The Great Terror
Briefing | By Jeff Waldmann | July 29, 2008
As a new edition of his illuminating book, The Great Terror, makes its way to the shelves, author Robert Conquest reflected back on the torrent of illuminating information about the
former Soviet Union that has come out since the first edition was
published four decades ago.
Perhaps most shocking of all of
Conquest’s revelations is that even members of the Soviet Politburo did
not definitively know the truth about atrocities committed by the
communist regime. This became the subject of much contentious debate
under Mikhail Gorbachev.
Conquest, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution,
writes in the Spring edition of Hoover Digest that prior to the
publishing of the book’s first edition in 1968 there was a scant amount
of trusted information on the reality of the Stalinist regime.
It gradually became clear that this period in Soviet history
represented an immense blind spot, which Conquest believed could be
eliminated by information already available.
He writes, “the facts released over the past few years, plus the
often-denied testimony of some of the regime’s hostile but increasingly
justified witnesses, could be put together, if carefully done, to
produce a veridical story, a real history.”
Conquest’s book did exactly that, and the work was extremely successful
in its endeavor, receiving favorable reviews from both sides of the
political spectrum.
The book would prove to be the leak that burst the dam, as a veritable
flood of supporting information washed over the official silence in the
ensuing years.
Conquest writes that so much new information became openly available
after 1989 that he was virtually forced to reexamine all of the facts
and release a new edition of his book.
The additions to the book were published in 1990, and afterwards the
author went on a jaunt through Russia, where, he writes, he found
himself a welcome guest in the newly open country.
Conquest goes on to write that the new ocean of information available
was so vast that it required still another set of amendments and
adjustments to the book.
The primary addition to his book is a set of decrees on what Conquest
calls “Mass Operations.” These documents are disconcerting,
particularly in their content and the manner in which they were handled.
“The lists of those sentenced by the Military Collegium were sent to
Stalin, and given his approval, with only a few Politburo members also
signing,” Conquest goes on to say, “Nor did this informal leadership
group have much time to spare. Records show that…these terror orders
were usually handled in twenty or thirty minutes.”
Conquest states that while each of the individuals on the lists were
charged with individual crimes against the state, this was merely a
guise for Stalin’s true intention of purging those whose ideologies
were incompatible with his own.
The essay promises that the third edition of Conquest’s book will be
another step forward in exposing the reality of Stalin’s regime.
Jeff Waldmann is an intern at the American Journalism Center, a training program run by Accuracy in Media and Accuracy in Academia.
2 Comments | Post a Comment
As long as his comments don’t rub the Israelis and their supporters the wrong way, then he will be allowed to continue. I guess that it’s ok to bash the Russian Communists, just don’t mention that there have been many holocausts throughout history, and that the “one” that is almost exclusively referred to, you know, the Nazi one, was relatively small by comparison. Yes, isn’t it interesting that no Russians and very few Japanese were ever charged with or brought to trial for war crimes? The Japanese were even worse than the Nazis. Don’t say that in Europe though, because they will charge you and arrest you for telling “An Inconvenient Truth”!
July 30 at 10:27 pm | #1 | Link
Hitler is responsible for perhaps six million deaths. Stalin and Lenin killed between 30 and 50 million people, and Mao murdered perhaps as many as 100 million.
Just recently a Nazi prison guard was supposedly “discovered” and deported. On the other hand I have yet to hear of a single former Soviet citizen who has been identified, tried and/or deported for cooperation with the KGB or as a political commissar.
Isn’t there something of an injustice here, or does our press engage in some “creative hypocrisy” in the way it reports this particular issue. And all of this after modern historians essentially prove that there was precious little difference between the National Socialists, the Fascists of Italy, and the Communists of the USSR.
Authors and historians such as Mr. Conquest do the world a service by reiterating the evils of socialism for those who forget. Capitalism may not be a perfect system, but General Motors, Standard Oil, or U.S. Steel never set up gulags and forced people into them; that was done by “governments.”