Stalin's Great Terror

This chapter of Russian History with Dr.Brovkin focuses on the tragic events from 1935 right after Kirov murder to 1938, i.e. the period of the Great Terror when close to a million persons were executed according to the latest archival research and 5 million people processed by the NKVD into their camps. I discuss the unfolding of this drama stage after stage, from show trials, to purge of the NKVD, the army and finally the party leadership. One of the key questions is why? I do have my interpretation and it it not focused on Marxism, or Communism, as most others.
Dr. Brovkin is a Russian-American historian, author of Russia After Lenin and other books, now retired, former Professor of Soviet History at Harvard University.

[МарияЗырянова-эь]

Thank you for the video!!! I was your student in the Urals State University 2001-2005. I remember your lessons!

[EdMcF]

My 'favourite' story of the purges is of an Armenian priest with a good memory who named as his co-conspirators everyone he had buried in the past three years.

[DressyCrooner]

Thank you for these videos Mr. Brovkin. Your work helped me see the truth about the Bolsheviks and leave a Trotskyist cult I was a member of. It is good to see the truth about Bolshevik oppression in the years before Stalin and likewise after.

[zachrivers]

Thank you for shedding light on what remains shrouded in mystery and western misinformation 👍

[anhourofhonourforanhonesth]

So definitely I am not alone when I explained Stalin's style of power play, as well as its politics, with The Prince of Machiavelli, as its best and most accomplished practical case in the extents of strategies that have been pursued to accomplish it, and the logic behind them. Every strategy, as amoral or immoral that it may be, is justified - as the Machiavelli tenet stands - : murder, intrigue, deception, falsification, and so on, if it serves to the purpose alone of letting the Prince to seize, keep and consolidate its power. Definitely Stalin is the ultimate Machiavelli Prince, his most well successful apprentice history have a record of. Just I'm not completely sure if Machiavelli would have stand the level of utter atrocities and cruelty that Stalin's NKVD ultimately carried out to accomplish this goal. When Machiavelli's idols like Cesare Borgia were in their place and praised by him for the same strategies they carried out, a such magnitude of cruelty for Prince's sakes perhaps was not reached yet.

[carlosferreira]

For me the Great Terror is most bizarre event in history! How was it possible - especially considering the butchering of the army officers - that nobody resisted the onslaught??

[hre]

On what basis was Trotsky labelled a fascist? I know it was propaganda but what were the fascist charges levied against him?

[eleanorkett]

I've been hearing that the latest research - as per Stephen Kotkin's latest presentation of the subject - has revealed that the impact of Stalin's military purges on military performance has been exaggerated. How do you respond to that?

[Putins_shirt]

"I know that after my death a pile of rubbish will be heaped on my grave, but the wind of History will sooner or later sweep it away without mercy."

Great Father of Nations, as Putin recently referred to the Man of Steel, was perhaps the greatest democratarian in Russian history.
He certainly made a lot of enemies in the Party in his efforts to wrest it from the government, and relegate it to an ancillary govt branch that would be in charge of educating and socializing and mobilizing the masses in Marxist ideology. Stalin, the last real socialist in the USSR, succeeded by a neoliberal reformist, the traitor Khrushchev, who destroyed Russia's agricultural industry, & overturned the power of the masses and reduced the govt to his political clique. The USSR never revived after Stalin's death; it was all downhill economically, socially and politically. But Stalin lives on in the hearts of millions, no matter how much he is smeared and vilified.

[ellatinsley]

Great video! I read that Molotov regarded the Great Terror as 'necessary'. What are your thoughts on this?