spread across Europe by the sixteenth century. The word means "rebirth".

The temporary currency introduced in Germany in November 1923, issued in strictly limited amounts, which ended hyperinflation; it was replaced by the Reichsmark in 1924.

The Allied body set up by the Treaty of Versailles to fix the total of German reparations, which it did in 1921, and to supervise payments; it declared Germany in default in 1922–1923.

The international community of scholars and writers in early modern Europe who exchanged letters, books and ideas across borders.

The East German term for leaving the GDR without permission, a crime from 1957; about 2.7 million people left between 1949 and 1961.

The political system of Spain from the return of the Bourbon monarchy in 1874 to Primo de Rivera's coup in 1923, a constitutional monarchy in which two parties shared power through managed elections.

A political desire for revenge on a state that has defeated one's country, above all the French wish after 1871 to recover Alsace-Lorraine from Germany.

Stalin’s transformation of the USSR from 1928 through collectivisation and the Five-Year Plans, imposed by the party-state on society rather than coming from popular revolt.

The calendar used in France from 1793 to 1805, which counted years from the founding of the Republic (Year I began on 22 September 1792) and gave months new names such as Brumaire and Thermidor.

The title given by Yad Vashem to non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust.

Tirpitz's argument that Germany needed a fleet only strong enough that even the greatest naval power would endanger its own position by fighting it, which would force Britain to respect Germany.

The nineteenth-century movement for Italian national unity and independence, meaning "resurgence" or "revival".

The unpaid labour that peasants owed their lords in the Habsburg lands, especially Bohemia, often several days a week.

The cultural movement of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries that valued emotion, imagination, history and the distinct character of each people, and inspired cultural nationalism.

The lands held and ruled directly by a king, as opposed to those held from him by nobles.

The occupation of Germany’s main industrial region by French and Belgian troops from January 1923, to collect reparations in coal and timber that Germany had failed to deliver. It was met by German passive resistance and ended in September 1923.

The negotiated route to democracy in Spain in 1976–1978, combining the reformers' use of Francoist law (reforma) with the opposition's demand for a full break (ruptura) with the dictatorship.

The Russian Marxist party founded in 1898, which split in 1903 into the Bolshevik and Menshevik factions.

A religious ceremony believed to give God's grace. The medieval Church recognised seven; Luther and most Protestants accepted only baptism and the Eucharist.

The method of the communist takeovers in Eastern Europe after 1945: removing rival parties and leaders one slice at a time while keeping the appearance of a coalition.

The oath of loyalty sworn directly to William I by the leading landholders of England, including the knights of the tenants-in-chief, in August 1086.

A regular gathering in a private home, usually hosted by a woman, where writers, nobles and visitors read and discussed new ideas; important in eighteenth-century Paris.

Literally 'self-publishing': banned or unofficial texts copied by hand or typewriter and passed secretly from reader to reader in the USSR.

The policy, from 1897, of uniting German landowners and industrialists behind the government against the Social Democrats, by giving industry naval contracts and agriculture tariffs on imported grain.

The politically active working people of Paris and other French towns (artisans, shopkeepers, journeymen) who wore trousers rather than knee-breeches and pressed for direct democracy, price controls and the Terror in 1792–1794.

The agreement, applied from 1995, that removed passport checks at the borders between most EU states and some others.

The defensive alliance of Lutheran princes and cities formed in 1531, led by Saxony and Hesse; Charles V defeated it at Mühlberg in 1547.

The gap that opened in Soviet Russia in 1923 between high prices for industrial goods and low prices for farm produce, which led peasants to hold back grain.

A payment made to the king in place of knight service, used to hire paid soldiers.

The women's organisation of the Falange (1934–1977), led by Pilar Primo de Rivera, which ran the compulsory Social Service for women and promoted their role as Catholic wives and mothers.

The Allied land campaign in western Europe that Stalin demanded from 1942 to relieve pressure on the USSR; it opened with the Normandy landings of June 1944.

The secret police of communist Romania, one of the most feared in the Soviet bloc.

Payments and services owed by peasants to the lord (seigneur) of the land they lived on, such as rents, fees on land sales, tolls and the use of his mill; abolished in France between 1789 and 1793.

A college for training priests; the Council of Trent ordered every diocese to set one up so that clergy would be educated and disciplined.

The killing of about 1,100–1,400 prisoners, many of them priests and ordinary criminals, by crowds in the Paris prisons on 2–6 September 1792, amid fear of a Prussian advance and a counter-revolutionary plot.

The compulsory labour service introduced in occupied France in February 1943, which sent between 600,000 and 650,000 French workers to Germany.

Economic activity outside the official plan and law, such as private trade, services and the resale of goods stolen from the state; it grew large in the late Soviet period.

The king's officer in an English shire, responsible for royal revenue, justice and order; sheriffs accounted to the Exchequer.

