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The Great Terror: A Reassessment

Robert Conquest

4.12 · Rating details · 1,001 ratings · 101 reviews

The definitive work on Stalin's purges, Robert Conquest's The Great Terror was universally acclaimed when it first appeared in 1968. Harrison Salisbury called it brilliant...not only an odyssey of madness, tragedy, and sadism, but a work of scholarship and literary craftsmanship. And in
recent years it has received equally high praise in the former Soviet Union, where it is ...more

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Paperback, 608 pages

Published January 1st 2008 by Oxford University Press, USA (first published 1968)

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Dec 14, 2009 Anastasia Fitzgerald-Beaumont rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Amongst my other reading at present I’ve been working my way through Robert Conquest’s classic The Great Terror>, an exploration of the Stalinist purge in Russia in the mid-1930s. I’ve reached the most terrible phase of that terrible part of the nation’s history, the so-called Yezhovchina, named after Nikolai Yezhov, then head of the NKVD, the Soviet security police.

It’s difficult to know how the nation was able to survive the ever growing spiral of denunciations, arrests and executions, embrac Amongst my other reading at present I’ve been working my way through Robert Conquest’s classic The Great Terror>, an exploration of the Stalinist purge in Russia in the mid-1930s. I’ve reached the most terrible phase of that terrible part of the nation’s history, the so-called Yezhovchina, named after Nikolai Yezhov, then head of the NKVD, the Soviet security police.

It’s difficult to know how the nation was able to survive the ever growing spiral of denunciations, arrests and executions, embracing the whole of society, high and low, in and out. It’s difficult to know how people, ordinary people, could go to sleep at night, knowing that they might very well be visited by the secret police in the early hours of the morning, their favourite time. It’s difficult to know how Russia avoided a collective breakdown in the midst of this horror.

Here’s one story that caught my attention, a demonstration of the manic stupidity of the whole period, the kind of thing that emerged in the process of lunatic denunciations. It concerns one Sylakov, a deserter from the Red Army. He gave himself up in Kiev claiming that, for whatever reason, that he had been involved in an anti-Soviet plot. He told of a planned raid on a post office in which he had a leading part, intended to provide funds for a terrorist cell. This was not enough for the NKVD, so after a good kicking, he implicated the whole of his old military unit, right up to the commanding officer. The attacks planned were not now on a post office, no, but on government leaders.

Following this almost the whole of his unit was arrested, from the commanding officer right down to the drivers, wives included. Sylakov’s family were also drawn in, his two sisters, his father and his old and crippled mother. So, too, was an uncle, who had only ever met his nephew once. The said uncle was discovered to have served once as a corporal in the old Imperial Army, and was immediately promoted by the NKVD into a Tsarist general!

As with a rock thrown into a silent pool, the rings grew ever wider as this absurd tale progressed, embracing more and more, to the point that every cell in Kiev prison was occupied by someone implicated in the ‘Sylakov Plot.’ But no sooner had the intensity of the Terror slackened with the fall of Yezhov in late 1938 than the NKVD began to re-examine the whole case, now a complete embarrassment. The suspects were all interrogated again, with a view to getting them to withdraw their forced confessions. Some, fearing a trick, refused and had to be given another kicking, to get them to reject statements that carried the death sentence! Is there any greater madness than this? ...more

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May 27, 2012 Jerome rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites

Which is more terrifying? Stalin's 1936-38 terror, or Western liberals' inability to recognize it? Updating his original work "The Great Terror" with a vast amount of new data, Conquest scrupulously details and puts into context the purges themselves: the many players and defendants, the shifting political cross-currents, the rounds of trials and arrests.

And he does the same for the many Western observers - intellectuals, writers, journalists, and left activists - who were oblivious to it or act Which is more terrifying? Stalin's 1936-38 terror, or Western liberals' inability to recognize it? Updating his original work "The Great Terror" with a vast amount of new data, Conquest scrupulously details and puts into context the purges themselves: the many players and defendants, the shifting political cross-currents, the rounds of trials and arrests.

