The Unknown Gulag: The Lost World of Stalin's Special Settlements
This scholarly, nuanced work shines light on Stalin's forced resettlement of two million Soviet peasants in the 1930s. A professor of history at the University of Toronto, Viola shows how a combination of repressive central government policies and out-of-control regional officials ruined the lives of so many Soviet citizens by deporting them to these "special settlements" to perform forced labor in the harsh tundra. Viola draws on newly opened archives to paint a complete portrait of the lives of the citizens, labeled "kulaks," or wealthy peasants. Hundreds of thousands died of disease or famine. As one child later remembered: "People began to swell and die" and were buried "without coffins, in collective graves." Viola writes clearly, but she is often understandably focused on larger, political questions, such as the nature of the Soviet state and how much of the repression was ordered by Stalin, and how much was ad hoc and locally ordered. This focus might limit Viola's readership, but this book is likely to become the scholarly standard on one of the 20th century's most horrific crimes. 25 b&w photos.(Apr.)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.