Interview with Stalin Expert Prof. Arch Getty

Arch Getty interviewed by James Harris

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Stalin & The Great Terror

Arch Getty, UCLA.
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James Harris, University of Leeds, is currently in the process of bringing many of the world's leading experts on The Terror to a conference in Leeds, this August (2010). The conference website is developing as we write and can be seen at www.36to38.com.

View free resources and further details related to the study of this topic.

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Stalin's Terror

Now that THF has a substantial collection of podcasts on Soviet history, I wanted to canvas the opinion of our followers on a question of particular interest to me. To what extent to you think that fear helps explain the descent into dictatorship and terror, 1921-1938? I'm thinking of all sorts of fears: fear of invasion, fear of oppositionists, of the hostility of the peasantry and workers, of the disloyalty of bourgeois specialists. It's a way of thinking beyond cliches about Stalin as motivated solely by a lust for power, and Bolshevism as an ideology of violence. In connection with this, let me suggest that you keep your eye on the link in the title--it brings you to the website of a conference I'm organising for this summer. In the coming months it should have a growing range of resources for teachers, students and others interested in Stalin's Terror.

James Harris
University of Leeds