The Voices of the Dead: Stalin's Great Terror in the 1930s by Hiroaki Kuromiya (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 567 'Compromise with the Dictatorship?'), Djokic then charts the growing opposition movement to the king's suspension of democratic life (Chapter 4, 'The Serb-Croat Opposition'). In these chapters it ismade clear that the dictatorship cannot and should not be interpreted as an exclusively Serbian imposition, and that the anti-dictatorship opposition included both Serbian and Croatian components. In this way, Djokic dissolves homogeneous national blocks intomultilayered and ever-changing political formations, and it is in these formations, he contends, thatwe should seek for an explanation of the failure ofYugoslav integration. Chapter 5, 'The 1939Agreement', deals with the 'Cvetkovic-Macek Agreement' which allowed for the creation of the largely autonomous Croatian Banovina within Yugoslavia, and Chapter 6, 'The Aftermath', looks at how this concession led to counter claims throughout the country, especially in Serbia. There is a lot of information in this book. The devil is in the detail, and Djokic has a remarkable skill for narrating what is often a convoluted tale, and for discerning patterns and historical meaning inwhat may appear to be no more than a morass of political chicanery. A particularly nice touch is the repeated references to train journeys made by politicians of various party colour across the country, especially to and fromBelgrade and Zagreb. Djokic uses these both as evidence of the energy and commitment invested into finding a workable political system and as a metaphor for the ongoing quest for the elusive Yugoslav compromise. The ultimate failure of thisquest is a reminder that the compromise itself is a counter-factual. One wonders, then, by how far it eluded itspursuers? Was the constant shuttie diplomacy a cause or an effectof the country's instability? If the latter, then the conven tional thesis can stillbe sustained: the politicians were chasing afata morgana, forever out of reach since no compromise would ever be satisfactory to all parties. Djokic is to be applauded for challenging historiographical orthodoxy and by extension challenging his reader to re-think the history of the interwar kingdom. One isalso reminded of theprotean nature of theYugoslav concept. Djokic is continuing an investigation started in thevolume Tugoslavism: Histories ofa Failed Idea (London, 2003). The contributors to that book, which Djokic edited, demonstrated that Yugoslavia meant different things to different people at different times.With thiswork, Djokic shows that the concept has also meant different things to differentpeople at the same time. The failure of interwarYugoslavia lay in the failure to agree on a Yugoslavia acceptable ifnot to all, then at least tomost. Djokic has shown thatwe need not presume the failurewas inevitable. School of History andArchives University CollegeDublin John Paul Newman Kuromiya, Hiroaki. The Voices of the Dead: Stalin's GreatTenor in the1930s.Yale University Press, New Haven, CT and London, 2007. viii + 295 pp. Maps. Illustrations. Notes. Index. ?19.99. When Nikita Khrushchev condemned Stalinist Terror in the 1950s and early 1960s, he chose to focus on the sufferingof theCommunist Party. The 568 SEER, 88, 3, JULY 20IO profile of thepurge victim he created was of a loyal Bolshevik cut down inhis prime. Encouraged by works such as Arthur Koestier's Darkness atNoon, this image of the purge victim has largely persisted inWestern writing on the terror.This is only part of the picture, however, for social groups other than the party elite were also hit hard: those who had already been identified as enemies (kulaks,priests, former nobles) were attacked anew, and anyone with foreign associations became suspect in the years 1936?38. Hiroaki Kuromiya's monograph recounts in detail the ordeal of several dozen of these more 'ordinary' victims. Based on a close reading of the personal files of purge victims located in theKiev archives, The Voices of the Dead tells the stories ofmen and women destroyed by theNKVD during Stalin's Terror. Kuromiya's richwork details (amongst others) the lives of former kulaks charged with anti-kolkhozagitation, ofOrthodox priests accused of spreading anti-Soviet agitation and of former nobles arrested as spies simply because they received money and provisions from relativeswho had fled abroad. Members of ethnicminorities which had their own nation-state outside of the Soviet Union were particularly vulner able. This was perhaps particularly true inUkraine which...