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Summary:

Based on chilling and revelatory new archival documents from the Ukrainian secret police archives, Stalinist Perpetrators on Trial illuminates the darkest recesses of Soviet repression -- the interrogation room, the prison cell, and the place of execution -- and sheds new light on those who carried out the Great Terror.
"Between the summer of 1937 and November 1938, the Stalinist regime arrested over 1.5 million people for "counterrevolutionary" and "anti-Soviet" activity and either summarily executed or exiled them to the Gulag. While we now know a great deal about the experience of victims of the Great Terror, we know almost nothing about the lower- and middle-level NKVD, or secret police, cadres who carried out Stalin's murderous policies. Unlike the postwar, public trials of Nazi war criminals, NKVD operatives were tried secretly. And what exactly happened in those courtrooms was unknown until now. In what has been dubbed "the purge of the purgers," almost one thousand NKVD officers were prosecuted by Soviet military courts. Scapegoated for violating Soviet law, they were charged with multiple counts of fabrication of evidence, falsification of interrogation protocols, use of torture to secure "confessions," and murder during pre-trial detention of "suspects"--And many were sentenced to execution themselves. The documentation generated by these trials, including verbatim interrogation records and written confessions signed by perpetrators; testimony by victims, witnesses, and experts; and transcripts of court sessions, provide a glimpse behind the curtains of the terror. It depicts how the terror was implemented, what happened, and who was responsible, demonstrating that orders from above worked in conjunction with a series of situational factors to shape the contours of state violence. Based on chilling and revelatory new archival documents from the Ukrainian secret police archives, Stalinist Perpetrators on Trial illuminates the darkest recesses of Soviet repression--the interrogation room, the prison cell, and the place of execution--and sheds new light on those who carried out the Great Terror."--Provided by publisher.

Table of Contents:

• The Incomplete Civil War and the Great Terror
• A Taste for Terror
• Vania the Terrible
• Under the Dictation of Fleishman
• What Happened in Uman?
• An Excursion to Zaporozhʹe
• Uspenskii's Stooge
• Postscript.

Author/Creator:

Viola, Lynne , author

Languages:

English

Language Notes:

Item content: English

Main Work:

Stalinist perpetrators on trial: scenes from the Great Terror in Soviet Ukraine [by Viola, L.]

Other Related Resources:

Print version: Stalinist perpetrators on trial [by Viola, L.] (New York, NY : Oxford University Press, 2017 — ISBN 9780190674168; LCCN 2017006386; OCLC Number 973733369)

Subjects:

Trials (Political crimes and offenses) — Ukraine

Trials (Political crimes and offenses) — Soviet Union

Political purges — Soviet Union

Political purges — Ukraine

Political persecution — Ukraine

Ukraine — History — 1921-1944

Soviet Union — History — 1925-1953

1921-1953

Political purges

Political persecution

Trials (Political crimes and offenses)

Soviet Union

Ukraine

Genres:

History

General Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 237-249) and index.
Description based on: Online resource; title from digital title page (ProQuest Ebook Central, viewed August 7, 2018).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xviii, 268 pages, 10 unnumbered pages of plates) : illustrations, map

Digital Characteristics:

text file

Call Numbers:

KKY40.P64 V56 2017eeb

ISBNs:

9780190674175 (electronic bk.)
0190674172 (electronic bk.)
9780190674182 (Epub)
0190674180 (Epub)
9780190674168 (hardcover, alk. paper) [Invalid]
0190674164 (hardcover, alkaline paper) [Invalid]

Library of Congress Control Numbers:

2017008661

OCLC Numbers:

973733660