The assassination of party official Sergei Kirov sets off an internal investigation that reveals a conspiracy to murder Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. Stalin authorizes the NKVD to identify ‘counter-revolutionaries’ and ‘enemies of the people’ for prosecution. Imprisonment, torture, violent interrogation and execution serve as tools of the party apparatus in an unprecedented act of political repression. The Great Purge has begun. Government officials, Red Army officers, intelligentsia and peasants are accused, rounded up, and quickly executed or sent to the Gulag. Four years later, Stalin brings an end to this campaign of terror and the NKVD leaders who carried out his orders are sentenced to death. Whether driven by genuine fear or ruthless ambition, Stalin exploited the Great Purge to legally consolidate his power at the cost of nearly 700,000 lives.
Read by Adam Sartain
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