A form of government in an Italian city in which one lord and his family held power, often after seizing it in a time of civil conflict. In Florence the same word was also used for the city's governing council of priors.

A member of Russia's security, military or police services, or an official who came from them; many held senior posts under Putin.

The buying and selling of church offices, condemned by the reform movement of the eleventh century.

The 1986 treaty that set the goal of a single market by the end of 1992 and extended majority voting in the European Community.

One of the dependent republics set up with French support in conquered territories in 1795–1799, such as the Batavian (Dutch), Cisalpine (north Italian) and Helvetic (Swiss) Republics.

The alliance between workers and peasants that Lenin wanted the New Economic Policy to restore after the Civil War.

The idea that legitimate government rests on an agreement among the people it governs, who give up some freedoms in return for security and the protection of their rights.

The German socialist party (SPD), Marxist in theory but increasingly reformist in practice, which became the largest party in the Reichstag in 1912 and led the governments of the early Weimar Republic.

The line of the Communist International from 1928 to 1934, which called Social Democrats "social fascists" and treated them as the main enemy, preventing a united left against Nazism.

West Germany's economic model: free markets and competition combined with a welfare state and cooperation between employers and trade unions.

A Russian agrarian socialist party founded in 1901 that aimed to give all land to the peasants who worked it; it won the most votes in the Constituent Assembly election of 1917.

The ruling communist party of East Germany, formed in 1946 by the forced merger of the Communist and Social Democratic parties in the Soviet zone.

The Catholic religious order founded by Ignatius Loyola and approved in 1540, devoted to education, missions and the defence of Catholicism, with a special vow of obedience to the pope.

A Paris women's club of 1793, led by Pauline Léon and Claire Lacombe and allied with the sans-culottes, closed with all other women's clubs by the Convention on 30 October 1793.

An extra tax on income introduced in Germany in 1991 to help pay for the costs of reunification.

Prisoners forced to work at the gas chambers and crematoria of the killing centres; the Auschwitz Sonderkommando revolted in October 1944.

The argument that Germany followed a "special path" of modernisation without a successful liberal revolution, leaving power with the old elites; challenged by Blackbourn and Eley.

The problem of the poverty and backwardness of southern Italy compared with the north, and of its relationship with the Italian state after 1861.

A term promoted by the Kremlin official Vladislav Surkov from 2006 for a Russian form of democracy shaped without foreign interference, used to justify state control of politics.

Supreme authority within a territory: the power to make and enforce laws without being subject to any higher power inside or outside the state.

A council of elected delegates of workers, soldiers or peasants, first formed in Russia in 1905; in 1917 soviets became rival centres of authority and then the formal basis of Bolshevik rule.

The remodelling of a state on the Soviet pattern: one-party rule, a planned economy, collectivised farming, a secret police and a leader cult.

One of about 105 regional economic councils that took over the management of Soviet industry from the central ministries under Khrushchev's reform of 1957; abolished in 1965.

The Council of People's Commissars, the Soviet government formed in October 1917 with Lenin as chairman.

The competition between the USSR and the USA, from Sputnik in 1957 to the American Moon landing in 1969, to achieve firsts in space, which both treated as proof of the superiority of their system.

The influenza pandemic of 1918–1919, which killed tens of millions of people worldwide. Troop movements and wartime hardship helped it to spread, and it was called Spanish only because neutral Spain reported it freely.

The side in the Spanish Civil War that supported the military rising of July 1936, led by Franco from October 1936; Republicans called them rebels or fascists.

The side in the Spanish Civil War that defended the government of the Second Republic against the rising of July 1936, a coalition of liberal Republicans, Socialists, Communists, anarchists and Basque and Catalan nationalists.

The change from the Franco dictatorship to parliamentary democracy in Spain, usually dated from Franco's death in 1975 to the Socialist election victory of 1982, carried out by negotiation within the existing law.

The Fascist court created in November 1926, staffed by militia officers, which tried political opponents of the regime until 1943.

The name given to Britain's late nineteenth-century policy of avoiding permanent alliances with other European powers, which it gave up between 1902 and 1907.

The armed Fascist squads of 1920–1922, known as Blackshirts, which used violence to destroy Socialist and Catholic organisations, often with the support of landowners and the tolerance of the police.

The Spanish economic reform of July 1959 that devalued the peseta, cut spending and opened the economy to foreign trade and investment, ending autarky and preparing the boom of the 1960s.

The East German secret police and intelligence service, with about 91,000 employees and 189,000 unofficial informers in 1989.

The Vichy laws of October 1940 and June 1941 that defined Jews by race and excluded them from public office, teaching and many professions.

The basic law of one of Spain's autonomous communities, approved by its own representatives and the Spanish Cortes, setting out its institutions and powers.

