Stalin's Terror High Politics and Mass Repression in the Soviet Union

The popular conception of the Stalinist 'purges' during the 1930s holds that mass arrests affected the Party, military and industrial leadership most of all. The studies presented here, based on archival evidence only available since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, challenge this received view. They demonstrate that the great mass of victims were ordinary people, peasants and workers, often of foreign origin. The book also analyses the relationship between the Communist Party and the secret police (NKVD), and delineates how Stalin and his circle scripted and staged the show trials and misused the Communist International to propagate the 'dangers' posed by putative opposition to Stalin's dictatorship. The final section, based on top-secret prisoners' files, shows how NKVD officers invented conspiracies against foreigners and Russians in the Moscow city and rural area. Book jacket.

Barry McLoughlin is part-time Lecturer at Vienna University.

Kevin McDermott is Senior Lecturer in History at Sheffield Hallam University.