Law And Terror In Stalin's Russia

The brooding figure of Joseph Stalin hovered over communist power in Russia for most of its 74 years. Despite its achievements, his regime practised lawlessness and terror over a wider span of territory and more people than had ever been known before. The question that arises is, how was he able to exercise dictatorial rule over 170 million people in the many countries making up the Soviet Union for so long?Stalin's Russia still has the power to evoke intense interest and the new information gradually being excavated from Soviet archives is forever bringing forth more appalling revelations of the depths to which men can sink.No longer is it widely believed that Stalin deviated from Lenin's model but, as John Hostettler shows, terror was inherent in the whole of Lenin's revolutionary career. In vivid detail the author plots the interaction of Marxist theory with the culturally backward legacy of autocratic Tsarist Russia that was played out in the minds of Lenin, Stalin and the other Bolshevik leaders.What is also established is that not only was law often ignored but was also twisted and used as a facade to enhance and legitimize appalling inhumanity. We see the growth of slave labour and the Gulag, of forced industrialization, and the almost unbelievable horrors of collectivization. The effects of the Great Terror in liquidating the Bolshevik Old Guard and millions of ordinary people caught up in the web of accusation, counter-accusation and the application to the whole Soviet empire of doublespeak are graphically illustrated.Finally, Hostettler questions whether a different road could have been taken after the Bolshevik Revolution had succeeded. He concludes that Stalin's Russia signals a warning against taking a wrong path in seeking human liberty and equality. Revolutionary law is no law at all and is no substitute for the rule of law.