The Road To Terror: Twenty-One Book Report
Sources of History Assignment 1
The topic I have chosen to discuss is the third of the Moscow show trails in 1938, also known as the Trial of Twenty-One. I have chosen this topic because I found the sheer corruption and fraud within the court due to Stalin’s paranoia to be extremely interesting. For example Stalin wiped out every member of Lenin’s politburo during the Moscow Trials and reportedly observed the Trial of Twenty-One for a secret chamber within the courtroom. Stalin is intriguing considering most of his crimes were unavailable and hidden for the west for most of the twentieth-century.
What I would like to focus on is key defendant Nikolai Bukharin also known as the ‘star’ defendant. He was the most high profile victim of Stalin’s …show more content…
However the book I used is called The Great Terror: A Reassessment which is a revised version of the original which was published in 1990. This book was published by Oxford University Press and was one of the first books published by a western writer discussing the Great Purge. Another book which I bought on eBay is called The Road to Terror: Stalin and the Self-Destruction of the Bolsheviks, 1932-1939. This is a book by John Arch Getty and Oleg V. Naumov and was published by Yale University Press in 1999. Although yet to look at the book, Getty is an American Historian known for his research on Stalin and Soviet Russian history. My third secondary source is a document I found online on the Marxists Internet Archive (marxists.org) and is titled The Trial of Twenty-One. This document is based on the Trial of Twenty-One and is from New International, Volume IV, Number 4, April 1938, from Tamiment Library microfilm archives. It is transcribed and marked-up by Andrew Pollack. My fourth and final source is a novel by Hungarian-born British novelist Arthur Koestler. Although this novel is fictional it gives an account of an Old Bolshevik who is arrested and put on trial for treason by a government which he helped create. It is based on Nikolai Bukharin. This novel was first published in
The topic I have chosen to discuss is the third of the Moscow show trails in 1938, also known as the Trial of Twenty-One. I have chosen this topic because I found the sheer corruption and fraud within the court due to Stalin’s paranoia to be extremely interesting. For example Stalin wiped out every member of Lenin’s politburo during the Moscow Trials and reportedly observed the Trial of Twenty-One for a secret chamber within the courtroom. Stalin is intriguing considering most of his crimes were unavailable and hidden for the west for most of the twentieth-century.
What I would like to focus on is key defendant Nikolai Bukharin also known as the ‘star’ defendant. He was the most high profile victim of Stalin’s …show more content…
However the book I used is called The Great Terror: A Reassessment which is a revised version of the original which was published in 1990. This book was published by Oxford University Press and was one of the first books published by a western writer discussing the Great Purge. Another book which I bought on eBay is called The Road to Terror: Stalin and the Self-Destruction of the Bolsheviks, 1932-1939. This is a book by John Arch Getty and Oleg V. Naumov and was published by Yale University Press in 1999. Although yet to look at the book, Getty is an American Historian known for his research on Stalin and Soviet Russian history. My third secondary source is a document I found online on the Marxists Internet Archive (marxists.org) and is titled The Trial of Twenty-One. This document is based on the Trial of Twenty-One and is from New International, Volume IV, Number 4, April 1938, from Tamiment Library microfilm archives. It is transcribed and marked-up by Andrew Pollack. My fourth and final source is a novel by Hungarian-born British novelist Arthur Koestler. Although this novel is fictional it gives an account of an Old Bolshevik who is arrested and put on trial for treason by a government which he helped create. It is based on Nikolai Bukharin. This novel was first published in