And he does the same for the many Western observers - intellectuals, writers, journalists, and left activists - who were oblivious to it or actively sought to hush it up, even decades later when there were no longer any shreds of doubt. This is the equivalent of Holocaust denial.

And a Holocaust it was. While left-wing apologists pooh-poohed the numbers of purge deaths as in the thousands, the estimates of those killed politically in the people's progressive utopia are now solidly in the eight figures, with as many as 15 to 20 million arrested and executed, or worked to death in the camps, in the years up until Stalin's death in 1953. As many more died were starved by the Communists in the Ukraine to break the peasantry a few years earlier. Yet most people seem never to have heard of any of this.

As much as I wanted to enjoy this book for it's profound historical importance, I found it difficult to get through it. As a historian and documentarian, Robert Conquest is unrivaled. As a writer, he doesn't make it easy on his readers. This book is probably more suited to be an academic reference than a consumer market book.

The author goes into fascinating detail about how the depraved mind of Stalin might have processed perceived threats to his power and gives a palpable feel for what those who lived during this era must have felt. He goes into thought provoking detail about just how maniacal and pervasive the purge mentality became. No one was trusted, not even those closest to Stalin. It seems that just about anyone was liable to be arrested and executed just for making the wrong glance. He also demonstrates how and why the purges increased exponentially, leading to millions of Russian citizens going to prison, or their deaths, on absolutely no basis of criminal wrongdoing.

Overall, the book has a cohesive structure from one chapter to the next, but all too often the author tends to give a dry recitation names, dates, and facts with little contextualization. He also assumes the reader has some familiarity with Russian politics and institutions. Many of the terms specific to Russia and the period covered are mentioned but never explained very well, if at all.

Despite these minor flaws, Conquest did a tremendous job in researching and uncovering the magnitude and details of Stalin's Great Terror. No other account prior to this gave a glimpse of just how extensive Stalin's campaign of terror and suppression was. This is without question the definitive book on the Stalinist purges.
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May 31, 2012 Geoff marked it as to-read · review of another edition

This guy's real name is Robert Conquest? My nom de plume is going to be Biceps Wellhung. ...more

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May 27, 2014 Czarny Pies rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommends it for: History buffs

Recommended to Czarny by: Norman Davies

Shelves: european-history

The Great Terror is a book of enormous importance because it was the first book on Stalin's purges written by a member of the Anglo-Saxon race employed as a professor at a major university in an Anglo-Saxon country. During the 1970's when I was studying history at an Anglo-Saxon university Slavs were given little respect. The fact that they had lived in Russia or some other country like Poland meant that they had strongly partisan feelings and hence could not be trusted to give a truthful accoun The Great Terror is a book of enormous importance because it was the first book on Stalin's purges written by a member of the Anglo-Saxon race employed as a professor at a major university in an Anglo-Saxon country. During the 1970's when I was studying history at an Anglo-Saxon university Slavs were given little respect. The fact that they had lived in Russia or some other country like Poland meant that they had strongly partisan feelings and hence could not be trusted to give a truthful account of anything. However, when Conquest made his case using the methodology accepted in North American and British Commonwealth universities, the historical profession had to finally acknowledge the truth that Stalin had made a huge and savage purge in the 1930s that affected every level of the Soviet communist party.

As a pioneering work by an accredited academic, Conquest's book is indeed a great triumph. He carefully charts out the different stages of the purges explaining which groups were targeted in each successive phase. He explains how incentives were provided to the bureaucrats. If they exceeded their quota of denunciations, they could hope to get promoted. If they failed to meet their quotas they could expect to be quickly purged themselves. The whole exercise became one of trying to denounce before being denounced. It was a true reign of terror.

