The Great Terror

[Os Cangaceiros]

I recently got this book (or rather, the reissue of the book), because I A) wanted to know about Stalin, and B) because it was inexpensive. I figure that with a name like "The Great Terror" it should be a pretty fair, balanced view of Uncle Joe. I've only read a bit of it so far, but I'm impressed with Stalin's power politics already. :lol: Stalin should have wrote his own version of "The Prince".

So, any opinions on the book from people who've read it? Spot on analysis of the Great Purges, or delicious, decadent bourgeois propaganda?

[Random Precision]

That the Conquest one? It's anti-communist tripe, and I really mean that, as one who is no admirer of Stalin. The second version of the book (assuming that's the one you got) is basically the exact same as the first version, and it does not incorporate the evidence from the Soviet archives which he by then had available to him.

If you want a more balanced and accurate account of the purges that circumvents Cold War politics and an excessive focus on Stalin as a "great man of history", I would recommend the work of Professor J. Arch Getty. Getty still holds Stalin responsible for exploiting the purges, but argues that they were more the result of an organic reaction by the Soviet bureaucracy to the conditions during the thirties which they saw as a threat to their position, rather than the orthodox view of Stalin as the man behind the curtain. His first major work on the subject was Origin of the Great Purges: The Soviet Communist Party Reconsidered, 1933-1938. He followed it up recently with The Road to Terror: Stalin and the Self-Destruction of the Bolsheviks, 1932-1939. Both of these are based on the most recent archival material available, and the latter even goes so far as to reproduce many entire documents from the archives, like official meeting transcripts, telegrams from Stalin to Molotov and Kaganovich, the records of regional party organizations, etc. That's the one I would recommend if you want to really learn about this tragic period of Soviet history.

EDIT: This should be moved to History. Actually, it would be okay to leave it here considering the fictional content of Conquest's works.

[Os Cangaceiros]

To tell you the truth, I'm more interested in the various factions and power struggles within Russia during the period of revolution and civil war (as far as the Left was concerned). I haven't read much about that particular subject, though. Do you have any recommendations for literature about that?

[hekmatista]

I read Red Victory: A History of the Russian Civil War by W. Bruce Lincoln last month and believe it might be an O.K. start on the subject. If nothing else, Lincoln acknowledges the objective constraints within which the Bolsheviks operated, which may counterbalance some of the myths about how subjectively totalitarian their leadership was. "Men make their own history, but not just as they wish.."

[Random Precision]

To tell you the truth, I'm more interested in the various factions and power struggles within Russia during the period of revolution and civil war (as far as the Left was concerned). I haven't read much about that particular subject, though. Do you have any recommendations for literature about that?

Year One of the Russian Revolution by Victor Serge, a Russian anarchist who went Bolshevik, is really good although rather hard to find. Dunno if you'd be up for it as an anarchist yourself, but Leon Trotsky's History of the Russian Revolution is fantastic; it actually helped convert me to Leninism :o

There's plenty of history from an anarchist perspective as well. Look for books by Paul Avrich, along with ones about Makhno and so forth.

You also may want to check out EH Carr's The Russian Revolution, for a more scholarly approach to the period.

And if you're interested in fiction from the period at all (very realistic fiction that is ;)) check out Isaac Babel's Red Cavalry Cycle of short stories.