Stalinist Confessions

Stalinist Confessions PDF Author: Igal Halfin
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Pre
ISBN: 0822973529
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 496

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Book Description
During Stalin's Great Terror, accusations of treason struck fear in the hearts of Soviet citizens-and lengthy imprisonment or firing squads often followed. Many of the accused sealed their fates by agreeing to confessions after torture or interrogation by the NKVD. Some, however, gave up without a fight. In Stalinist Confessions, Igal Halfin investigates the phenomenon of a mass surrender to the will of the state. He deciphers the skillfully rendered discourse through which Stalin defined his cult of personality and consolidated his power by building a grassroots base of support and instilling a collective psyche in every citizen. By rooting out evil (opposition) wherever it hid, good communists could realize purity, morality, and their place in the greatest society in history. Confessing to trumped-up charges, comrades made willing sacrifices to their belief in socialism and the necessity of finding and making examples of its enemies.Halfin focuses his study on Leningrad Communist University as a microcosm of Soviet society. Here, eager students proved their loyalty to the new socialism by uncovering opposition within the University. Through their meetings and self-reports, students sought to become Stalin's New Man. Using his exhaustive research in Soviet archives including NKVD records, party materials, student and instructor journals, letters, and newspapers, Halfin examines the transformation in the language of Stalinist socialism. From an initial attitude that dismissed dissent as an error in judgment and redeemable through contrition to a doctrine where members of the opposition became innately wicked and their reform impossible, Stalin's socialism now defined loyalty in strictly black and white terms. Collusion or allegiance (real or contrived, now or in the past) with "enemies of the people" (Trotsky, Zinoviev, Bukharin, Germans, capitalists) was unforgivable. The party now took to the task of purging itself with ever-increasing zeal.

Stalinist Confessions

Stalinist Confessions PDF Author: Igal Halfin
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Pre
ISBN: 0822973529
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 496

Get Book Here

Book Description
During Stalin's Great Terror, accusations of treason struck fear in the hearts of Soviet citizens-and lengthy imprisonment or firing squads often followed. Many of the accused sealed their fates by agreeing to confessions after torture or interrogation by the NKVD. Some, however, gave up without a fight. In Stalinist Confessions, Igal Halfin investigates the phenomenon of a mass surrender to the will of the state. He deciphers the skillfully rendered discourse through which Stalin defined his cult of personality and consolidated his power by building a grassroots base of support and instilling a collective psyche in every citizen. By rooting out evil (opposition) wherever it hid, good communists could realize purity, morality, and their place in the greatest society in history. Confessing to trumped-up charges, comrades made willing sacrifices to their belief in socialism and the necessity of finding and making examples of its enemies.Halfin focuses his study on Leningrad Communist University as a microcosm of Soviet society. Here, eager students proved their loyalty to the new socialism by uncovering opposition within the University. Through their meetings and self-reports, students sought to become Stalin's New Man. Using his exhaustive research in Soviet archives including NKVD records, party materials, student and instructor journals, letters, and newspapers, Halfin examines the transformation in the language of Stalinist socialism. From an initial attitude that dismissed dissent as an error in judgment and redeemable through contrition to a doctrine where members of the opposition became innately wicked and their reform impossible, Stalin's socialism now defined loyalty in strictly black and white terms. Collusion or allegiance (real or contrived, now or in the past) with "enemies of the people" (Trotsky, Zinoviev, Bukharin, Germans, capitalists) was unforgivable. The party now took to the task of purging itself with ever-increasing zeal.

Confessions of a British Stalinist

Confessions of a British Stalinist PDF Author: Royal Communionist Party
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Communism
Languages : en
Pages : 1