Moreover, the bureaucrats had to obtain confessions from those denounced and train them to repeat them at the trials. Western observers were shocked to seem long-time communists confess to crimes that would never have committed and in most cases would have never possessed the physical means to do the things they admitted to having done. Robert Conquest again does an admirable good in explaining the methods used to extract the fake confessions and make the supposed criminals publicly confess. Mr. Conquest's book makes very fascinating reading. Research continues to bring to light new facts about the purges, but this book will never really be superseded.

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Jan 01, 2012 Manray9 rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: russia

Conquest's The Great Terror is the definitive work in English on Stalin's purges and the death of Bolshevism. For readers interested in the ascendency of Stalinism in Russia this is the primary source. ...more

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Nov 11, 2014 Peter Jakobsen rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: tvc

It is hard to understand why so many intelligent people admired the socialist experiment of Soviet Union c.1934-1940. These useful idiots defended and lauded systematic mass slaughter on an industrial scale. Conquest's book, originally appearing in 1968, helped convince those still impervious to, inter alia, Hungary and Czechoslovakia. The case is made, with solid and well sourced evidence, that Stalin basically topped anyone who looked at him sideways, or didn't look at him or whatever. Nor wer ...more

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Mar 28, 2016 Edwin Stratton-Mackay rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Brilliant work, its value underscored by the savage attacks on it by Kremlin apparatchiks. Originally the standard work on the Great Terror, Stalinism was worse than Robert Conquest reported.

Hitler lost, and failed to complete the cover-up of Nazi crimes (Sonderaktion 1005.) On the other hand, Stalin won, and didn't die until 1953. Stalin had the opportunity to complete his cover-up. The breadth of Stalin's criminality only began to be understood after 1990. Conquest's work is the place to star ...more

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Aug 08, 2015 Nooilforpacifists rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: russian-history

I remember vividly using this book -- or was it the first edition? -- to refute my friends who refused to believe that evil lurked East of the Brandenburg gate and, especially, in Moscow

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May 09, 2012 Loring Wirbel rated it really liked it · review of another edition

OK, let's begin with the obvious - Conquest can lean to polemical language from his excitable right-wing background (really, what is helped by calling someone "odorific"?), and his tendency to let his passion direct his writing can make him seem a less reliable historian. Nevertheless, no one had better compiled the history of show trials than Conquest did in his original 'Great Terror,' and the new version, reflecting new information from the 1990s, puts all the elements in place. For that reas OK, let's begin with the obvious - Conquest can lean to polemical language from his excitable right-wing background (really, what is helped by calling someone "odorific"?), and his tendency to let his passion direct his writing can make him seem a less reliable historian. Nevertheless, no one had better compiled the history of show trials than Conquest did in his original 'Great Terror,' and the new version, reflecting new information from the 1990s, puts all the elements in place. For that reason, I'll give the revised 'Great Terror' a solid four stars despite its frantic language.

Conquest should be given appropriate due for assembling details, not only of the show trials that Stalin urged foreign observers to see, but the secret trials of military leaders and other officials. He goes to great lengths to find out what happened to the relatives and friends of key victims of the Great Terror, and we gain a sense of the chilling fact that for every person executed by Stalin, dozens went to the Gulag camps for no reason at all.

Still, Conquest takes a few overreaches in logic. Many modern historians, like Orlando Figes, are willing to buy Conquest's theory that Stalin was directly responsible for Kirov's murder, yet few would say the Great Terror began with Kirov's murder. Figes, in his book 'The Whisperers,' points out that there was an easing of tensions in 1935-36, and Figes counts Kirov's earlier murder among Stalin's littler terrors. Rather, the reason the Great Terror was launched in late 1936 seemed to be more related to the approaching war with Germany and Japan, and the subtle feeling on the part of Stalin that he must execute anyone with even the potential of being a fifth columnist.

