Robert Conquest’s The Great Terror

Despite my promise to myself that I would not start The Great Terror right away, to give myself a break from the violence and torture in Rape of Nanking … I read over 100 pages of it this morning, doped out on Thera Flu, drinking water, sitting next to the blasting radiator in my kitchen. I had a ton of candles lit around the apartment, it was 5 am, I had just slept 9 hours, unheard of for someone like me who only needs 5 hours at the most, and I felt energized, and “purged” (perhaps an unfortunate word choice, in light of the topic of The Great Terror) – and I felt like starting a new book.

Robert Conquest’s book The Harvest of Sorrow was one of the most haunting upsetting books I had ever read. And his analysis of Stalin in Stalin: Breaker of Nations is RIVETING. Because at the heart of Stalin, at the darkness at the center, is a mystery. What creates a Stalin? Nobody really knows. Conquest discusses that part of Stalin’s staying power had to do with the fact that he avoided clarity. He obscured, he hid his manipulations and maneuverings, he remained separate … and one of the problems was that many people, even those closest to him, did not believe that his intentions (completely obvious, through his ACTIONS) were real. “He can’t REALLY mean what he says … can he? Moderation HAS to come soon … doesn’t it?” But Stalin’s true ambitions and plans were obscured, purposefully. I suppose this is a very extreme example of plausible deniability. Stalin could not be pinned down. And yet his ACTIONS told the whole story. Tragically, many people (in the Soviet Union, and in the rest of the world) did not look at Stalin’s actions and see the monster within. They missed the point – that the entire story was right before their very eyes, Stalin was letting the entire world know what he was about – through his ACTIONS. And yet, his thoughts/motivations/ambitions were hidden behind a smokescreen. That was one of the main things I took from Stalin: Breaker of Nations – but now, with The Great Terror, Conquest goes into that mystique, that mystery, on an even deeper level.

The book is terrifying.

I like it, too, because it is unforgiving. The prose is filled with outrage, Conquest is like a dog with a bone … It’s obvious why this book is looked at as so definitive, so IT. I also like it because of the sense of vindication, woven throughout the writing. Conquest had published this book in the 60s. Much of his conclusions were based on speculations. Conquest was crucified and shunned by academia (many of them who refused to believe that Communism could be so evil, could manifest itself in such butchery – many people STILL refuse to believe this to this day – a shocking example of the “la la la la I CAN’T HEAR YOU” mentality). With glasnost, and the opening up of the archives in the late 1980s, early 1990s, Conquest was able to go back and confirm all of his theories. He was right on every score.

Great book. I’m tearing through it.