Stalinist Perpetrators on Trial. Scenes from the Great Terror in Soviet Ukraine. By Lynne Viola

Abstract

Stalinist Perpetrators on Trial presents case studies from Ukraine of Soviet internal security police (NKVD) officers, who were brought to heel there during the “capstone stage” of the Great Terror of 1937-1938. By December 1938, NKVD operatives found themselves accused by Stalin of violating socialist legality during the Terror operations. These perpetrators of state-ordered violence themselves became targets of Stalin’s wonted “scapegoating at times of radical policy reversal” (4). Arrest, interrogation, and closed trials followed. Serendipitous access to recently-opened security police archives in Ukraine enabled Lynne Viola to delve into “the bowels” of the Soviet regime, still closed in Russia, to examine the resulting investigative files of NKVD perpetrators in Ukraine (6). Valuable for specialists, at 179 pages of text, Stalinist Perpetrators is also an exemplary monograph for students. A master historian, Viola writes with Chekhovian diagnostic precision. She ensures the book’s accessibility by including a chronology, map of Ukraine, glossary of terms specific to Soviet history, photographs of the perpetrators, and a note on usage. Her Introduction and first chapter provide a concise overview of the history of the Great Terror as a “hallmark of Stalinism” (5) and of the NKVD as its institutional vehicle.