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Book Description


Stalinist Perpetrators on Trial

Stalinist Perpetrators on Trial PDF Author: Lynne Viola
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190674172
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
Between the summer of 1937 and November 1938, the Stalinist regime arrested over 1.5 million people for "counterrevolutionary" and "anti-Soviet" activity and either summarily executed or exiled them to the Gulag. While we now know a great deal about the experience of victims of the Great Terror, we know almost nothing about the lower- and middle-level Narodnyi Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del (NKVD), or secret police, cadres who carried out Stalin's murderous policies. Unlike the postwar, public trials of Nazi war criminals, NKVD operatives were tried secretly. And what exactly happened in those courtrooms was unknown until now. In what has been dubbed "the purge of the purgers," almost one thousand NKVD officers were prosecuted by Soviet military courts. Scapegoated for violating Soviet law, they were charged with multiple counts of fabrication of evidence, falsification of interrogation protocols, use of torture to secure "confessions," and murder during pre-trial detention of "suspects" - and many were sentenced to execution themselves. The documentation generated by these trials, including verbatim interrogation records and written confessions signed by perpetrators; testimony by victims, witnesses, and experts; and transcripts of court sessions, provides a glimpse behind the curtains of the terror. It depicts how the terror was implemented, what happened, and who was responsible, demonstrating that orders from above worked in conjunction with a series of situational factors to shape the contours of state violence. Based on chilling and revelatory new archival documents from the Ukrainian secret police archives, Stalinist Perpetrators on Trial illuminates the darkest recesses of Soviet repression -- the interrogation room, the prison cell, and the place of execution -- and sheds new light on those who carried out the Great Terror.

My Life in Stalinist Russia

My Life in Stalinist Russia PDF Author: Mary M. Leder
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 9780253338662
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 380

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Book Description
"A sometimes astonishing, worm's-eye view of life under totalitarianism, and a valuable contribution to Soviet and Jewish studies." --Kirkus Reviews In 1931, Mary M. Leder, an American teenager, was attending high school in Santa Monica, California. By year's end, she was living in a Moscow commune and working in a factory, thousands of miles from her family, with whom she had emigrated to Birobidzhan, the area designated by the USSR as a Jewish socialist homeland. Although her parents soon returned to America, Mary was not permitted to leave and would spend the next 34 years in the Soviet Union. Readers will be drawn into this personal account of the life of an independent-minded young woman, coming of age in a society that she believed was on the verge of achieving justice for all but which ultimately led her to disappointment and disillusionment. Leder's absorbing memoir presents a microcosm of Soviet history and an extraordinary window into everyday life and culture in the Stalin era.

The Stalinist Empire

The Stalinist Empire PDF Author: Ted Gottfried
Publisher: Twenty-First Century Books
ISBN: 9780761325581
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 140

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Book Description
Chronicles the years of Joseph Stalin's iron-fisted reign in the Soviet Union, from the time of Lenin's death to the dawn of World War II.

Revisioning Stalin and Stalinism

Revisioning Stalin and Stalinism PDF Author: James Ryan
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350122939
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 267

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Book Description
This thought-provoking collection of essays analyses the complex, multi-faceted, and even contradictory nature of Stalinism and its representations. Stalinism was an extraordinarily repressive and violent political model, and yet it was led by ideologues committed to a vision of socialism and international harmony. The essays in this volume stress the complex, multi-faceted, and often contradictory nature of Stalin, Stalinism, and Stalinist-style leadership, and. explore the complex picture that emerges. Broadly speaking, three important areas of debate are examined, united by a focus on political leadership: * The key controversies surrounding Stalin's leadership role * A reconsideration of Stalin and the Cold War * New perspectives on the cult of personality Revisioning Stalin and Stalinism is a crucial volume for all students and scholars of Stalin's Russia and Cold War Europe.

Tortured Confessions

Tortured Confessions PDF Author: Ervand Abrahamian
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520216235
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
3 The Islamic Republic

Show Trials

Show Trials PDF Author: George H. Hodos
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313045917
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 214

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Book Description
Show Trials combines first-hand knowledge with hitherto unpublished, confidential material, to offer a penetrating and candid account of the Stalinist purges that occurred in Albanian, East German, Bulgarian, and Rumanian purges, as well as in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Poland. George Hodos shows how these trials played a pivotal role in consolidating Soviet domination over the satellite countries during Stalin's lifetime. As an important addition to our understanding of these events and times, Show Trials is essential for historians of Eastern Europe and absorbing reading for anyone interested in world affairs.

Stalin's Russia

Stalin's Russia PDF Author: Max Eastman
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000370569
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
First published in 1940, Stalin’s Russia is a close study of the development of the Stalinist regime and the flaws in socialist doctrine that made it possible. The book examines the contrasts between the "free and equal" society heralded by the Marxist-Leninist programme and the totalitarian state that emerged in its place. It makes use of a wealth of material to cast light on the inner workings of Stalin’s regime. It explores the significance of the Stalin-Hitler pact, and argues that the word "socialism" itself became a liability to any genuine movement of liberation as a result.

The Stalinist Era

The Stalinist Era PDF Author: David L. Hoffmann
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107007089
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 217

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Book Description
Placing Stalinism in its international context, The Stalinist Era explains the origins and consequences of Soviet state intervention and violence.