The Voices of the Dead
Subtitle: Stalin's Great Terror in the 1930s
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: December 24, 2007
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 304
ISBN-13: 9780300123890
Subjects: European history: from c 1900 -; Political oppression & persecution; Inter-war period, 1918-1939; Political Terrorism; Russia - History - 1917 To 1991; History; History - General History; History: World; Former Soviet Union, USSR (Europe); Europe - Russia & the Former Soviet Union; History / Soviet Union; Political Freedom & Security - Civil Rights; Soviet Union; Case studies; Political persecution; State-sponsored terrorism; Victims of state-sponsored terrorism
Description: "Swept up in the maelstrom of Stalin's Great Terror of 1937-38, nearly one million people died. Most were ordinary citizens who left no records and, as a result, have been completely forgotten. This book is the first to attempt to retrieve their stories and reconstruct their lives, drawing upon recently declassified archives of the former Soviet Secret Police in Kiev. Hircaki Kuromiya uncovers the hushed voices of the condemned and chronicles the lives of dozens of individuals who shared the same dehumanising fate-falsely arrested, executed and dumped in mass graves." "Kuromiya investigates the truth behind the fabricated records, filling in at least some of the details of the lives and deaths of ballerinas, priests, beggars, teachers, peasants, workers, soldiers, pensioners, homemakers, fugitives, peddlers, ethnic Russians, Ukrainians, Poles, Germans, Koreans, Jews and others. In recounting the extraordinary stories gleaned from the secret files, Kuromiya not only commemorates the dead and forgotten but also sheds new light on Soviet society and provides original insights into the enigma of Stalinist terror."--Jacket.