Jan Waclaw Machajski: A Radical Critic of the Russian Intelligentsia and Socialism Book

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.