Stalinist Perpetrators on Trial: Scenes from the Great Terror in Soviet Ukraine

8vo, hardcover in dj, 304pp. In Stalinist Perpetrators on Trial, Lynne Viola, a professor of history at the University of Toronto, recounts statistics that still defy belief . Viola writes [in] words with renewed significance in today's politically volatile, polarized climate. (LA Review of Books) Fascinating and compact . Viola's pioneering study helps us understand Soviet perpetrators in the particular. But it also provides crucial lessons about authoritarianism in general and the violence of the security forces that protect it. (Norman M. Naimark, The Soviet and Post-Soviet Review) A research tour de force from one of the leading historians of Stalinism, shedding remarkable new light on what happened at the end of the Great Purges. A 'must read' for scholars and students of the Soviet period. (Sheila Fitzpatrick, author of Everyday Stalinism) This book is exceptional among the voluminous scholarship on Stalin's terror. Lynne Viola has written a fascinating and valuable work. The voices of those hangmen who ultimately became victims of the terror, as well as those they arrested, provide a stark picture of the Great Terror. The author explores the banality of evil in the Stalinist context: from the daily routine of torture and murder emerges the familiar figure of the self-righteous criminal. (Oleg V. Khlevniuk, author of Stalin: New Biography of a Dictator) Stalinist Perpetrators draws back the curtain on how the Stalinist Terror actually operated?not just how the state ordered it, but how it happened in provincial offices and prison cells. Her subject is the 'purge of the purgers,' the trial and often execution of the men responsible for the Terror. The nature of her source material?voluminous case files on these accused individuals?allows her to reconstruct the process and practices of the Stalinist Terror, including the beatings and torture, at the level of individuals, both in Kyiv and in more mundane provincial cities. (Peter Holquist, author of Making War, Forging Revolution: Russia's Continuum of Crisis, 1914-1921) The Stalinist purges of the late 1930s stand as one of the most horrific episodes of state terror in the twentieth century. Yet the perpetrators of those crimes have remained anonymous for many decades, protected mainly by the rules of historical access in Russia. Now, Lynne Viola, working in Ukrainian archives, provides the first remarkable study of the perpetrators. In this groundbreaking book, we see for the first time who these individuals were, their backgrounds, what brought them to their position of life and death decisions, what life was like for them and their families during such a time. Most important, Viola examines with keen and dispassionate acumen how Stalin's murderers justified the torture and killing of hundreds of thousands of their fellow citizens. This is a disturbing book, and one that needs to be read. (David Shearer, author of Stalin and the Lubianka: A Documentary History of the Political Police and Security Organs in the Soviet Union, 1922-1953)