contributions to the understanding of Stalinist terror in the 1930s. The essays explore in great depth the background of the terror and patterns of persecution, while providing more empirically founded and substantiated estimates of the numbers of Stalin's victims. Many of the essays are informed by new trends in social and political history, and they approach Stalinist terror with new methods and from new perspectives. Although Stalin remains the central 'personality' in the terror, other leaders, institutions, and social groups played important roles, and by analysing them the essays in the volume help to provide a more complete and balanced view of the phenomenon of terror as a whole.

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