Stalin's Great Purge - Effects on the Red Army 1936-1938 

That's as bad as a public speech!

Thank you for this video, the numbers are really staggering...

Sometimes my responses seem kinda glib, but then I'm 59 and have read 100's of books on Military history, campaigns, specific battles, biographies etc. I tend to forget how many hours and hours I put in reading and then maybe years later re-reading stuff only to realize half way through i read it 10-15 years before. So just the research alone is time consuming and I really respect your efforts even if I sometimes disagree with your conclusions. Or have something to add....ahem. I cannot recall who provided the data, but it came from a lecture from the US Army Carlyle series that Glantz participated in. It was a pure throw away stat but the implications were staggering. In 1939-40 there were over 300 major train derailments in the Soviet Union. God only knows what the criteria for "major" would be.... I can think of several proximate causes some interrelated. The "wrecking purges" extended to all levels of Soviet society, including factory managers that failed to make quotas. Imagine the quality control issues that might provide in rail or rail wheel or switchng equipment. Also in the removal of experienced route and station masters and engineers. Now fast forward that into catastrophic wartime conditions in 1941. I have never seen or heard of any stats of RR losses not due to combat but I've gotta think the number was huge, much much higher due to communication breakdowns, conflicting priorities, fog of war etc. I mention this specifically because I am a fan of Gary Grigsby's War in the East. The game is hugely complex and as in actual warfare mastery of logistics is the key. Playing the 1941-45 Campaign against the AI will usually take months at 4-6 hours 5 days a week. At any rate I, and several others who I chat with all came to the same conclusion. The Soviet RR system was TOO good. Even at the outset. At normal Admin settings it's damn near perfect, with enhanced degree of difficulty (for the German side and everyone plays as the Wermacht, naturlich) it's supernatural in it's ability to reinforce, evacuate, supply etc..all flawlessly. Of course in actuality it was anything but. The opening campaign and pretty much all of 42 saw Soviet units under supplied, mis-routed etc. Now take a deeper look not just at the commanders purged, but the staff logistics specialists who took one in the back of the neck. Combine that with poor track quality and equipment and lack of trained RR personel and yo've got a recipe for absolute chaos behind the lines. And since the Soviet Union by design depended heavily, almost exclusively on RR's .... BTW the only way to win in War in the East as the Wehrmacht is to shove every allowable production and manpower point into RR reconstruction and be incredibly efficient in trunklines etc. Didn't mean to get so "sidetracked" (pun intended...LOL) but the purges had far deeper impacts on Soviet military performance than just command decapitation. As always, Regards Art Brogden

Thanks for the great video, and sorry for the terrible comments. I suppose talking about communism is the sweetest perfume for a very special brand of RU-vid user... Perhaps this steps away from the military and into the political, but can we hope for a future video explaining the causes and the Soviet rationale for the purge (and its continuation over such a period of time)?

Hey, my first comment here.) But it may be of some interest to you. On August 25th Russian Defence Ministry declassified a bunch of documents about Battle of Stalingrad. Including detailed account of USSR assault group tactics (field manual). stalingrad75.mil.ru

Brian Garrow Well people will say anything under extreme pain

Yes, yes, I did it, just tell me what I did! I DID IT! PLEASE STOP! JUST STOP!

+Megaldon300 Not even necessary. The socialist tyranny in many European countries wasn't as savage in terms of torture. Like the Stasi in occupied East-Germany, they didn't really get into torture of extreme physical pain. But using other forms of torture stuff like isolating people from all human contact, never adressing someone by their name, sleep deprivation, mild malnutrition, exhaustion and endless repeating interrogation, they still were quite brutal and got all sorts of 'information' from their victims. Now compare that to other socialist countries and it seems pretty civilised. For example about Cambodia I read a report that went sort of "So we hung him upside down in handcuffs for 2 hours, beat with rods every few minutes, then gave him a few spoonfuls of human shit to eat while upside down, after that he felt like talking". The Stasi torture doesn't come close to that, but don't think for one second that makes it 'less bad' or acceptable.

Blah b I wasn't referring specifically to physical torture. Put the human mind under any sort of strain and it will want to make it stop. My point was that if you want to blame someone you use torture if you want accurate information you might want to try something else

take the US camp at gitmo for example which barely ever produces accurate information

Never forget history or it tends to repeat itself

yeah, likely both.

Yep, he has improved a lot. Just watch some of the first vids.

Jia Hong Situ He is also way more confident in his presentation

I get a kick out your accent. It adds a lot of flavor to the videos being that Germany and Austria were protagonists.

His accent is getting better.

EndNoble not my comrade!

Yup. Don't call out hackers on RU servers or you'll get the kickban in most cases. :)

They were spies!

