Stalin's Regime: An Analysis of Ideology and Betrayal
This five-page undergraduate paper examines the book, Darkness at Noon, by Arthur Koestler, and discusses the dynamics of Stalins purges. The author notes how Stalin justified the Great Purge and used the show trials of the old revolutionaries who had been defeated in the power struggles of the late nineteen-twenties and early nineteen-thirties to solidify his personal rule over the Soviet Union. Before the nightmare of betrayal and self-destruction was over, Soviet society had been transformed into a paranoid madhouse and nearly everyone in the Soviet Union had become either an Ivanov, a Gletkin, or a Rubashov.
