Mass Terror in the USSR

The Story of One Family

Author(s): George Anchabadze
Editor(s): Giorgi Kldiashvili, Iris Kempe, Matthias Neumann, Robert Orttung, Jeronim Perovic, Lili Di Puppo
Series: Caucasus Analytical Digest (CAD)
Issue: 22
Pages: 13-16
Publisher(s): Center for Security Studies (CSS), ETH Zurich; Jefferson Institute, Washington D.C.; Heinrich Böll Foundation, Tbilisi; Research Centre for East European Studies, University of Bremen
Publication Year: 2010

Much has been written about the mass terror as a system of government in Soviet Russia and the Soviet Union, though key questions remain unanswered and will be a topic for future research. The unprecedented repressions that began in 1917, after the Bolsheviks came to power, lasted until 1953, and touched (in both the literal and figurative meanings of this word) almost the entire population of the Soviet Union. Behind the statistics describing the huge number of those executed or imprisoned for political reasons, who died during transportation, in the camps or in exile from abuse, hunger and dispossession, stand the fates of concrete individuals and families. Stories about the tragic fates of individual victims during the period of Soviet state terrorism help us to understand the nature of political repression no less than dry statistics. The author of this article describes the history of the mass terror in the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic, and in its autonomous republic of Abkhazia during the 1930s, drawing on the experiences of his own family.

Download:

English (PDF)