Great Purge

Pravda was a daily newspaper that tried to prove labor activism and expose the working conditions in Russian factories. The first paper of Pravda was issued on May 5, 1912 in St. Petersburg by the Bolshevik's of the Russian Social Democratic Party. The paper was closed eight times in the first two years and every time it closed, the Bolsheviks reopened it under a new name "Worker's Truth," etc. Pravda represents Squealer in the book Animal Farm because Squealer tells lies to try to get everybody…

Nikita Khrushchev, sought to “De-Stalinise” Russia by rejecting ‘the Stalin cult,’ to attempt to reform Russian government and society. However, questions arise on whether Khrushchev’s reforms were executed effectively due to limited changes being made during his regime. As a result, some historians have argued that the Stalinist regime was continued by the Soviets. De- Stalinisation was ‘doomed to failure, because the system’s inherent instability meant that radical changes, whether in the…

Both Stalin and Hitler employed the use of violence during their political leadership, most prominently through the establishment of concentration camps. Stalin viewed many people in the Soviet Union to be his enemy. The fate of these people was to be either killed or sent to forced labor camps, known as the Gulags, due to a variety of reasons. Political leaders, wealthier peasants (known as kulaks), criminals of all types, and essentially anyone suspected of opposing Stalin’s rule were sent…

Over the 30 years of Joseph Stalin’s dictatorship, the estimated death toll ranged from 28 to 40 million people, whom died from a variety of things, such as famine, executions, and a very large war. Stalin assumed autocratic rule of the Soviet Union in 1924 following the death of Lenin. Stalin made a variety of reforms, but his main focus was on the economic issues that was occurring in the communist country at the time. Stalin made his economic reforms solely to make the most amount of money…

repercussions of Joseph Stalin’s reign during World War II. From around 1941 to the early 1950’s they fell victim to three obstacles: Stalin’s purges, the NKVD in labor camps, and education. All three were significant obstacles because they caused political and social impacts, but none were as detrimental as the NKVD and the labor camps. Stalin sent NKVD officers to purge homes, evacuate or arrest the “fascist scum”, the term for those who did not agree with Stalin, and board them onto cattle…

Fear and terror are common tactics used against people in order to control them. By using terror to incite fear in people states are given the ability to control the actions and reactions and subdue or influence the general public. This Essay provides a critical analysis into State Terror using the historical example of Stalin and Soviet Russia in 1922. By looking at this example of Joseph Stalin and Soviet Russia the impacts and outcomes of state terrorism can be fully analysed and the above…

Joseph Stalin, a prominent member of the Bolshevik party, and later one of the most important men in the twentieth century, took control of the Soviet Union after the death of Vladimir Lenin. From the beginning Stalin, had a clear vision of the direction the Soviet Union had to take. To Stalin, the answer to strengthen Russia was rapid industrialization. After all, Marxist theory ordained that a socialist society must be highly industrialized with an overwhelming preponderance of workers.…

consequences. However, Machiavelli believes that a prince must, “avoid those things which will make him hated,” at all costs (Machiavelli 112). Obviously, Stalin was hated by most, but he dealt with it by getting rid of those who hated him. He had “purges” and hired secret police to kill all the “anti-soviets” or anyone who despised him. He is killing and exiling all of his haters to make sure all the people who he is ruling do not hate him. He ends up killing millions and millions of people…

live based on the “Seven Commandments” that the whole farm had come up with (Orwell, 25). Similarly, Stalin had a major purge on those who he felt weren 't capable of supporting the country or Stalin himself. His “mass execution of Polish nationals” along with the twenty million civilians that were sent to labor camps, where many died, are now known as purges (Gracheva). These purges were very harsh on those being killed, and those in labor camps that survived did not leave the camps very strong…

Eugenia Ginzburg’s was an active communist member who found herself struggling to preserve her physical being and dignity while caught on the wrong side of the Great Terror. Her “counter political” correspondence would lead to arrest, as authorities twisted and exaggerated a few counter political articles into proof of Trotskyist terrorism. These claims immediately thrust her into a spiral of events that dramatically altered the course of her life would challenge the base of her moral ideology…