Changes

Finally, in the deluge of the conservative-liberal "Black Books" on Stalinist "totalitarianism," a work which not only meets the highest standards of historical research, but also enables us to grasp the unique social dynamics that culminated in the great purges of the 30s: J. Arch Getty's and Oleg V. Naumov's The Road to Terror.^{<a href="#1">1</a>}&nbsp; Based on the archives of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party which were only recently made available to historians, this book is an extraordinary achievement already at the level of narrative presentation: historical documents (the minutes of the CC sessions, party decrees, private and official letters) are introduced and accompanied by a substantial commentary which displays a theoretical stringency rarely met in historians (suffice it to mention references to Foucault, Bourdieu, and modern linguistics in order to explain the functioning of the ritual of self-accusation in the show trials). Furthermore, the picture that emerges of this period from the late 20ies — the failure of the collectivization of agriculture — to the late 30ies — the sudden stop of the "irrational" terror — is much more complex than the image of Stalin ruthlessly realizing his demoniac project of total domination: the great purges are put in their context, rendered visible as the result of the way the top nomenklatura (mis)perceived their situation. In the eyes of Stalin and his immediate entourage, the Bolshevik rule was unstable, out of control, permanently threatened by the centrifugal forces — far more than the gratuitous sadistic display of power, the Stalinist terror was an implicit admission of the inability to run a country through the "normal" chains of administrative command. In order to properly measure the impact of The Road to Terror, one should start with the paradox of the revolutionary sacrifice.</p>