Word: stalinize
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Stalin started by crushing the Old Bolsheviks, then broadened the purge to annihilate the flower of our party, our army, our intelligentsia and ordinary people...
Later there was a rumor that Stalin demanded that Nikolayev be brought before him. Nikolayev fell to his knees, said he had acted on orders and begged for mercy. Maybe he figured he would be allowed to live because he had only carried out his mission. He was a fool. For the mission to remain secret, he had to be exterminated...
Something else I know. When Stalin came to Leningrad to investigate Kirov's murder, he ordered the commissar who had been personally responsible for guarding Kirov that day brought to him for interrogation. The truck taking him to see Stalin crashed, and the commissar was killed...
...have no doubt that Stalin was behind the plot. Kirov had turned the Leningrad party organization into a good, active group. He was very popular, so a blow aimed at him would hurt the party and the people. That's probably why he was marked for sacrifice: his death provided a pretext for shaking up the country, alarming the people so that they would accept the terror and let Stalin get rid of the undesirables and "enemies of the people...
...Comintern, or Communist International, started disappearing into the meat grinder, the Polish representatives were virtually all arrested and shot as enemy agents. I came to Moscow from the Ukraine for a Central Committee meeting. Nikolai Yezhov, chief of the secret police, and I were standing around, and Stalin came over. He shoved his finger into my shoulder and said, "What's your name...