A major work of original historical research, 1937 provides a detailed and penetrating analysis of the causes and consequences of Stalin’s purges.
The author, an eminent Russian Marxist historian, argues that it is impossible to understand these tragic events apart from Stalin’s determination to wipe out all vestiges of the socialist opposition to his regime, above all, that associated with Leon Trotsky.
This is the first major study by a Russian Marxist historian of the most tragic and fateful year in the history of the Soviet Union. With an encyclopedic knowledge of Soviet source material, including archival documents released after the fall of the USSR, Vadim Rogovin presents a detailed and penetrating analysis of the causes, impact and consequences of Stalin’s purges. He demonstrates that the principal function of the terror was the physical annihilation of the substantial socialist opposition to Stalin’s bureaucratic regime.
Vadim Z. Rogovin (1937-1998) wrote about social inequality in the USSR and its implications for social justice, labor productivity, and social morality in Soviet society. Gaining access to Left Opposition writings in the 1960s and 1970s, he became convinced of the correctness of Leon Trotsky’s opposition to Stalin. In the 1990s, he wrote a seven-volume series on the rise of Stalinism and the history of the socialist-based opposition to Stalin’s rule.
In the late 1980s, he became an outspoken critic of Mikhail Gorbachev’s pro-market economic reforms and their negative impact on the living standards of the broad mass of the population. His articles in the popular Soviet press about the positions of the Left Opposition on major questions of politics and policy were widely read.