Conquest seems to miss a very important part of the story that Figes and others have stressed. The largest number of murders, and the most extra-judicial and illegal murders, took place in the latter half of 1938, well after the high point of the show trials. Yes, many of those convicted in show trials were taken out and shot in the back mere hours after the trials concluded. But thousands of other innocent victims who were sentenced to 10 or 20 years in a labor camp, were taken to remote railroad stations in late 1938 and executed without any legal grounds, simply due to the whims of Stalin or Molotov. Since the scope of these executions did not fully emerge until the late 1990s, maybe Conquest simply didn't have access to all the relevant information. Or maybe he was looking at the wrong part of the problem - the legal system, as opposed to the penal system.

Despite these complaints, this book will probably stand for quite some time as the best English source for Stalin's Great Terror, particularly since Conquest includes transcripts from many of the trials. I was left with the distinct feeling that the problem of Soviet Russia's mid-century horror was not Stalin as a person, but the insidious disease of party vanguardism. The disease occupied the soul of Lenin, with his obsession with violence; it destroyed Trotsky, who lost most integrity when he signed off on Kronstadt; and it took control of the souls of Stalin, Molotov, Yagoda, Yezhov, and others, who perverted the minor problems of centralized socialism and planned economies, turning the inconsistencies into horrific excuses for mass murder.

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Jan 24, 2010 Claudia Moscovici rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Psychopathy is usually analyzed as an individual psychological phenomenon. As we've seen, the term describes individuals without conscience, with shallow emotions, who are able to impersonate fully developed human beings and mimic feelings of love, caring and other-regarding impulses to fulfill their deviant goals: be that stealing your money, stealing your heart or both. This phenomenon becomes all the more toxic, and dangerous, when such individuals rise to national power and manage to create Psychopathy is usually analyzed as an individual psychological phenomenon. As we've seen, the term describes individuals without conscience, with shallow emotions, who are able to impersonate fully developed human beings and mimic feelings of love, caring and other-regarding impulses to fulfill their deviant goals: be that stealing your money, stealing your heart or both. This phenomenon becomes all the more toxic, and dangerous, when such individuals rise to national power and manage to create totalitarian regimes ruled by mind-control, deception, lack of individual and collective rights and freedoms, and arbitrary displays of power.

Psychopathic, or at least seriously disordered rulers, such as Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Ceausescu teach what happens when (their) pathology spreads to a whole country. Given that psychopaths are estimated to be, at most, only 4 percent of the population, it's difficult to imagine how they manage to rise to positions of authority over more or less normal human beings to impose a social pathology in every social sphere: from education, to the police force, to the juridical system, to the media. Few books explain this strange and extremely dangerous political and psychological phenomenon better than Robert Conquest's classic, The Great Terror. This book traces both Stalin's rise to power within the ranks of the Bolsheviks and, concurrently, the spreading of the totalitarian system like a fatal virus throughout Soviet society (and beyond).

The book also exposes the underlying lack of principles even among seemingly ideological rulers like Joseph Stalin. When it suited his purposes, Stalin strategically oscillated siding with the left wing of the communist party (Trotsky, Kamenev and Zimonev) or the right of the Bolshevik party (Bukharin, Rykov and Tomsky), turning each side against the other, to weaken them both and consolidate his own power. He surrounded himself with equally ruthless, unprincipled and sadistic individuals who did his dirty work--Yakov, Yagoda and Beria--placing them in positions of power in the NKVD, or Secret Police.

Stalin engaged in arbitrary displays of power, sending tens of millions of people to their deaths in prison or labor camps. Even his army leaders weren't spared. In a very poor strategic move that showed he cared more about acquiring total control than about his country's victory, Stalin decimated the ranks of his army elite right before the war against Hitler, when the Soviet Union would have needed them most. Nobody was safe from the gulag; nobody could maintain ideological purity. Anybody could be accused of deviationism from communist principles at any time.

