"Enemies of the People" Under the Soviets: A History of Repression and Its Consequences

by Peter Julicher

Overview

The Soviet era was a time of social and economic upheaval in Russia's history as the Bolsheviks strove to build a socialist utopia based on the theories of Karl Marx. Central to this endeavor was the 25-year dictatorship of Josef Stalin, whose determination to make the Soviet Union a dominant industrial and military power created misery on a grand scale and caused the deaths of millions of people. Stalin arbitrarily invoked the specter of "enemies of the people" to destroy anyone who opposed the new socialist order. Millions of Soviet citizens were executed in continuous purges, and millions more perished in the slave labor camps of the Gulag. This book describes the fate of those citizens who were declared enemies of the people not because of what they had done but because of who they were. Stalin's repression not only destroyed the best and brightest, it prevented the development of a civil society in the Soviet Union which would have promoted economic justice, the rule of law and basic human rights for all.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780786496716
Publisher:	McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Publication date:	03/27/2015
Pages:	284
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

The late Peter Julicher taught history at Cranbrook Kingswood School in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, for thirty-two years. He was a graduate of Temple University in Philadelphia, Middlebury College in Vermont and the Pushkin Institute in Moscow. He was affiliated with Greenhills School and lived in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Preface 1

A Note About Russian Names, Words, and Dates 2

Introduction 3

I Capitalists, the Bourgeoisie, Landlords and the Romanovs 11

II Socialist Revolutionaries, Anarchists and Civil War 33

III Russian Orthodoxy and the Soviet State 48

IV Trotsky and Trotskyism 70

V Wreckers and Kulaks 96

VI Old Bolsheviks, Ordinary People and the NKVD 119

VII The Military, Foreign Communists and Repatriated POWs 150

VIII The Creative Intelligentsia, Cosmopolitans and Jews 176

IX The Secret Speech and Its Aftermath 201

Epilogue 210

Chapter Notes 245

Bibliography 258

Index 261