Great Purge: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 08:26, 13 October 2004

Revision as of 08:37, 13 October 2004

Line 66:

By the summer of [[1938]], everyone in power realized that the purges had gone too far, and Yezhov was relieved from his head of [[NKVD]] post (remaining People's Commissar of Water Transport) and eventually purged. [[Lavrenty Beria]] succeeded him as head of the NKVD. This signalled the end of the Great Purge, although the practice of mass arrest and exile was continued until Stalin's death in [[1953]].

One of [[Russia]]'s leading [[human rights]] groups, the [[Memorial (society)|Memorial]] human rights group, has released a list of 1,345,796 names of people who fell victim to Stalin's purges. The best current estimate is that during the period [[1934]] to [[1939]] about 12 million people were sentenced to terms in the labour camps, where the harsh conditions in the [[Gulag]] caused the death of manymost prisoners within a few years. Estimates as high as 20 million have been published, but these often include the estimated 10 million deaths during the famine associated with the [[collectivization]] agriculture in the early 1930s.

==Western reactions==

Line 72:

[[Robert Conquest]], a former British intelligence official and writer for the Foreign Office's Information Research Department, a department whose function was anti-communist propaganda, wrote the book ''The Great Terror'' in 1968. According to Robert Conquest, writing in ''The Great Terror'', with respect to the trials of former leaders some Western observers were unable to see through the fraudulent nature of the charges and evidence, notably Walter Duranty, of the ''[[New York Times]]'', a Russian speaker; the American Ambassador, Joseph Davis, who reported, "proof...beyond reasonable doubt to justify the verdict of treason"<!--Page 468, ''Great Terror'' ISBN 0195071328--> and Beatrice and Sidney Webb, authors of ''Soviet Communism: A New Civilization''<!--Page 469, ''Great Terror'' ISBN 0195071328-->. According to Robert Conquest, writing in ''The Great Terror'', while "Communist Parties everywhere simply transmitted the Soviet line", some of the most critical reporting also came from the left, notably the ''[[Manchester Guardian]]''<!--Page 465,467 ''Great Terror'' ISBN 0195071328-->.

Despite great scepticism regarding the show trials and occasional reports of Gulag survivors, many western intellectuals retained a favorable view towards the Soviet Union which persisted until definitive proof began to appear after Stalin's death with, first, the relevations of [[Khrushchev]], then, the writings of [[Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn]], the publication of ''The Great Terror: Stalin's Purge of the Thirties'' by [[Robert Conquest]] in the late 1960s, the release of Soviet records during [[glasnost]] and finally, in France, where the intellectual climate was most sympathetic to Soviet communism, publication in 1997 of ''[[The Black Book of Communism]]''<!--Page 466,476-480,485-489 ''Great Terror'' ISBN 0195071328, ix-xx, Forward, Black Book of Communism, ISBN 0674076087-->. Minimizations of the Great Purge continues among [[historical revisionism|revisionist scholars]] in the United States.<!--Pages 15 to 17, ''In Denial'', ISBN 1893554724-->.

==Rehabilitation==

Line 93 ⟶ 95:

* [http://www.cdi.org/russia/230-2.cfm ''CDI Russia Weekly'' #230, "Russia: Rights Group Marks Bolshevik Anniversary With Catalog Of Soviet Repressions" By Gregory Feifer][[Category:Soviet political repressions]]

* [http://www.plp.org/books/Stalin/node67.html "The Collectivization 'Genocide'"]

[[de:Große Säuberung]]

[[fr:Grande Purge]]