You can't ban a griefer if he is an admin

bro needs reverse friendly fire

Panzer Faust FRIENDLY FIRE WILL NOT BE TOLERATED

*Yezhov

Someone actually got hit by a bunch of bricks

How are they doing

The author missed a lot. The army grew significantly at the beginning of the war. He did not indicate the percentage of those who were removed from the army, and also did not completely indicate the real percentage of those who returned. In percentage terms, the losses were, so to speak, insignificant.

Experience and knowledge do not grow on trees and they take time to fester. It doesn't matter how big the body was expanded if they were killing off the brain cells and creating a tense atmosphere of rivalry, distrust, paranoia, and extreme fear.

Didnt help that that great blubbering idiot Voroshilov was in charge of the operation to begin with.

Some links, please.

Real mystery is how Germans managed to screw thing up and loose the war, if Red army was so fucked up.

Whats worst about Voroshilov is that he had an incredible reputation at the time. People in the west even though he'd be Stalin's successor.

nobody deserves ww2

opalen903 Surprisingly, as damaging as the Purge was in the short term, it culled the old guard from the Red Army, allowing less experienced, but more effectively educated strategists to take the forefront during the war. Of course, we can see it wasn't all sunshine and rainbows, less experience means more mistakes and therefore casualties, but the Purge can be considered an introductory factor in deciding the course of the Eastern Front because of this, at least in my opinion.

It was a joke, reduced ineffectiveness (like it says in the video) is a double-negative.

Sure, they culled the stodgy old guard, thats why they killed Tukachevsky but kept 'tanks will never replace horses' Budyonny.

@opalen903 Reduced ineffectiveness does = increased effectiveness, it is a double negative. But to me, saying reduced ineffectiveness implies that something that was ineffective (bad) is now much less poorer than it was before. To me, saying increased effectiveness can imply that something that wasn't already bad to begin with got better. "I reduced the ineffectiveness of my firearm that jams every five shots." "I increased the effectiveness of my firearm that jams every five thousand shots." Yes they do mean the same thing, and one is just a double negative. I dunno, I guess I'm so used to hearing that double negative so much I prefer the worse grammar being used in some cases.

They never did replace horses, they displaced them. Also, you can eat a horse in the soviet winters, you cannot eat tank.

cool, what did he say?

I told him it's a good channel and he wanted to know the name of but I could not remember. Today, I emailed him the link so now he does. I enjoy your content. Keep up the good work!

thank you!

Joseph Stalin happy birthday day comrades

We can't forget you! We even made a movie about your death!

Joseph Stalin I think antifa keeps summoning you!

What you talking about, glorious tovasrich Stalin? Everyday is day to glorify thy name! **sweats cold** Glory to Stalin!

Yo, I think you need to chill my dude.

yeah, although it goes against all information that was put out by RU-vid in policy links, interface information and Ian (Forgotten Weapons) chat with support. As explained in a follow-up post. YET, I don't know how well or bad the ads will be. I had a few videos that had so low ads that it didn't made much of a difference. So, hard to tell.

Military History Visualized it's like RU-vid is trying to make life hard for content creators. Either way, hope it works out. This is one of the better channels on this site and I hope to God you can continue doing what you're doing.

well, it my case it has been quite annoying from the start, because I was hit with demonetization right from start (January 2016) see the video below from February with timestamp. Then they introduced manual review (Summer 2016) and all my videos got reviewed, which was great, because all were cleared. So, those were the "happy times", because I never had the "careless days", but then hit the Adcopalypse (April? 2017) and other recent changes that dropped the ad revenue considerably. So, without my Patreons I would have a really hard time now. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-LB1qPExHQY8.htmlm26s

Hi MHV I am upset that you too are being attacked by google. You are producing provocative videos. Your videos make people think. Google does not like either. I hope all the producers of these "alternate view" videos will band together and attack google. The internet was supposed to be a free speech forum. Looks like free speech is free only if you use the correct words.Most people cannot view events in the time they took place. Their judgement of events is based on their current view of the world.Your videos work hard to show events as they were seen by the people creating these events. I think this is your best video. I hope you will make more videos talking about events directly related to this video.

yeah, I spent considerable more time on this, because I thought my overall design was a bit lacking. Although, not sure if I can afford this, because it took 19.5 hours. Luckily, some stuff will be reproducible way faster

ThingsWillBeFine They did not want the embarrassment of losing to us again.

Polish living in the SU were also one of the most targeted group.

What's wrong with purging Germans and Koreans? Why were they in the Red army anyway?

John Connor racism is what's wrong.

