Editions

The Great Terror

The Great Terror

  • Stalin’s Purge of the Thirties

Robert Conquest's The Great Terror is the book that revealed the horrors of Stalin's regime to the West. This definitive fiftieth anniversary edition features a new foreword by Anne Applebaum.

One of the most important books ever written about the Soviet Union, The Great Terror revealed to the West for the first time the true extent and nature Stalin’s purges in the 1930s, in which around a million people were tortured and executed or sent to labour camps on political grounds. Its publication caused a widespread reassessment of Communism itself.

This definitive fiftieth anniversary edition gathers together the wealth of material added by the author in the decades following its first publication and features a new foreword by leading historian Anne Applebaum, explaining the continued relevance of this momentous period of history and of this classic account.

Reviews

  • "More than any other writer, Conquest has been responsible for bringing to the attention of the West the extent of the crimes committed against humanity in the name of Soviet Communism"

    Sunday Times

  • "Stalin was not only the master criminal; he was the master concealer. It took a master detective, and a poet, like Mr Conquest, to unmask him completely"

    New York Times

  • "Monumental"

    Washington Post

  • "A very important book. No one has written about Stalin's terror so deeply"

    Milovan Djilas

More from this Author

About the Author

Robert Conquest

Robert Conquest (1917 – 2015) was one of the twentieth century’s greatest historians of the Soviet Union. Publication of The Great Terror: Stalin’s Purge of the Thirties in 1968 brought him international renown, as did his revelatory later history The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivisation and the Terror-Famine published in 1986. As well as holding academic posts at various universities, including the London School of Economics, Columbia University and Stanford University, he was an acclaimed poet, critic, novelist and translator.

Robert Conquest

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