some degree of mass following, from outside the existing power establishment.
There are few famous examples among putsches, but Hitler’s abortive putsch in
Munich in 1923, and perhaps Mussolini’s march on Rome, would qualify as
such. It will succeed only if the body of the existing administration, police and
military have lost confidence in their official leaders and are prepared to accept
the outsiders as replacements without, however, accepting a genuinely revolu-
tionary change in society. In this sense the Bolshevik take-over of Russia in
October 1917 may more properly be called a putsch than either a revolution or
a coup d’e ́tat.
Court of Justice of the European Communities
(see European Court of Justice)
Criminal Law
Criminal law describes the part of a legal system which deals with illegal
actions, performed by citizens against other citizens or against the state, which
are so serious, or so associated with moral turpitude, as to warrant punishment
by the state rather than acivil lawjudgment involving the resolution of a
conflict or some kind of restitution. The state usually monopolizes the right to
carry out prosecutions under criminal law, though some systems, of which the
Englishcommon lawis the most important, still include residual private
rights to prosecute individuals for breaking the law. In all cases the state has a
monopoly of the right to inflict criminal punishment. Criminal law is now
increasingly used to enforce the performance of duties in highly regulated
spheres such as industrial safety or pollution legislation, or in cases where civil
action by an individual to protect their rights is unlikely to be effective. The
result has been a blurring of the previously quite sharp distinction between
criminal and civil actions. The most important development in criminal law is
the increasing pressure to produce some form of international criminal law to
deal with,inter alia, hostage taking and terrorism, as well as war crimes. The
statute of an International Criminal Law has been completed by the UN but is
opposed by the USA, without whose membership it would be very weak.
Cuban Missile Crisis
The Cuban missile crisis occurred in 1962 when the Soviet Union, under the
leadership ofKhrushchev, attempted to gain an advantage in thecold warby
placing medium-range nuclear missiles in Cuba, which underCastrohad
gradually moved into an alliance with theSoviet bloc. The missiles would
have threatened the American mainland—Cuba is only 90 miles (145 kilo-
Court of Justice of the European Communities