Totalitarianism is a pathological system imposed upon an entire country or area. Like a disease, it spreads through the healthy aspects of society. It conditions even ordinary human beings, through the inculcation of fear and through brainwashing, to lose their conscience, their empathy and their humanity. Robert Conquest's The Great Terror is a testament to human corruptibility. This magnificent book will continue to remain historically relevant for as long as we allow disordered individuals to have power over us, our families and our social institutions.

Claudia Moscovici, psychopathyawareness ...more

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Jul 20, 2020 Miceál rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: russian-history, soviet-history, personal-library

Incredibly comprehensive, but as you can imagine, heavy reading. I'm always a little wary about calling books like this 'good' or saying I enjoy them, because it seems vastly inappropriate, but this was a very well-written book and it had a natural ease of authority that kept things clear and precise; something that's very difficult to do when it comes to such broad subject matters. Some books simply have you flicking back and forth and constantly trying to re-orientate yourself, but this book m ...more

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Jan 16, 2012 David rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

One of the most important books written in the 20th century.

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Dec 12, 2019 Matt rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

An important and incredible story, masterfully told. It’s hard to imagine living through the period described in this book. And as Conquest notes, it was hard for many to believe it was happening at the time. This book describes in detail the litany of Stalin’s crimes, and tells the story with a mastery of detailed historical knowledge, psychological and moral insight, and literary grace. It would be wrong to describe this book as a pleasure to read. But it is a deeply powerful and important wor ...more

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Nov 28, 2019 Mimi rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: stalled

It took me a fews months to finish that book. The critical Era It tackles alongside the authors narrative technique didn't tickle the good part at the back of my brain leaving the array of my curiosity unfulfilled.

From an academic standpoint, this book could serve as a great reference as a classic example to cite from credible source - - probably that is why I didn't get to enjoy it as I should have.
This doesn't deny the great information I learned - despite the unnecessary names and dates devia ...more

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Aug 07, 2015 Albertine67 rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Really well written and compelling; it didn't feel like it was 500+ pages. Admittedly I was reading it purely out of interest so I'm not going to be quizzed on what I remember of it in a few weeks, but despite a wealth of detail it is easy enough to follow the main themes and figures. The numbers involved in the repression and purge are so enormous that one constantly refers back to the individual stories, the people, to restore a sense of realism. For that reason I also found it helpful to have ...more

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Jan 15, 2013 David rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Wonderful early (1968) detailed account of Stalin's purges and show trials of the late 1930s. Engrossing subject matter and vivid, excellent writing; Conquest updated this book as "The Great Terror: A Reassessment" in the 1990s. ...more

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Feb 07, 2013 Mateu rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Huge book, full of details but, but, incredibly quickly read. Numbers and vastness are overwhelming. Can't help thinking 'how could it happen?, how did Stalin succeed?'. A masterpiece on dictatorship on masses. ...more

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Jul 01, 2012 Kevin rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: russia

"Stalin is not a nice guy. We get it. This book was torture." ...more

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Jul 17, 2012 Scott rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

The authoritative work on one of history's darkest periods ...more

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Sep 30, 2019 cool breeze rated it really liked it

This was a towering achievement when it was first published in 1968. Piecing together the scope of Stalin’s butchery and genocide from the sparse evidence available at the time was an incredible accomplishment. Conquest’s conclusions have since been confirmed in all but minor details by subsequent developments such as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956 (1973) and the revelations following the collapse of the Soviet Union and its communist vassal states.

Conquest managed to c This was a towering achievement when it was first published in 1968. Piecing together the scope of Stalin’s butchery and genocide from the sparse evidence available at the time was an incredible accomplishment. Conquest’s conclusions have since been confirmed in all but minor details by subsequent developments such as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956 (1973) and the revelations following the collapse of the Soviet Union and its communist vassal states.

