- Paperback
- Publisher: Arrow
- ISBN-10: 0099844508
- ISBN-13: 978-0099844501
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 5,177,800 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Product Description
This reassessment uses newly available material to give breadth and depth to a history of the momentous years between 1934 and 1939 when millions of people died in Stalin's purges.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From the Back Cover
'I know of no work of modern history to which it can be compared. Robert Conquest deserves the thanks of humanity. The Great Terror is a major contribution to civilisation; and I urge anyone who considers themselves civilised, or even capable of becoming so, to read this mighty and dreadful, fervent and controlled, just and merciless, rolling and detailed, timely and prophetic and - above all - most necessary book.' Bernard Levin
When The Great Terror was first published, it was universally acclaimed as one of the most important books ever written about the Soviet Union. Now, in this revised and updated edition, Robert Conquest uses fresh and dramatic material, which has only recently become available, to give further depth and breadth to his history of the momentous years between 1934 and 1939 when millions died in Stalin's purges. His reassessment of its significance confirms the Terror as one of the most tragic and far-reaching human and political issues of our time.
Brought to new reader's attention again recently via Martin Amis's Koba the Dread, Conquest's stunning work again proves itself to be - in Levin's words - a 'most necessary book.'
'When you read Conquest, you feel him very close to us. He writes with pain about the sufferings of the Russian people under the heel of despotism.' Literaturnaya Gazeta, Moscow
'Brillian. Mr Conquest, our greatest Kremlin elucidator, has fitted together the dread story. Never has it been told with such insight into motive and relationship. Not only an odyssey of madness, tragedy, sadism, but a work of scholarship and literary craftsmanship.' Harrison E. Salisbury. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
12 of 25 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Many of Conquest's arguments are a little outdated, but this book is a good Aunt Sally to be knocked down by further reading. Read this book alongside Robert Thurston's "Life and Terror in Stalin's Russia" and you will have a fair coverage of the debate about the causes of the Great Terror.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
2 reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Better than the "Reassessment" edition!
11 Nov 2010
Format:Paperback
One of the astonishing things about the opening of the Soviet Archives is just how accurate Robert Conquest's account of Stalin's purges and the horrors of the GULag system of slave labor and mass murder.
Conquest put out a "Reassessment" in the wake of the fall of the Soviet Union wherein even he states his own surprise at how accurate his sources had been in the 1960s when all he had to work from were books by the few who had survived and managed to flee West and write books as well as interviews with survivors and that treasure trove of knowledge about the Soviet Union, the "Samizdat", the underground printing movement that circulated throughout the post-Stalin period and which revealed the truth about many, many things the regime tried to keep secret.
The "Reassessment" is an almost exactly duplicate of this, original version. The only substantial difference is that, in this version, a separate chapter was given to ennumerating Stalin's victims. In the new edition, Conquest eliminates that chapter and subsumes it into another. Thus where the statistical information on Stalin's victims was once easily accessisible, it's now burried in the text. Why, exactly, Conquest chose to do this is beyond me.
he should have stuck with making the few corrections, almost always minor, that the opening of the archives revealed. But publishers like repackaging "old" books: the money's already invested in the it, thus with no new advance to the author, repackaging a 30 or 40 year old book is very profitable. No wonder the publisher wanted some word to imply an "improved" book rather than a simple reprint noting the largely cosmetic changes in the text.
So, if you can, try to grab a copy of this version. You can always read the other one to compare and, I believe you'll see that the title "Reassessment" is unwarranted, or, at least overrated.
Conquest put out a "Reassessment" in the wake of the fall of the Soviet Union wherein even he states his own surprise at how accurate his sources had been in the 1960s when all he had to work from were books by the few who had survived and managed to flee West and write books as well as interviews with survivors and that treasure trove of knowledge about the Soviet Union, the "Samizdat", the underground printing movement that circulated throughout the post-Stalin period and which revealed the truth about many, many things the regime tried to keep secret.
The "Reassessment" is an almost exactly duplicate of this, original version. The only substantial difference is that, in this version, a separate chapter was given to ennumerating Stalin's victims. In the new edition, Conquest eliminates that chapter and subsumes it into another. Thus where the statistical information on Stalin's victims was once easily accessisible, it's now burried in the text. Why, exactly, Conquest chose to do this is beyond me.
he should have stuck with making the few corrections, almost always minor, that the opening of the archives revealed. But publishers like repackaging "old" books: the money's already invested in the it, thus with no new advance to the author, repackaging a 30 or 40 year old book is very profitable. No wonder the publisher wanted some word to imply an "improved" book rather than a simple reprint noting the largely cosmetic changes in the text.
So, if you can, try to grab a copy of this version. You can always read the other one to compare and, I believe you'll see that the title "Reassessment" is unwarranted, or, at least overrated.
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Not bad for not having all the classified Russian documents
18 Sep 2004
Format:Paperback
This book was written before the fall of the Soviet Union. Conquest is a well known Russian historian and writes a well researched book, for the sources that were available to him at the time. Since the fall, he has updated his work with A Reassessment. Don't read the outdated infor in this book, check out the Reassessed version.
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