J. Arch Getty

Stalinist terror : new perspectives

Acknowledgements Introduction J. Arch Getty and Roberta T. Manning Part I. Persons and Politics: 1. Narkom Ezhov Boris A. Starkov 2. The politics of repression revisited J. Arch Getty Part II. Backgrounds: 3. The second coming: class enemies in the Soviet countryside, 1927-1935 Lynne Viola 4. The omnipresent conspiracy: on Soviet imagery of politics and social relations in the 1930s Gabor T. Rittersporn 5. The Soviet economic crisis of 1936-1940 and the great purges Roberta T. Manning 6. The Stakhanovite movement: the background to the great terror in the factories, 1935-1938 Robert Thurston Part III. Case Studies: 7. The great terror on the local level: purges in Moscow factories, 1936-1938 David L. Hoffman 8. The great purges in a rural district: Belyi Raion revisited Roberta T. Manning 9. The Red Army and the great purges Roger R. Reese 10. Stalinist terror in the Donbas: a note Hiroaki Kuromiya Part IV. Impact and Incidence: 11. Patterns of repression among the Soviet elite in the late 1930s: a biographical approach J. Arch Getty and William Chase 12. The impact of the great purges on Soviet elites: a case study from Moscow and Leningrad telephone directories of the 1930s Sheila Fitzpatrick 13. Victims of Stalinism: how many? Alec Nove 14. More light on the scale of repression and excess mortality in the Soviet Union in the 1930s Stephen G. Wheatcroft Index.

State and Society under Stalin: Constitutions and Elections in the 1930s

It is clear that tested by the Constitution of the Soviet Union as revised and enacted in 1936, the USSR is the most inclusive and equalised democracy in the world. Sidney and Beatrice Webb, 1937 Many who lauded Stalins Soviet Union as the most democratic country on earth lived to regret their words. After all, the Soviet Constitution of 1936 was adopted on the eve of the Great Terror of the late 1930s; the “thoroughly democratic” elections to the first Supreme Soviet permitted only uncontested candidates and took place at the height of the savage violence in 1937. The civil rights, personal freedoms, and democratic forms promised in the Stalin constitution were trampled almost immediately and remained dead letters until long after Stalins death.

Origins of the Great Purges. The Soviet Communist Party Reconsidered, 1933-1938

List of tables Preface Introduction: the Great Purges as history 1. The Communist Party in the thirties 2. What was a purge? 3. The Verification of Party Documents of 1935: a case study in bureaucratic ineptitude 4. Radicalism and party revival 5. Radicalism and enemies of the people 6. The crisis matures: 1937 7. Epilogue: the Ezhovshchina Conclusion: some observations on politics in the thirties Appendix: the Kirov assassination Bibliographic essay Notes Index.