casahistoria home                              visit caféhistoria for updates and current topic news



4. The Terror
   

---

 

What it was

• NKVD; Secret Police; Great Purges; Soviet Gulags; Workers' Opposition from Spartacus educational Site. Excellent introductory sections for an overview linked to documents
• Lavrentiy Beria Bio of Stalin’s sectre police chief from the Russian international TV news channel RT Russia
• Repression and Terror: Kirov Murder and Purges - Brief but clear account from the Russian Archives of the US Library of Congress
• Modern History Sourcebook - Stalin's Purges, 1935 An official Soviet era explanation of the arrest and execution of thousands of perceived enemies of the state.
• The Purge Presentation by Professor Gerhard Rempel, Western New England College.
• 1934 Criminal Code of the RSFSR Article on the working of the law with links to actual sections
• The Secret Police A clear website devoted to the Gulags and the Terror but very slow to load.
• "Purges and Hysteria in the Soviet Union" Account by by Frank E. Smitha, 1998
• Another View of Stalin - The Great Purge The Purges as seen by committed Stalinist, Ludo Martens, a Belgian historian noted for his work on the Soviet Union.
Starts at page 109 of this section of the book which begins on page 101 of the book.
• "Life Is Not Easy, Damn It!"  Stepan Podlubnyi (1914- ), born in Ukraine to wealthy peasants. After 1917 his father was stripped of all but a part of his land because of his "kulak" origins. From 1932 Podlubnyi was an informer for the Secret Police. In this passage, he recalls the year 1937, the beginning of the Great Terror in the Soviet Union, and the arrest of Podlubnyi's mother. From the Mosaic site. §
• The Short Course The official line of Stalin in justifying the Purges. This is the official explanation from textbooks published before Stalin's excesses were repudiated by his successors. From Goucher College.
• Nightmare in the workers paradise Useful concise & illustrated BBC article by Tim Tzouliadis Author, of The Forsaken, outlining the story of the 100,000 US citizens who emigrated to the USSR in the 1930’s but then became victims of the Stalin terror, receiving little/no support from the US.

• Industrialisation of the Country and the Right Deviation in the C.P.S.U.(B.) (1928).
• Bukharin's Group and the Right Deviation in Our Party (1929).
• On Applying Physical Pressure to Prisoners (1939)  inaccessible if download limit is exceeded!

• How Did Stalin Defeat the Opposition? (1935)
• The Revolution Betrayed. What is the Soviet Union and where is it going? (1937)  inaccessible if download limit is exceeded!

• Revelations from the Russian Archives This US Library of Congress site contains the first significant number of documents shown anywhere from what may be the most important new source of primary materials for understanding the history of the twentieth century. These documents provide an unprecedented inside look at the workings of one of the largest, most powerful and long-lived political machines of the modern era. They include material from archives that had been key working files of the Communist rulers until August 1991: the archives of the Central Committee, the Presidential archive, and the KGB. Key sections include:
  • Repression and Terror: Stalin in Control
  • Repression and Terror: Kirov Murder and Purges
  • Secret Police
  • The Gulag
  • Collectivization and Industrialization
  • Anti-Religious Campaigns
  • Attacks on Intelligentsia: Early Attacks
  • Attacks on Intelligentsia: Renewed Attacks
  • Attacks on Intelligentsia: Censorship
  • Attacks on Intelligentsia: Suppressing Dissidents
  • Ukrainian Famine
  • Deportations

• And they all confessed ... Interesting account of the key trials by Gudrun Persson, Historian. She writes articles about Russia in the Swedish press.
• Last Plea of N.I. Bukharin, from  ”Report of Court Proceedings in the Case of the Anti-Soviet ’Bloc of Rights and Trotskyites’ heard before the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the U.S.S.R., Moscow, March 2-13, 1938” (Publ. People’s Commissariat of Justice of the U.S.S.R., Moscow, 1938).

• Forced Labor Camps On-line Exhibition - by the Open Society Archives. Excellent details on the Gulag system. Very clear and straightforward. Unorthodox page layout.
• Soviet Archives Exhibit - The Gulag  another brief but clear account from the Russian Archives of the US Library of Congress
• Gulag: Many Days, Many Lives presents an in-depth look at life in the Gulag through exhibits featuring original documentaries and prisoner voices; an archive filled with documents and images; and teaching and bibliographic resources that encourage further study. Visitors also are encouraged to reflect and share their thoughts about the Gulag system.
• Kolyma: Former inmate of this Siberian prison camp from Stalin's reign describes the Gold mine and the people who lived there. Includes photos.
• Stalin's Great Terror: Origins and Consequences lecture by Prof Rogovin, Univ of Melbourne, 1996, from World Socialist Web Site. Places Terror in an international and contemporary context. The Terror seen in what is probably best described as a post-communist revisionist style by a left winger......
• How times change: Gulag just the ticket for Russian tourists  From the Australian newspaper, "The Age", July 2004.

• The Scale and Nature of German and Soviet Repression and Mass Killings, 1930-45 Lengthy article by Stephen Wheatcroft which provides a well supported comparison of Nazi & Soviet terror

the casahistoria Russia/USSR core sites: