The Road To Terror In The 1930's

Soviet state violence, dating back to the founding of the regime, was employed as a tool to construct an aesthetic harmonious society. “[Soviets believed that the removal of social aliens would not only eradicate enemies of the Soviet regime but would purify society and move the country toward communism. Viewed from this perspective, Stalinist terror was not a consequence of Russian backwardness or Stalin’s vindictiveness, but was instead an integral means by which Soviet leaders pursued their vision of an ideal society” (Holquist, 129). The Great Terror of the 1930s caused millions of people to be detained, arrested, killed, or sent to prison or camps accused of being “enemies of the people.” In fact, where did the terror originate? One explanation was Sergei Kirov, a Leningrad Party secretary and Politburo member’s, …show more content…
The Road to Terror: Stalin and the Self-Destruction of the Bolsheviks, 1932-1939 by J. Arch Getty and Oleg V. Naumov was the primary source document used along with the secondary sources, Peasant Rebels Under Stalin by Lynne Viola, Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s by Sheila Fitzpatrick, Cultivating the Masses by David L. Hoffman, Inventing the Enemy by Wendy Z. Goldman, and Policing Stalin’s Socialism by David R. Shearer to conclude the origins of terror. In other words, the origins of terror were constructed from inside the Communist Party after the release of the Riutin Platform in 1932. However, one must understand there are many possibilities to the origins of terror. Authors who approached the topic of terror from the perspective of the state often concluded what the origins of terror were. On the other hand, authors whose methodological scheme looked at terror from the bottom up aspect often provided little to no answer to the origins of