Laboratories of Terror: The Final Act of Stalin's Great Purge in Soviet Ukraine

Laboratories of Terror examines the final chapter of Stalin's Great Terror in Soviet Ukraine, revealing the mechanics and logistics of the terror at the local level through the criminal files of mid-level NKVD operatives.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 240 pages
Publication date: 07 February 2023
Publisher: Oxford University Press Inc

Laboratories of Terror delves into the final chapter of Stalin's Great Terror in Soviet Ukraine. In November 1938, the Communist Party Central Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR suspended mass operations in repression, leading to the release of numerous purge victims whose cases remained incomplete. Simultaneously, hundreds of NKVD operatives responsible for the Great Terror were scapegoated and arrested. Drawing upon materials from the largely closed archives of the Soviet security police, this collection of essays by an international team of researchers sheds light on the previously opaque world of the NKVD perpetrators. It explores the mechanics and logistics of the terror at the local level by examining the criminal files of a series of mid-level NKVD operatives from across Ukraine. The result provides fresh perspectives on Stalin's central role in the architecture of the terror and the NKVD perpetrators' agency in implementing one of the most horrific episodes of twentieth-century mass violence.

Weight: 352g
Dimension: 235 x 157 x 18 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780197647554