A Russian law of August 1881 that allowed provinces to be placed under emergency rule, giving officials power to ban meetings, close newspapers and exile suspects without trial; it was renewed until 1917.

The constitution granted by King Charles Albert of Piedmont on 4 March 1848; the only constitution of 1848 in Italy to survive, it became the constitution of the Kingdom of Italy.

Reforms of 1906–1911 that allowed Russian peasants to leave the commune, own their land privately and consolidate their strips, aiming to create a class of prosperous peasants loyal to the regime.

A nickname for the hangman's noose, from the executions carried out under Pyotr Stolypin in 1906–1910.

The agreement of Britain, France and Italy in April 1935 to oppose German rearmament and any change to Austria's independence; it collapsed during the Abyssinian crisis.

The subjects taught by Renaissance humanists: grammar, rhetoric, poetry, history and moral philosophy, studied through classical texts.

The EU principle that decisions should be taken at European level only where the aim cannot be achieved better by member states.

The border regions of Czechoslovakia with a German-speaking majority, about three million people, transferred to Germany by the Munich Agreement of 1938.

A state with enough military, economic and political power to act across the whole world; after 1945 the term was used for the United States and the Soviet Union.

The main direct tax of the French monarchy before 1789, levied on land or income and paid almost entirely by commoners, since the clergy and most nobles were exempt.

Literally 'published over there': works by Soviet writers smuggled abroad, printed in the West and often smuggled back into the USSR.

A landholder who held land directly from the king, owing him service in return.

The oath sworn on 20 June 1789 by the deputies of the National Assembly, meeting in an indoor tennis court at Versailles, not to separate until France had a constitution.

The period of relative cultural and political relaxation in the USSR after Stalin's death, roughly 1954–1964, named after a novel by Ilya Ehrenburg.

The civil war in England between Stephen and the Empress Matilda over the succession, 1135–1153.

The name Russians gave to the circle around President Yeltsin in the late 1990s, including his daughter, his aides and the oligarch Boris Berezovsky, which held great informal power.

The radical Jacobin deputies who sat on the high benches of the French National Convention, including Robespierre, Danton and Marat, allied with the Paris sans-culottes and in power in 1793–1794.

A Catholic order of priests living under a strict rule, founded in 1524 by Gaetano of Thiene and Gian Pietro Carafa (later Pope Paul IV) to set an example of clerical reform.

The month of the revolutionary calendar in which Robespierre was overthrown (9 Thermidor Year II, 27 July 1794); also the reaction against the Terror that followed in 1794–1795.

The series of wars fought mainly in the Holy Roman Empire from 1618 to 1648, beginning with the Bohemian revolt and widening into a European conflict between the Habsburgs and France, Sweden and their allies; it devastated much of Germany.

The Prussian electoral system introduced in 1849, which divided voters into three classes by the taxes they paid, each class choosing a third of the electors, so the richest few had as much weight as the poorest majority.

A method of farming in which land was divided into three fields, one sown in autumn, one in spring and one left fallow.

Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz's programme, through the Navy Laws of 1898, 1900 and later, to build a German battle fleet in the North Sea strong enough that Britain could not risk fighting it.

A payment of one tenth of produce or income to the Church, made compulsory in Charlemagne's lands in 779.

The break between Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union in 1948, when the Cominform expelled Yugoslavia for refusing Soviet direction.

The acceptance by a state or church of religious beliefs and practices different from the official or majority faith, without persecution.

French women publicly shaved at the Liberation in 1944–1945 for alleged collaboration, especially relations with German soldiers.

The medieval idea that the authority of the Roman Empire passed to later rulers, such as Charlemagne in 800 and the German kings crowned emperor from 962.

The Catholic doctrine that in the Mass the substance of the bread and wine is changed into the body and blood of Christ, while their appearance remains the same.

The system by which Italian liberal prime ministers built majorities by winning over individual deputies of any party with posts and favours, producing shifting coalitions without clear parties or programmes.

The peace treaty of 3 March 1918 between Soviet Russia and the Central Powers, in which Russia gave up Poland, the Baltic provinces, Finland and Ukraine; it was annulled after Germany's defeat.

The secret agreement of April 1915 in which Britain, France and Russia promised Italy Austrian territory, including Dalmatia, in return for entering the First World War on their side.

The treaty of April 1922 between Soviet Russia and Germany that restored diplomatic relations and cancelled mutual claims; it opened the way to secret military cooperation.

The treaty of 843 that divided the Carolingian Empire among the three sons of Louis the Pious: Lothar, Louis the German and Charles the Bald.

The demand of the states defeated in 1918, above all Germany, Hungary and Bulgaria, for the peace treaties to be changed to recover territory and remove restrictions such as disarmament and reparations.

The French name for the period of fast growth and rising living standards from 1945 to 1975.

