The result was a network of rebellions, counter-insurgency operations, reigns of state terror and border wars that over the following seventeen years generated numerous crimes against humanity and cost hundreds of thousands of lives. That the revolutionary process would itself entail significant direct violence was soon understood, accepted, at times even celebrated by all revolutionary groups. It focuses on the dynamics of dehumanization, the role of a fear-filled вЂњatrocity environment,вЂќ and the evolution of new violence-facilitating organizational structures, arguing the need for a global history as well as for a comparative approach.Д®thiopiaвЂ™s unprecedented social and political revolution of 1974 promised to dismantle much of the structural and cultural violence on which the countryвЂ™s imperial order had been founded. In pursuit of a greater integration of Ethiopian historiography with the field of genocide studies, this forum contribution examines three essential conditions and features of the Red Terror in critical dialogue with questions, methods, and insights developed in work on other case studies.

While a new generation of scholars is re-evaluating the history and legacies of the Ethiopian revolution, the periodвЂ™s atrocities are yet to be adequately examined in relation to comparative and conceptual discussions on genocides and crimes against humanity. Some of these were part of the вЂњRed TerrorвЂќ that violently repressed all urban opposition, whereas others were associated with counter-insurgency measures against rural guerrillas.

The Ethiopian revolution of 1974 resulted in the establishment of a military regime, the Derg, that oversaw and orchestrated numerous atrocities during its seventeen years in power.

Second imperial civil war