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Title: HISTORY AS SURREALISM
Review: When I read the first edition of this book back during the Cold War, it was difficult to believe the quality of scholarship and research effort that Conquest demonstrated throughout this book, written while the KGB was still running amok. What most general histories dismissed with a few sentences or paragraphs as "millions died or were imprisoned", Conquest gave us the names, the chronology, and the results of Stalin's paranoid Reign of Terror. Now that the archives have become more accessible, Conquest is able to update his work and further illuminate this darkest period of Russian (and perhaps world) history. ANYTHING written by Conquest is worth reading if you want to understand the workings of 20th century Soviet politics and society.
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