Knowingo
Origins of the Great Purges The Soviet Communist Party Reconsidered, 1933-1938
What really caused the Great Purges: a master plan by Stalin, or a chaotic party machine driven to violence?
At a glance
- Author
- John Archibald Getty
Why read it
- You will question both familiar stories of the purges, the official Stalinist one and the Western one centred on Stalin
- You will weigh the claim that the worst terror was a radical reaction against bureaucracy, not the work of a petrified one
- You will see how a few well timed interventions by Stalin could set off an uncontrolled explosion in a disordered system
Who it is for
- History student weighing Stalin's personal role against structures
- Reader of Soviet history unsatisfied by simple villain stories
- Political scientist studying how organisations turn on themselves
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