The Great Terror

Robert Conquest's fascinating new book is the first comprehensive study of the Russian purges in the 1930s, during which Stalin and his NKVD chiefs subjected to country and party to an example to repression, in which reach their public climax in the notorious Confession Trials. After tracing the extra ordinary background of the Soviet Communist Party and its individual leaders in struggles preceding Stalin's victory, Mr conquest examines the dark episode of Kirov's murder, which is being called "the crime of the century". He goes on to describe the manoeuvers that followed it, culminating in the trial of August 1936, when the first time a number of Stalin's rivals came forward choose one to make false confessions of terrorism.