Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Preface -- 1. What Was Stalinism? -- 2. Imperial Spaces of Violence -- 3. Pyrrhic Victories -- 4. Subjugation -- 5. Dictatorship of Dread -- 6. Wars -- 7. Stalin's Heirs -- Notes -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Y -- Z

The first major study by a Russian Marxist Historian of the Stalinist purges which are often collectively reffered to by the year they reached their greatest intensity: 1937. Rogovin shows that the purges were aimed at the physical annihilation of the growing socialist opposition to Stalin's bureaucratic regime. Focused on Leon Trotsky and his thousands of supporters, the purges were a blow against the October Revolution, its leaders and its heritage.

Examining Stalin's reign of terror, this text argues that the Soviet people were not simply victims but also actors in the violence, criticisms and local decisions of the 1930s. It suggests that more believed in Stalin's quest to eliminate internal enemies than were frightened by it.

The British, Irish, Russian, American, German and Austrian contributors examine the intricate nature of the mass repression unleashed by the Stalinist leader of the USSR during 1937-38. The first part of the collection deals with annihilation policies against the Soviet elite and the Communist International. The second section of the volume looks at mass operations of the secret police (NKVD) against social outcasts, Poles and other 'hostile' ethnic groups. The final section comprises micro-studies about targeted victim groups among the general population.

Drawing on declassified material from Stalin’s personal archive, this is the first systematic attempt to analyze how Stalin saw his world—both the Soviet system he was trying to build and its wider international context. Stalin rarely left his offices and viewed the world largely through the prism of verbal and written reports, meetings, articles, letters, and books. Analyzing these materials, Sarah Davies and James Harris provide a new understanding of Stalin’s thought process and leadership style and explore not only his perceptions and misperceptions of the world but the consequences of these perceptions and misperceptions.

"The definitive work on Stalin's purges, the author's The Great Terror was universally acclaimed when it first appeared in 1968. Provides accounts of on everything form the three great 'Moscow Trials' to methods of obtaining confessions, the purge of writers and other members of the intelligentsia, on life in the labor camps, and many other key matters. On the fortieth anniversary of thew first edition, it is remarkable how many of the most disturbing conclusions have born up under the light of fresh evidence." --

These essays by scholars from six nations offers contributions to the understanding of Stalinist terror in the 1930s. The essays explore in depth the background of the terror and patterns of persecution, while providing more empirically founded estimates of the numbers of Stalin's victims.

Robert Conquest's The Great Terror is the book that revealed the horrors of Stalin's regime to the West. This definitive fiftieth anniversary edition features a new foreword by Anne Applebaum. One of the most important books ever written about the Soviet Union, The Great Terror revealed to the West for the first time the true extent and nature Stalin’s purges in the 1930s, in which around a million people were tortured and executed or sent to labour camps on political grounds. Its publication caused a widespread reassessment of Communism itself. This definitive fiftieth anniversary edition gathers together the wealth of material added by the author in the decades following its first publication and features a new foreword by leading historian Anne Applebaum, explaining the continued relevance of this momentous period of history and of this classic account.

"Now updated with new facts, and abridged for use in Soviet history courses, this gripping book assembles top-secret Soviet documents, translated into English, from the era of Stalin's purges. The dossiers, police reports, private letters, secret transcripts, and other documents expose the hidden inner workings of the Communist Party and the dark inhumanity of the purge process."[book cover].