The agency set up in 1990 to privatise or close the state-owned enterprises of the former GDR.

The declaration of November 1820 by Austria, Prussia and Russia that the powers could intervene, by force if necessary, against revolutions that threatened other states.

'Rubble women': German women who cleared bombed cities after 1945 and became a symbol of reconstruction.

The arrangement under the Spanish Restoration by which the Conservative and Liberal parties took turns in government, each organising elections to give itself a majority when the king called it to office.

The treaty of 12 September 1990 between the two German states and the four wartime Allies that restored full sovereignty to a united Germany and fixed its borders.

The centrist coalition led by Adolfo Suárez that won the Spanish elections of 1977 and 1979 and governed during the transition; it collapsed in 1982.

The General Union of Workers, the Spanish socialist trade union founded in 1888 and linked to the PSOE.

The British code-name for intelligence gained by breaking German codes, especially the Enigma cipher, at Bletchley Park during the Second World War.

The official party created by Primo de Rivera in 1924 to support his dictatorship; it had little popular following and disappeared after his fall.

The 'sacred union' of French political parties, including socialists, behind the war effort from August 1914, which suspended normal political conflict.

The pro-Kremlin 'party of power' formed in 2001, which has held a majority in the Russian State Duma since 2003 and supports the president.

The statement of basic rights and freedoms adopted by the UN General Assembly on 10 December 1948.

The monumental basilica and cross at Cuelgamuros near Madrid, built in 1940–1958 partly by political prisoners, where Franco was buried from 1975 until his exhumation in 2019.

A free man who had become the sworn man of a lord, owing him military service and counsel in return for protection and usually land.

The Catholic and royalist revolt in the west of France that began in March 1793 against conscription, and the brutal republican repression that followed.

The German term for the process of confronting and working through the Nazi past in public life, law, education and culture.

An unfree peasant in medieval England, bound to his lord's land and excluded from the royal courts in disputes with his lord.

A French royal tax on income ("twentieth") first levied in 1749 and in principle paid by all, though the privileged often negotiated reductions.

A rural district of several villages in the Russian Empire, run after 1861 by elected peasant elders, with its own peasant court.

The period of German history from 1815 to the revolution of March 1848, marked by conservative rule, censorship and the growth of liberal and national opposition.

A meeting of senior Nazi officials chaired by Reinhard Heydrich in Berlin on 20 January 1942 to coordinate the 'Final Solution' across government departments.

The European war of 1740–1748 that began when Frederick II of Prussia invaded Silesia after Maria Theresa inherited the Habsburg lands; the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748) left Silesia to Prussia.

A US government agency set up in January 1944 to rescue victims of Nazi persecution, which helped fund rescue work such as Raoul Wallenberg's in Budapest.

A system in which the state takes responsibility for the basic well-being of its citizens through social insurance, health care, education and housing, as built in Britain after 1945.

German 'world policy' from 1897: the aim of making Germany a world power with colonies, overseas bases, a large battle fleet and a voice in every international question.

The killings of former Jacobins and revolutionaries by royalist and Catholic groups in south-eastern France in 1795, after the fall of Robespierre.

The anti-Bolshevik forces in the Russian Civil War, led mostly by former tsarist officers such as Kolchak, Denikin, Yudenich and Wrangel.

The rapid growth and recovery of the West German economy in the 1950s and 1960s.

The Yugoslav economic system from 1950 in which elected workers' councils ran enterprises within a partly market-based framework.

Ian Kershaw’s description of how officials in Nazi Germany took initiatives that they believed matched Hitler’s wishes, so his ideas drove policy without detailed orders.

The League of Nations conference on reducing armaments that met in Geneva from February 1932; it failed after Germany withdrew in October 1933.

A short sealed letter by which an English king sent orders to officials or began legal proceedings in the royal courts.

The Jewish sections of the Soviet Communist Party (1918–1930), which promoted communism among Jews and suppressed Jewish religious life, Hebrew and Zionism.

The movement founded by Giuseppe Mazzini in 1831 to create a single, independent, democratic Italian republic through education and popular insurrection.

The reparations agreement of 1929 that reduced Germany’s payments and spread them until 1988; German nationalists, joined by the Nazis, campaigned against it.

An elected council for local government in rural Russia, created in 1864 at district and provincial level, which ran schools, health care and roads and became a base for liberal politics.

The campaign of 1946–1948, named after the party secretary Andrei Zhdanov, that imposed strict ideological control on Soviet literature, music, film and science and attacked Western influence.

The customs union of German states led by Prussia, in force from 1 January 1834, which removed duties between members and excluded Austria.

The failed military coup of 23–24 February 1981, when Civil Guards under Antonio Tejero held the Spanish Congress hostage; it collapsed after King Juan Carlos ordered the army to support the constitution.