J. Arch Getty and Oleg V. Naumov, The Road to Terror: Stalin and the Self- Destruction of the Bolsheviks, 1932-1939. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999. xxvii + 635 pp. $35.00 cloth.

Extract

Until the 1980s, historians of Soviet Russia could be divided into those who subscribed to the totalitarian theory of Soviet history and those who subscribed to a more nuanced view. In his landmark book, Origins of the Great Purges (Cambridge, 1985), J. Arch Getty single-handedly split Russian historians into two new camps: those who were horrified by Getty's work and those who were not. At the root of the controversy was Getty's provocative challenge that historians “rethink Stalinism,” taking into account that one man could in no way be solely responsible for the Terror of the 1930s. Getty turned his attention to provincial party officials, documenting the way the purges assumed their own momentum away from Moscow. In so doing, he seemed to minimize Stalin's role and, according to his critics, Stalin's culpability.