The Gulag was a system of forced labor camps in the Soviet Union. The word Gulag originally referred only to the division of the Soviet secret police that was in charge of running the forced labor camps from the 1930s to the early 1950s during Joseph Stalin's rule, but in English literature the term is popularly used for the system of forced labor throughout the Soviet era. The abbreviation GULAG (ГУЛАГ) stands for "Гла́вное Управле́ние исправи́тельно-трудовы́х ЛАГере́й", but the full official name of the agency changed several times.
Stalinism is the totalitarian means of governing and Marxist–Leninist policies implemented in the Soviet Union (USSR) from 1927 to 1953 by dictator Joseph Stalin. Stalin had previously made a career as a gangster and robber, working to fund revolutionary activities, before eventually becoming General Secretary of the Soviet Union. Stalinism included the creation of a one man totalitarian police state, rapid industrialization, the theory of socialism in one country, forced collectivization of agriculture, intensification of class conflict, a cult of personality, and subordination of the interests of foreign communist parties to those of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, which Stalinism deemed the leading vanguard party of communist revolution at the time. After Stalin's death and the Khrushchev Thaw, a period of de-Stalinization began in the 1950s and 1960s, which caused the influence of Stalin's ideology to begin to wane in the USSR.
George Robert Acworth Conquest was a British-American historian, poet, and novelist. He was briefly a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain but later wrote several books against Communism.
Wrecking was a crime specified in the criminal code of the Soviet Union in the Stalin era. It is often translated as "sabotage"; however, "wrecking", "diversionist acts", and "counter-revolutionary sabotage" were distinct sub-articles of Article 58, and the meaning of "wrecking" is closer to "undermining".
Viktor Andriyovych Kravchenko was a Ukrainian-born Soviet defector, known for writing the best-selling book I Chose Freedom, published in 1946, about the realities of life in the Soviet Union.
The Information Research Department (IRD) was a secret Cold War propaganda department of the British Foreign Office, created to publish anti-communist propaganda, including black propaganda, provide support and information to anti-communist politicians, academics, and writers, and to use weaponised information, but also disinformation and "fake news", to attack not only its original targets but also certain socialists and anti-colonial movements. Soon after its creation, the IRD broke away from focusing solely on Soviet matters and began to publish pro-colonial propaganda intended to suppress pro-independence revolutions in Asia, Africa, Ireland, and the Middle East. The IRD was heavily involved in the publishing of books, newspapers, leaflets and journals, and even created publishing houses to act as propaganda fronts, such as Ampersand Limited. Operating for 29 years, the IRD is known as the longest-running covert government propaganda department in British history, the largest branch of the Foreign Office, and the first major anglophone propaganda offensive against the USSR since the end of World War II. By the 1970s, the IRD was performing military intelligence tasks for the British Military in Northern Ireland during The Troubles.
Propaganda in the Soviet Union was the practice of state-directed communication aimed at promoting class conflict, proletarian internationalism, the goals of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and the party itself.
The actions by governments of communist states have been subject to criticism across the political spectrum. Communist party rule has been especially criticized by anti-communists and right-wing critics, but also by other socialists such as anarchists, democratic socialists, libertarian socialists, orthodox Marxists, and Trotskyist communists. Ruling communist parties have also been challenged by domestic dissent. According to the critics, rule by communist parties has often led to totalitarianism, political repression, restrictions of human rights, poor economic performance, and cultural and artistic censorship.
Margarete Buber-Neumann was a German writer. As a senior Communist Party of Germany member and Gulag survivor, which turned her into a staunch anti-communist, she wrote the famous memoir Under Two Dictators. It begins with her arrest in Moscow during Joseph Stalin's Great Purge, followed by her imprisonment as a political prisoner in both the Soviet Gulag and the Nazi concentration camp system, after being handed over by the NKVD to the Gestapo during World War II. She was also known for having testified in the so-called "trial of the century" about the Kravchenko Affair in France. In 1980, Buber-Neumann was awarded the Great Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.
Douglas Arnold Hyde was an English political journalist and writer. Originally a communist and the news editor of the Daily Worker, he resigned in 1948 and converted to Catholicism. After his conversion, he gained an international reputation in the late 1940s and 1950s as a prominent and outspoken critic of communism. His most famous publication, I Believed, was a great financial success, created with the help of MI6, with reprints secretly being sponsored by the UK Foreign Office's Information Research Department (IRD) to be used as anti-Soviet propaganda.
Falsifiers of History was a book published by the Soviet Information Bureau, edited and partially re-written by Joseph Stalin, in response to documents made public in January 1948 regarding German–Soviet relations before and after the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact.
Les Lettres Françaises is a French literary publication, founded in 1941 by writers Jacques Decour and Jean Paulhan. Originally a clandestine magazine of the French Resistance in German-occupied territory, it was one of the many publications of the National Front resistance movement. It received contributions from Louis Aragon, François Mauriac, Claude Morgan, Édith Thomas, Georges Limbour, Raymond Queneau and Jean Lescure.
The Fall of Berlin is a 1950 Soviet war and propaganda film, in two parts separated in the manner of a serial. It was produced by Mosfilm Studio and directed by Mikheil Chiaureli, with a script written by Pyotr Pavlenko and a musical score composed by Dmitri Shostakovich. Portraying the history of the Second World War with a focus on a highly positive depiction of the role Soviet leader Joseph Stalin played in the events, it is considered one of the most important manifestations of Stalin's cult of personality, and a noted example of Soviet realism. After De-Stalinization, the film was banned in the Eastern Bloc for several decades.
Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin is a 2010 book by Yale historian Timothy Snyder. It is about mass murders committed before and during World War II in territories controlled by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.
Anatoly "Anatol" Maksimovich Goldberg was a broadcaster and writer who became head of the BBC Russian Service during the Cold War.
David J. Dallin was a Belarusian-American one-time Menshevik leader and later a writer and lecturer on Soviet affairs, who helped Victor Kravchenko defect in the 1940s.
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs, abbreviated as NKVD, was the interior ministry of the Soviet Union from 1934 to 1946. The agency was formed to succeed the Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU) secret police organization, and thus had a monopoly on intelligence and state security functions. The NKVD is known for carrying out political repression and the Great Purge under Joseph Stalin, as well as counterintelligence and other operations on the Eastern Front of World War II. The head of the NKVD was Genrikh Yagoda from 1934 to 1936, Nikolai Yezhov from 1936 to 1938, Lavrentiy Beria from 1938 to 1946, and Sergei Kruglov in 1946.
Estimates of the number of deaths attributable to the Soviet revolutionary and dictator Joseph Stalin vary widely. The scholarly consensus affirms that archival materials declassified in 1991 contain irrefutable data far superior to sources used prior to 1991, such as statements from emigres and other informants.
This is a select bibliography of post-World War II English-language books and journal articles about Stalinism and the Stalinist era of Soviet history. Book entries have references to journal reviews about them when helpful and available. Additional bibliographies can be found in many of the book-length works listed below.
Apocalypse: Stalin is a French three-part television series retracing the meteoric rise of Joseph Stalin and the birth of Stalinist ideology, broadcast on France 2 on November 3, 2015. It brings together known and unpublished period documents relating the major events which led Stalin to become Secretary General of the Soviet Communist Party and to lead the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Archival images have been restored and colorized. The series is directed by Isabelle Clarke and Daniel Costelle.
