Conquest, Robert

Discusses the ideologies of the twentieth century showing that Marxism and National Socialism had more impact on modern history than impersonal economic and social forces, and looks at some coming problems including the European Union, which the author considers doomed to failure.

Provides an account of the Great Terror, which raged in the Soviet Union between 1936 and 1938, during which General Secretary Joseph Stalin ordered the executions of thousands of people who opposed his policies.

Chronicles the events of 1929 to 1933 in the Ukraine when Stalin's Soviet Communist Party killed or deported millions of peasants; abolished privately held land and forced the remaining peasantry into "collective" farms; and inflicted impossible grain quotas on the peasants that resulted in mass starvation.

Provides a portrait of Stalin, based on material that became available in the aftermath of glasnost along with earlier official and unofficial sources.