Conquest managed to compose his exposé despite the massive orchestrated coverup by the Soviet Union, and the denials, excuses and attacks of its Western allies, fellow travellers and apologists. These included Walter Duranty and The New York Times ("All the Fake News That Fits Our Agenda"), who won the 1932 Pulitzer prize for whitewashing Stalin’s murder of millions by deliberate starvation (the Holodomor). As late as 1985, useful idiots and sycophants like Jerry F. Hough and J. Arch Getty were still publishing books saying that Stalin only murdered thousands. The actual numbers were millions tortured and slaughtered and more than ten million shipped to the Gulag.

As Stalin said, "When one man dies it's a tragedy. When thousands die it's statistics" (Антон Антонов-Овсеенко, Портрет тирана [Portrait of Tyranny])

Unfortunately, Conquest's book has not aged well, beyond getting the facts right before anyone else of note. He knew he was going to be viciously attacked, and devoted much of the book to documenting and proving his conclusions. This now makes for tedious reading. Telling the story could probably be condensed to 100 pages today. Slogging through the 400 additional pages of proof in 2019 is just incredibly tiresome and depressing.

This book deserved to be rated 5 stars from 1968, when it was published, to when its conclusions were beyond dispute, even prophetic, the 1990s. In 2019, it only rates 3 stars as a book on the topic, with a footnote of 5 stars for its place in history. The author’s updated preface and epilogue do not add much beyond a little well-deserved gloating. I compromised by giving it 4 stars. ...more

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Dec 28, 2018 Philip rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, history

Truth is not just stranger than fiction, but also much more farcical and simultaneously far, far more frightening.

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May 08, 2019 Howard Jaeckel rated it liked it · review of another edition

Robert Conquest’s “The Great Terror” is generally regarded as the definitive work about the Stalinist purges of the late 1930s. Definitive it surely is and will doubtless be invaluable to serious students of Soviet history and expert Kremlinologists who already know a great deal about the period.

But the book’s highly detailed accounts of the arrest, interrogation, “trial” and “confessions” of an endless number of Communist officials, most of whom will be entirely unfamiliar to the non-expert, i Robert Conquest’s “The Great Terror” is generally regarded as the definitive work about the Stalinist purges of the late 1930s. Definitive it surely is and will doubtless be invaluable to serious students of Soviet history and expert Kremlinologists who already know a great deal about the period.

But the book’s highly detailed accounts of the arrest, interrogation, “trial” and “confessions” of an endless number of Communist officials, most of whom will be entirely unfamiliar to the non-expert, is likely to be too much for the general reader. Indeed, at frequent intervals I found myself ready to make a full confession of my dilettantism and pseudo-intellectuality if only I could be allowed to put the book down and yield to sleep. “The Great Terror” is a very heavy read.

And I must acknowledge that I was ultimately broken (after about 150 pages, for those wishing to judge the strength of my resistance), and I began skipping first a few, and then scores of pages. That allowed me to get to the readily accessible, if horrifying, parts of the book -- those detailing what a prisoner went through from the shock of arrest in the middle of the night, the inhuman interrogation, the inevitable confession, the show trial and execution in the cellars of the NVKD or, for the lucky ones, a weeks’ long journey under brutal conditions to an Arctic labor camp that few would be able to survive.

This is vital material. The horrors of Stalinism are not nearly as well known in our country as the crimes of the Nazis. That is evidenced by the fact that some youngsters find it amusing to display Communist symbols and paraphernalia, when nobody but a neo-Nazi would think of sporting a swastika or wearing a T-shirt bearing the image of one of Hitler’s henchmen. More widespread knowledge of what we were fighting in the Cold War is badly needed.

Still, such knowledge may be gleaned in a more generally accessible context such as, to cite one example, Anne Appelbaum’s “Gulag.” The typical reader, wanting to know what Stalinism was, but feeling no need to wade through the details of each and every show trial held during that terrible time, will do better with such a volume.

