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On 10 January 1939, Stalin wrote that the Central Committee of the Communist Party had permitted the use of what was euphemistically called “the application of physical measures of persuasion” in interrogations from 1937. To date, there is no extant written order on the use of torture during the Great Terror. Stalin’s admission demonstrates conclusively that directives on torture came from the top.
Between the summer of 1937 and November 1938, the Stalinist regime arrested over 1.5 million people for “counterrevolutionary” and “antisoviet” activity and either summarily executed or exiled them to the Gulag. This was Stalin’s “Great Terror” and, contrary to popular belief, the largest number of victims were not elites or “Old Bolsheviks,” but common people. Below is a timeline of The Great Terror in Soviet Ukraine.
A look back at the great posts of 2007.
Lynne Viola’s final post about her research for her book.
Everyday this week we are posting part of a series from author Lynne Viola, The Unknown Gulag: The Lost World of Stalin’s Special Settlements. Check out part one and part two and part three. Luck and serendipity combined to provide unique and rich sources for the book. I was continually amazed at the degree of […]
I read of the Regional Party Committee’s plans to feed the exiles’ families (including some 88,000 children) according to “starvation norms.”
Stalin’s reign over the Soviet Union has left many unanswered questions but in The Unknown Gulag: The Lost World of Stalin’s Special Settlements Lynne Viola answers one: what happened to millions of peasants in the 1930’s.
An A-Z list of books to read.