Reddit reviews The Great Terror: A Reassessment

Please. This is not a broken legal system. If they had their way, this would read like the sicker parts of the show trials in Robert Conquest's The Great Terror.

I definitely plan to! I might get it next. I'm reading The Great Terror, the classic study of Stalin's Purges right now.

I think the way the 60s are remembered in popular memory is really distorted. The Hippie movement was not nearly as popular as people seem to remember. And the youth conservative movement was also HUGE.

The '72 election was really a watershed. McGovern was portrayed as the candidate of "Abortion, Amnesty and Acid" LMAO

Anybody who thinks Communism is okay needs to read this book. The only good Communist is a dead one. They are the enemy of individualism and freedom.

I confidently predict that you are going to get a lot of politically motivated responses to this question and that they will all be removed. To get the ball rollling hopefully in the right spirit, I would recommend the works of Anglo-American historian Robert Conquest. He wrote extensively about the Soviet Union and the impact of collectivisation, Stalinism etc at time when the jury was still out. His most famous work was The Great Terror.

> I'm curious as to what the communists on this sub all think about the large scale purges of 1937/38 and the subsequent deportation of these mostly 'political' prisoners (but there were common criminals as well) to labor camps across Siberia and Chukotka, Priamur, etc.

> I can't really call myself a Trotskyite or a Stalinist to be honest, certainly I see them as vermin, but the nature of these purges have always seemed so ridiculous to me. The totally random and obtuse method of rounding up intellectuals for non-existent conspiracies so as to fulfill regional quotas is so ridiculous that its almost funny, until the actual circumstances become apparent. After spending years in prisons alone or with a cellmate the political prisoners were sent to hellish labor camps where a culture exists that makes Lord of the Flies look like teletubbies... Women are ubiquitously raped (often 'in concert' as the criminals there refer to gang rape...) by every level of camp administration - who due to this luxury often have syphilis - and 'common criminals' who include everything from thieves and murderers to child molesters(mao's influence) and rapists are not considered 'enemies of the people' and so receive special treatment.

> The lives of political prisoners becomes a slow and humiliating march to death. These people are often dedicated communists, specialists, intellectuals, peasants, workers - they come from all sectors of society and are worked to death in a senseless fashion. Slave labor is so obviously ineffective, especially when the slaves are not properly fed or clothed in -70 degree weather.

Don't know what exactly you're looking for us to discuss. It's important to highlight that the Great Purge is simply a name given to the phenomenon of mass executions/murders around 1937-1938. My understanding from historians that study it, is that no one really knows why it started or what the impetus behind it actually was, but that for some reason, mass executions started occurring in somewhat obscure patterns throughout this period. Despite that overview however, there are some commonly held opinions among them about why it happened. Personally the best resource (although there are multiple sources) I've read is this.

> Couldn't these people have been put to better uses?

Sure.

> And what of the thousands who simply starved due to miscalculations and ridiculous expectations, resorting to cannibalism en masse, etc?

What about them?

> I am of the sincere opinion that the purges and camps sewed the seeds for the USSR's destruction. How could anyone who experienced those purges or was connected to them, not feel betrayed and hopeless?

That actually has virtually nothing to do with the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

> Anyway, average commies, convince me that this was all good fun and that the revolution required the decimation of educated specialists.

No socialist/communist I know defends this. I think somewhere in there, you have the popular misconception about who/what we are. The Soviet Union wasn't remotely communist. In name sure, but not much else.