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Aug 14, 2017 Randal rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommends it for: Anyone, especially admirers of Putin, so they might understand his background

Shelves: nonfiction

The definitive book on Stalin's purges. The updated version features Conquest in a typical bit of academic (read childish) debate in which he quotes critics of the first book --primarily Communists who said it was impossible / propaganda to suggest the since-proven scale of Stalin's evil. He revels in rubbing their noses in how he was right and they weren't. It feels wrong to laugh at any part of a book that details the arrests, torture and state murder of millions of its own citizens, but parts ...more

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Dec 07, 2017 Ivan rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: history

Should be read together with "Night and Fog/Natt og tåke" for a fair side-by-side comparison of the Soviet and the Nazi extermination-by-labor camp systems. Contains a treasure trove of material, which was hard to come by in the years of the Soviet Union, and, unfortunately, somewhat tendentious - I have read the 1982 edition, so I will have to reread the reassessment, written after the archives were officially opened and the information disseminated out.

Overall, the Soviet system was more irrat ...more

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Jun 12, 2012 Pavel rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction

Few weeks ago I was working at All-Russian State Archive of literature and art, gathering materials for my Mayakovsky documentary... This, you know, old quiet place where all the manuscripts and old letters and archives and all possible obscurities are treasured. I love such places. And...Majority of people in its reference room were foregniers. Somehow... I won't make any conclusions about that, but no wonder that the most сomplete book about Stalin's terror was written by the English Professor ...more

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Aug 07, 2009 Greg Northrup rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Most everyone is aware of the tremendous breadth and brutality of Stalin's regime, but Robert Conquest's book really brings home the horrendous conditions and arbitrary nature power of the regime, as well as stultifying effect it had throughout the society. This is the first book I've read on the subject and it's a feast of detail, constantly thought provoking and well written with particularly appropriate and cutting indignation. I was kind of in a shocked but fascinated stupor for much of this ...more

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Sep 02, 2009 Kim rated it liked it · review of another edition

The numbers involved are numbing.. millions executed, millions in labor camps.. I can't rightly get my mind around it. It's like thinking about the national debt. I kept trying to put it in context. Say if half the town I live in were "purged"... Still hard to grasp, and I live in a small town. The author is reputable and the facts seem well established at this point. What a sorrow for the Russian people. One aspect of the book I found difficult to overcome was the way the author jumped forward ...more

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Nov 17, 2011 Greg rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: international-relations

Robert Conquest is one of those historians you either really like or really hate. His writing is very polemical and opinionated laced with occasional snark. For many readers, the writing style will get in the way, hence I deduct a star. The subject, Stalin's purges and terrorization of the population in the 1930's, is a tough one to read. The best way to describe the book is 498 pages of bad road. You'll feel exhausted, battered and beaten after reading of the famines, show trials, work camps, m ...more

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Oct 25, 2013 Thomas marked it as unfinished · review of another edition

Shelves: abandoned, russia

This book would be of some utility for the Stalin scholar going through a print version with a highlighter and cross-referencing individual show trials of the '30s. For the general reader, or in my case audiobook listener, it's like having a textbook on electrical engineering screamed at you by a hysterical back-bench Tory MP on large quantities of cocaine. I loved the same author's much more accessible Stalin biography {book:Stalin: Breaker of Nations] but I found this one pretty much intolerab ...more

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Sep 28, 2009 Patrick rated it it was amazing

Must read stuff.
From Amazon:
Upon its publication in 1968, Conquest's The Great Terror: Stalin's Purge of the Thirties ( LJ 12/1/68) received wide acclaim for its broad, well-documented portrayal of the death of millions in Stalin's peacetime consolidation of power. A generation later, the collection of samizdat literature and the openness of glasnost have permitted access to better information, thereby allowing a reassessment of the study. Conquest's review largely confirms the original work. In ...more

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Robert Conquest

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George Robert Ackworth Conquest was a British historian who became a well known writer and researcher on the Soviet Union with the publication, in 1968, of his account of Stalin's purges of the 1930s, The Great Terror. ...more