Goldman, Wendy Z. Terror and Democracy in the Age of Stalin: The Social Dynamics of Terror.

Goldman, Wendy Z. Terror and Democracy in the Age of Stalin: The Social Dynamics of Terror. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

Wendy Goldman’s agenda is to examine how the implementation of the Great Terror was facilitated by Soviet social institutions, such as professional unions, or, to put it in another way, how the social roles that people occupied made them engage in accusing and attacking each other, thus bringing an additional momentum to the whirlpool of the Stalinist repression. She starts (Chapter 1) with the analysis of social crises of the Soviet industrialization which, in a way, flared up tensions between different social and professional groups in the Soviet society (new plans and demands, lack of housing, food shortages). She then explores how the Great Terror was staged (chapter 2), focusing on the rhetoric of vigilance which became the language to express these social tensions. During the show trial processes, she argues, common workers learned how to use this rhetoric, which then became a major weapon to attack each other and the managerial staff during the Great Terror. In chapter 3, Goldman looks at how the Soviet leadership mobilized popular support for the Great Purge by using rhetoric of enemy advance and by appealing to workers’ initiative in exterminating the “internal threat.” She then focuses on the Soviet campaign for “democratization” in professional unions, which became a venue for dissatisfied workers to apply the newly learned skills in using accusatory rhetoric to their work environment. In chapter 5 and 6 Goldman analyzes specific cases when people were accused at work meetings, arguing that “by 1938, ‘unmasking’ had developed an internal, self-generating organizational dynamic.” (247)