The Great Terror: A Reassessment 40th anniversary Edition

It is very much worth while to read this "old" book (2008)--since it is the most readable and authoritative shifting of evidence as it became more available, decade by decade, ask the "Iron Curtain" rusted from within. Robert Conquest was a great hero of the Cold War, who died August 3, 2015. The weapons he wielded were exacting research and a mastery of expression that marked his many works of poetry, fiction, history, and politics.

In the World War II years, some idealistic Americans found themselves "mugged by reality" and came to grasp the nature of the Soviet Union. During the Cold War, more people did. George Orwell’s Animal Farm and 1984, as well as Boris Pasternak’s Dr. Zhivago became touchstones. But do Americans know much about it now?

Today, History Channel-type documentaries frequently cover the home-front abuses of Hitler’s Nazis (Jews, Gypsies, or churchmen); but there is very little portrayal of the malevolence of Stalin’s regime held for ordinary Russians. The slogan “Never Forget” evokes Jews under Hitler, not the deaths of at least 15 million Russians during Stalin’s Terror.

The "darkness at noon"-type subject matter makes the book a bit unsettling, but it is highly readable and well worth the time.

I bought this book as research for a Symposium on Russian Opera I am to deliver as so many composers and other artists fell victim to Stalin's purges. I knew they were bad but had no idea until I waded into Mr. Conquest's almost (OK, strike the almost) painfully detailed and comprehensive account of Stalin's war on his own people in the 1930s and again after WWII; his massive paranoia, and the thousands, even millions of executions, many described in horrifying detail. In addition there is coverage of the gulags, the destruction of families, the misery inflicted on a people who had suffered mightily and suddenly found themselves trapped in a gigantic machine of accusation without proof, condemnation without due process, torture, and squalid death at the hands of thugs who were themselves fearful of being destroyed by the system they served. One example: Conquest's description of the fall and execution of arch-enforcer Lavrentiy Beria, sobbing and begging for his life, a rag finally stuffed into his mouth to silence him before getting a bullet in the brain, is unforgettable.

Conquest's victim totals have been challenged, even decried as grossly over-estimated and at odds with figures from official Soviet documents (and do we believe that there was absolute truth to be found in THAT source?). But even if his figures are inflated, the basic story remains true as testified to by others once Stalin was dead. This book is a tough read, but it's an account of an essential facet of 20th century history that needs to be better known and understood.

In late 1918 Schumpeter, (quoted in “Prophet of Innovation” – McCraw) discussed the Bolshevik triumph in Russia with his companions: ‘Marxism would have a practical test’. “Weber replied that the result was likely to be catastrophic, because the Bolsheviks were so brutal”. No one offered any disagreement, and Weber, after more discussion, posited: “A laboratory heaped with human corpses!” (pg. 94).
Precisely. Lenin, and then Stalin produced exactly that outcome. Followed by Mao, Pol Pot, and the Kims. Those Communist dictators (and there are no Communist rulers who are not dictators) who haven’t managed to murder most of their population are doing their best to drive them to, or keep them in poverty. Communism is a failure everywhere and every time it has been ‘enforced’ (it would not exist without ‘enforcement’).
Conquest does a good job on a difficult subject, but even with his efforts, this is not an easy read. We are treated, on turning nearly every page, with sub-human viciousness, not to say bestiality, which pretty much defines the ‘experiments’ in Communist systems, whether they are attempted in Eur-Asia, the Far East, or the West; every one of them becomes a murder factory to some extent.
Tony Judt, who is nobody’s idea of a “capitalist tool”, states in “Post War” (pg 561): “In light of twentieth-century history the state was beginning to look less like a solution than the problems, and not only or even primarily for economic reasons. What begins with centralized planning ends with centralized killing”. Just so; there has yet to be a counter example. The twenty-first century Communists have proven to be, in percentage, as deadly or worse.
I did find it surprising that, early on, there existed some slight opposition to Stalin and that Stalin spent even a minute of his time making any attempt at all to provide some scintilla of legal justification for his mass-murders. But it quickly becomes clear that the opposition promptly ‘disappeared’ and whatever legal strictures were supposed to limit such murderous thuggery were then either ignored or changed by fiat. Any fantasy of a civilized USSR government is shown to be just that: A fantasy. My surprise is itself not surprising; such opposition was fleeting; worthless in the general murderous progression.
Conquest guides us through the entire outrageous process, from scurrilous ‘accusation’, through arrest, then what is claimed to be ‘trial’, often enough resulting in an immediate bullet to the head. If you were ‘fortunate’ enough, you are jailed but with a good chance of a slow death there of starvation or thuggery. Or perhaps sent to the camps where you had a good chance of dying in transport, only to arrive and find circumstances as likely to kill you at your destination. Again, like the accusation and arrest, the cause of your death was as random, but much more likely, as getting hit by lightning; a huge number more died in the Terror than ever died by lightning. And a shot to the head may well have been the most humane result; I’ll admit to skimming over some of the descriptions of torture.
Chapter 12, “The Great Trial”, should be an embarrassment not only to those in the West who were on-site observers, but to those who read such blatant nonsense and continued to fantasize that Communism was (and is) something other than the murderous thuggery it has always been; Stalin “won” the PR campaign because the “useful idiots” were only too happy to lie to themselves and others.
There is no lack of reliable literature on the subject: Pipes – “The Russian Revolution”, and “Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime”, Applebaum – “Gulag: A History”. Even that apologist Figes - “A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution: 1891-1924”. And many, many more. Most all are authoritative, all are well supplied with footnotes and bibliographies but we still find pathetic apologists, hoping to salvage some gloss of decency for the horror of Communism, often claiming Conquest’s victim counts are wrong, and they do so by citing ‘new’ data, as if being ‘new’ were to automatically make it more accurate than what Conquest cites.
It doesn’t. There is no reason to believe the ‘new’ numbers haven’t been equally fudged by other apologists, and the whole attempt stinks to high heaven: It’s as if, by citing some ‘new’ account claiming Hitler only directly murdered 5 million innocent people rather than 6 million, he is somehow less of a monster.
We are lead through the final rounds of the horror, some bureaus purged several times over, until the incoming managers must have known that they were handed their death warrants; foreigners murdered in Russia, Russians murdered in foreign countries, the youth league terrorized into a ‘Stalinjugend’ (sic), until even Stalin realizes the inefficiency of it, never finding the least concern for the brutality of it. ‘The banality of evil’ was rarely so evident
Conquest spends a good bit of the last chapter discussing the apologists of the time and attempting to explain the (sometimes admitted) denial of plain and obvious facts; he is far more generous than, for instance, those exposing Hitler’s supporters would be. The fantasies and lies of the Webbs, J-P.Sarte, Davies, Owen Lattimore, GBS, Durante, the French Communist press and more get a look lacking in deserved acrimony.
The last several pages make it clear that Stalin’s bestiality were built into Communism from the start, and the attempts to ‘de-Stalinize’ while still being the USSR could only be cosmetic.
Even now, well into the twenty-first century, you’re left wondering how long it will take for Russia to somehow outgrow that horrible, maiming disease it suffered for more than 70 years.
A difficult but worthwhile read.

This is a very well done audio book. Clarity is good. The story is incredible. Anyone wanting to know about Stalin in the Soviet Union days should read this and his other book, "Harvest of Sorrow" about the Ukrainian famine in the 1920's and 30's. This is far and away the most informative history book I have ever read and everything is extensively referenced. It took me a year to finish it, starting with a printed book and finishing with this audio book. This book will blow you away if you have never studied just what a nasty character Stalin was.