The Great Terror: A ReassessmentThe definitive work on Stalin's purges, Robert Conquest's The Great Terror was universally acclaimed when it first appeared in 1968. Edmund Wilson hailed it as "the only scrupulous, non-partisan, and adequate book on the subject." George F. Kennan, writing in The New York Times Book Review, noted that "one comes away filled with a sense of the relevance and immediacy of old questions." And Harrison Salisbury called it "brilliant...not only an odyssey of madness, tragedy, and sadism, but a work of scholarship and literary craftsmanship." And in recent years it has received equally high praise in the Soviet Union, where it is now considered the authority on the period, and has been serialized in Neva, one of their leading periodicals. Of course, when Conquest wrote the original volume two decades ago, he relied heavily on unofficial sources. Now, with the advent of glasnost, an avalanche of new material is available, and Conquest has mined this enormous cache to write a substantially new edition of his classic work. It is remarkable how many of Conquest's most disturbing conclusions have born up under the light of fresh evidence. But Conquest has added enormously to the detail, including hitherto secret information on the three great "Moscow Trials," on the fate of the executed generals, on the methods of obtaining confessions, on the purge of writers and other members of the intelligentsia, on life in the labor camps, and many other key matters. Both a leading Sovietologist and a highly respected poet, Conquest here blends profound research with evocative prose, providing not only an authoritative account of Stalin's purges, but also a compelling and eloquent chronicle of one of this century's most tragic events. A timely revision of a book long out of print, this updated version of Conquest's classic work will interest both readers of the earlier volume and an entirely new generation of readers for whom it has not been readily available. |
Contents
STALIN PREPARES | 23 |
THE KIROV MURDER | 37 |
ARCHITECT OF TERROR | 53 |
OLD BOLSHEVIKS CONFESS | 71 |
THE PROBLEM OF CONFESSION | 109 |
THE YEZHOV YEARS | 133 |
LAST STAND | 135 |
ASSAULT ON THE ARMY | 182 |
IN THE LABOR CAMPS | 308 |
THE GREAT TRIAL | 341 |
THE FOREIGN ELEMENT | 399 |
CLIMAX | 419 |
AFTERMATH | 443 |
HERITAGE OF TERROR | 445 |
THE TERROR TODAY | 484 |
NOTES | 491 |
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Common terms and phrases
accused Army arrested assassination Beck and Godin Beria Bukharin Trial camps cell Central Committee charges Comintern Commander Communist Party Comrade conspiracy counter-revolutionary court criminal death December denounced enemies espionage evidence execution Extraction of Confession fact former German Gorky Head History of Stalin's Ibid interrogation Izvestiya TsK KPSS January June Kaganovich Khrushchev Kiev killed Kirov Komsomol Kossior Kravchenko Krestinsky Kuibyshev later leaders leadership Lenin Leningrad Literaturnaya gazeta London Mensheviks military Molotov Moscow murder Nicolaevsky NKVD NKVD officers Old Bolshevik oppositionists Ordzhonikidze organization Orlov People's Commissar plenum police Politburo political Postyshev Pravda prisoners Pyatakov Trial Radek reported Revolution revolutionary Rightist Roy Medvedev Russian Purge Rykov Ryutin Secret History Secret Speech Secretary seems sent sentenced shot Smirnov Soviet Union Stalin Stalin's Crimes Stalinist Terror terrorist tion told torture Trotsky Trotsky's Trotskyite Tukhachevsky Ukraine Ukrainian victims Voroshilov Vyshinsky Weissberg wife Yagoda Yakir Yezhov York Zinoviev Zinoviev Trial Zinovievites