The Accused

Book excerpt: First published in 1951, this is both a personal narrative and forensic analysis of the methods employed by Stalin and the G.P.U. during the Great Purge from the middle of 1936 to the end of 1938. It is the exploration of the systematic imprisonment, interrogation and extraction of false confessions from millions of people that is extraordinary. Weissberg explains how victims of the state police were forced to make confessions incriminating not only themselves but also co-conspirators. This practice was aimed at destroying the relations of trust between those who were responsible for the Russian revolution. Those who were not killed in camps in the Soviet Arctic were divided and conquered. Hence, the central thesis in the book is that the Russian revolution and communism in the Soviet Union were irrevocably destroyed and ended in the 1930s during the terror of the Stalinist purges. A remarkable and little known contribution to our understanding of the events in the Soviet Union.