The Great Purge or the Great Terror (Russian: Большой террор), also known as the Year of '37 (37-ой год, Tridtsat sedmoi god) and the Yezhovschina ('period of Yezhov'), was Stalin's campaign of political repression in the Soviet Union that occurred from 1936 to 1938. The Gulag was a system of forced labor camps established during Joseph Stalin’s long reign as dictator of the Soviet Union. --Michael Weiss, The New Criterion "The volume that tore the mask away from Stalinism before most people had even heard of Solzhenitsyn." Some victims claimed they would rather have been killed than sent to endure the torturous conditions at the infamous Gulag labor camps. 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, … The violent revolution marked the end of the Romanov dynasty and centuries of Russian Imperial rule. This ruthless and bloody operation caused rampant terror throughout the U.S.S.R. and impacted the country for many years. The Great Terror: Stalin's Purge of the Thirties is a book by British historian Robert Conquest which was published in 1968. One was the absence of any reference to Russian archival sources. Which is more terrifying? In the top picture, Yezhov, the organiser of the Great Terror, appears on Stalin’s left. The Great Terror, a retrospective term which historians have borrowed from the French Revolution, refers to the state-organized bloodshed that overwhelmed the Communist Party and Soviet society during the years 1936 to 1938. New research reveals misconceptions about Joseph Stalin and his “Great Purge,” Business Insider. During the Russian Revolution, the Bolsheviks, led by leftist ...read more, The Red Scare was hysteria over the perceived threat posed by Communists in the U.S. during the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States, which intensified in the late 1940s and early 1950s. A. Getty, The Origins of the Great Purges: The Soviet Communist Party Reconsidered , 1933–1938 (New … Others see it as his way to preserve, enhance and unify the Soviet Communist Party. Reign of Terror, also called the Terror, French La Terreur, period of the French Revolution from September 5, 1793, to July 27, 1794 (9 Thermidor, year II). Many experts believe these threats further encouraged Stalin to carry out the purge in an effort to unite and strengthen his country. This meant that children as young as 12 could be executed. The exact motives for the Great Purge are debated among historians. Conquest's title was also an evocative allusion to the period that was called the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution (French: la Terreurand from June to July 1794 la Grande Terreur, "the Great Terror"). The Great Terror; Pilots and Explorers; Popular Front; Rebuilding of Moscow; Rehabilitation of Cossack Divisions; Second Kolkhoz Charter; Stalin Constitution; Upheaval in the Opera; Year of the Stakhanovite; 1939. Stalin’s Great Purge: Over A Million Detained, More Than Half A Million Killed, War History Online. They first came to power in 1613, and over the next three centuries, 18 Romanovs took the Russian throne, including Peter the Great, Catherine the Great, Alexander I and Nicholas II. To further complicate the matter, prisoners in the labor camps commonly died of exhaustion, disease or starvation. While most Russians regard the event as a horrific incident in history, others believe Stalin helped strengthen and propel the Soviet Union to greatness, despite his barbaric tactics. Download PDF. By the mid-1930s, Stalin believed anyone with ties to the Bolsheviks or Lenin’s government was a threat to his leadership and needed to go. Robert Conquest's The Great Terror: A Reassessment is a book that is an absolute 'must read' for anyone who is interested in the history of Communism, and more important, the issue of human rights. But the author 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. 00693 dated 23 October 1937 (which mandated the arrest of all people The accused were tried, found guilty on site and executed. It gave rise to an alternate title of the period in Soviet history known as the Great Purge. This paper. Stalin had to fight his way to political succession, but ultimately declared himself dictator in 1929. In all, about one-third of the Communist Party’s 3 million members were purged. R. Conquest, The Great Terror: A Reassessment (New York, 1990); Google Scholar J. The great terror: a reassessment 1990, University of Alberta Press, in association with the Canadian Institute of Ukranian Studies in English The Causes of the Great Terror, … Ezhov actually established quotas in each district for the number of arrests. At a plenary session of the party’s Central Committee in February-March 1937, Nikolai Bukharin and Aleksei Rykov, the most prominent party members associated with the so-called Rightist deviation of the late 1920s and early 1930s, were accused of having collaborated with the Trotskyite-Zinovievite terrorists as well as with foreign intelligence agencies. After Kirov’s death, Stalin launched his purge, claiming that he had uncovered a dangerous conspiracy of anti-Stalinist Communists. the great terror: polish-japanese 649 “spies” were arrested according to other special operations, particularly NKVD Order No. The process fed upon itself, as the accused under severe physical and psychological pressure from their interrogators, named names and confessed to outlandish crimes. The Great Purge, also known as the “Great Terror,” was a brutal political campaign led by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin to eliminate dissenting members of the Communist Party and anyone else he considered a threat. The Great Terror, a retrospective term which historians have borrowed from the French Revolution, refers to the paroxysm of state-organized bloodshed that overwhelmed the Communist Party and Soviet society during the years 1936-38. Kirov’s death led to three widely publicized trials that successfully wiped out many of Stalin’s political rivals and critics. Stalin’s acts of terror and torture broke the Soviet people’s spirits and effectively eliminated certain groups of citizens, such as intellectuals and artists. "use strict";(function(){var insertion=document.getElementById("citation-access-date");var date=new Date().toLocaleDateString(undefined,{month:"long",day:"numeric",year:"numeric"});insertion.parentElement.replaceChild(document.createTextNode(date),insertion)})(); FACT CHECK: We strive for accuracy and fairness. More than a million other people were sent to forced labor camps, known as Gulags. Kirov was murdered at the Communist Party headquarters by a man named Leonid Nikolayev. The notorious prisons, which incarcerated about 18 million ...read more, The Romanov family was the last imperial dynasty to rule Russia. All Rights Reserved. His reign as dictator also made his people completely dependent on the state. In July-August 1936 Lev Kamenev, Grigorii Zinoviev, and fourteen others were convicted of having organized a Trotskyite-Zinovievite terrorist center that allegedly had been formed in 1932 and was held responsible for the assassination of Sergei Kirov in December 1934. Updating his original work "The Great Terror" with a vast amount of new data, Conquest scrupulously details and puts into context the purges themselves: the many players and defendants, the shifting political cross-currents, the rounds of trials and arrests. In the 1920's they had been allies of Trotsky, and therefore opposed to Stalin. A short summary of this paper. Later, historians learned that the defendants agreed to these forced confessions only after being interrogated, threatened and tortured. The Great Terror: Old and New Approaches. The rise of Nazi power in Germany and militarists in Japan also posed a great danger to the U.S.S.R. Conquest, Great Terror, p. 702. 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