Around the turn of the century, social reformers began to refer to themselves as progressives rather than liberals. "Liberalism" was too closely associated with laissez-faire economics to serve their purposes. Only in the closing phase of World War I did the term come back into favor, partly because advocates of peaceful change now found it necessary to distinguish themselves from the Bolsheviks and their partisans, but also because wartime repression gave new importance to the defense of civil liberties. In a polarized world, political and cultural freedom was endangered both by revolutionary terror and by the counterrevolutionary activities of the capitalist state.

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