The Great Terror

A Reassessment

By: Robert Conquest

Narrated by: Frederick Davidson

Length: 30 hrs and 34 mins

Publisher's summary

The definitive work on Stalin's purges, The Great Terror was universally acclaimed when it first appeared in 1968. While the original volume had relied heavily on unofficial sources, later developments within the Soviet Union provided an avalanche of new material, which Conquest has mined to write this revised and updated edition of his classic work.

Under the light of fresh evidence, it is remarkable how many of Conquest's most disturbing conclusions have been verified. Many details have also been added, including hitherto secret information on the three great "Moscow Trials", the purge of writers and other members of the intelligentsia, life in the labor camps, and many other key matters.

Both a leading Sovietologist and a highly respected poet, Conquest blends profound research with evocative prose to create a compelling and eloquent chronicle of one of the 20th century's most tragic events.

©1990 Robert Conquest (P)1992 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Critic reviews

"[A] terrifying record from the best of all commentators on Stalin's USSR." ( Star-Ledger, Newark)
"[A] broad, well-documented portrayal....This remains an essential source." ( Library Journal)

Brilliant in every way

What made the experience of listening to The Great Terror the most enjoyable?

Conquest's combination of research and writing are unsurpassed.

What about Frederick Davidson’s performance did you like?

Terrific reader, Davidson is one of the greats. His slightly acerbic, sardonic tone was perfect for this important work.

Continuation

Excellent on all accounts including the narration. I only wish the tile from the same author covering the manufacturer Ukrainian famine, which is referenced in this book at least 3 times, were available from audible.

And if it were so I’d recommend the same narrator be used!

Background noise ruined it for me

While I love the narrator's voice, when he pauses another voice bleeds through into the background. This was, for me, distracting to the point of frustration.

I am very interested in the topic, having yet to find an all around satisfying audiobook on the subject.

Stalin! Man of the century...

At least according to a recent poll taken by a Russian TV game show. I scratch my head in wonder. Have they no idea who this man was? Is there a single family in Russia today that remains untouched by this cold-blooded murderer?

Stalin undoubtedly deserves no less scrutiny than Hitler and Mao. A history of the 20th Century would be incomplete without this subject.

Very informative

overall good narration, however there was background noises and voices occasionally. also I understand why he did it, but voicing all of the soviet persons in the book as monotone bureaucrats belays any sense of their humanity, limited as it was.

Compelling and Devestating

It's easy to dismiss cold war mindset as "unreasoning paranoia" on the part of Mr. and Mrs. Middle America and opportunistic politicians like Joe McCarthy, but there was a reason why every President from Truman through Reagan regarded the Soviet Union with great suspicion, and that was its own demonstrated cruelty to its own people. Stalin's successors, to their credit, did much to dismantle the terror machine that Stalin and Lenin built, but its shadow still looms over the Russians today.

5/5

towards the middle even the narrator gets bogged down in the kafkaesque redundancy and mispronounces a fair amount of words

I can make lists too

I appreciate the original research, but if this book was 22 hours of reading lists of names of people shot, it would be more engaging.

Interesting history. Dull narrator.

Good information about a horrible time in history. The narrator’s robot like way of portraying the Russian voices was terrible.

Stalin's Gangster State

It is hard for anyone who has grown up in fortunate circumstances in the West to grasp on a gut level the full horror of the Soviet Union under Stalin. This book lays bare in excruciating detail the workings of an unscrupulous leader who was crude, vicious, vile and ruthless. Unfortunately, he was also clever and resourceful enough to achieve near absolute power in the Soviet Union by 1938. Stalin and those he advanced in the Communist Party knew no bounds. He ordered the murders of former close associates; directed his secret police to extract false confessions from prisoners by torture in order to persecute them in “show trials” or to justify their summary execution after review by a corrupted kangaroo court. On a broader scale his program in the early ‘30s to collectivize agriculture led to massive famines, terrorist shootings and deportations that caused the deaths of millions. Later in the ‘30s the arbitrary arrests and forced confessions of his purges and campaigns against so-called “diversionists, spies, and Trotskyites” led to prison and death for further millions in the now infamous “archipelago” of labor camps.

The aim in all this was two-fold: eliminate all possible rivals to Stalin for supreme power in the Soviet Union and to force the public into compliance with directives from above through a regime of terror. Apparently, Stalin as well as others in the top echelons of the Bolshevik Party justified these methods to themselves, at least in part, as necessary for the greater good of moving society toward the ideal state envisioned by Marxist-Leninist theory. A criminal clique with vast political power who can justify their murders and cruelties by means of an extremist creed that squelches all qualms of conscience or moral restraint is a dangerous and fearful prospect. That certainly was the case in the Soviet Union from the 1930’s until Stalin’s death in 1953.

That said, this book reads more like an encyclopedia or a catalogue of crimes rather than a vivid account of individual horror stories. It does a good job of describing and documenting the overall scope of the horrors perpetrated by the Stalin regime and to some extent continued by his successors. It is not, however, great literature in the sense of graphically depicting life under these regimes. “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” does that far better.