A lot of people of korean and german origin lived in Russia. While the Koreans were mainly refugees from Japanese occupied Korea or imported cheap workers for the area around Vladivostok, the Tzar had actually invited the countrymen of his wife to settle in Russia, as Germans were considered and respected for being efficient and the Tzar used them to populize remote but potentially prolific areas, as the country was still (and is until today) only thinly populated. I would recommend this wikipedia article if you want to know more about it: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russians_in_Germany Sadly, the russian Germans that immigrated in the 1990s are now one of the backbones of the right-wing party AfD, as they fear (badly integrated as they still are) the legal immigrants and refugees (illegal immigrants aren't allowed to work) could take their low qualification jobs. As they are mostly more fluent in russian than german, they also often fall for the propaganda of the russian news that are available in Germany.

they also shot the replacements. 1936: the numbers; 1936-1941: the kills.

Military History Visualized Can you please teach me German?

Other people were promoted... and then they were shot.

Daniel The Scotsman soviet commie space magic

Dedication.

When it comes to leadership, the purges helped the Soviet Union, as it allowed newer and less important officers, but who were aware of the changes in tactics to be promoted. Names like Zhukov, Timoshenko, Voroshilov etc. might sound familiar. Without their understanding of the potential of the German combined armed tactics(commonly known as Blitzkrieg) the USSR would have suffered perhaps the same fate as France. The time of Barbarossa was right. If Hitler invaded earlier, his tanks would have faced the terrain which melted snow or spring rains turned into uncrossable mud. A later invasion meant that USSR would have had time to finish their army rebuilding program and even launch an invasion of their own. If the Great Purge affected the Soviet union in any catastrophic way, that was in the industrial/techonological development sector. USSR would long suffer, even after his death, after many engineers and designers were purged for good, but understandable reasons. For examples, Soviets lost the race to the moon(well, not technically lost since they never planned to send a man there, but rather a robot) because of their head scientist died due to an injury he suffered while in GULAG

Omega Alpha lol, nope. Because his first replacement was a moron who let 4 cosmonauts die and next man in line *destroying ALL work connected to Korolev* out of pure hate for the man. Including two already BUILT N-1 and miniature Shuttle with 2 tons of cargo load designed for resupply of space station.

Well, indirectly it did. The poor performance of the Soviet military, which was a consequence of the Purge, was shown for the world to see in the Winter War. Something that certainly gave German leadership the confidence that they would win.

only 2% of people even remotely have the chance of being able to shoot someone in the face whilst they beg for their lives :3 that is why it is the back of the head.

or sumpthing like that

Corn Marketman the Internet strikes again!

Purges have nothing to do with communism? being purged is being excluded from the communist party. Pretty relevant.

Carbon 12 Yes but the video is not discussing weather communism works or not, purges were not invented by Marx and didn't only happen in the USSR (of course not in such high numbers)

I've not seen many comments arguing whether communism works or not, but if it had a part to play in these purges, and how much weight that has on the value of communism as a system, that it so easily permits such atrocities.

Carbon 12 Those comments were probably buried by the ones that were actually discussing the video. Don't get me wrong, I like to discuss politics, but comments like "xd and they say that wasn't real communism" aren't really worth discussing

I know Trotsky comes back

but is that it do you just get Trotsky?

I suppose you get to keep some good military leaders.

Well I'm hotsky for Trotsky. Aside from that though, Trotsky's leader bonus combined with the NVKD primacy focus allows you to stage a coup instantly as long as you have enough infantry equipment and there is enough communist support in the country. This is incredibly useful after Germany is defeated and you are in an uneasy peace with the allies. Basically Stalin makes WW2 easy and is better for multiplayer but Trotsky allows you to expand the comintern after the war without starting WW3.

Just never ever take the purge first focus.

Im cheering for the wehraboos :D ... *grabs popcorn and coke*

The Juice ah OJ you happy about getting released?

Well, of course. I mean, I didn't do it. I just ran away from the police, and wrote a book about how I would've done it.

Well I'm not a fan of both, but I have to admit that realistically I would have prefered being under Hitler than under Staline. Just to feel a little less fear each second of my life.

Your a capiboo probably

Which shows the alarming way that Stalin has be rehabilitated under Putin.

Sad to see some of the Russian people like this girl buy into absolute bullshit propaganda

My understanding of this - is that he is given credit for the degree of industrialization of the USSR before the war. I don't know if it's true - but - that is my understanding of what they are talking about when they say that. .

Stalin got lucky,despite his incompetency,.

@@BobSmith-dk8nw Well, she pointed out thar 1) without industrialization the East wouldnt had survived, and 2) no democracy could have sustained losses so high. Rehabilitation, no doubt, but those arguments seem sound.

This comment should be more appreciated.

I'm a little sleppy so sorry if I miss something. That's the point sargent. Kinda. At least for me, as there are "many different ways of communism" when a communist variant state eventually fails some people say "That wasn't real communism, the real communism is the one variant I agree with" and we make fun of that people. Besides if it used mistakenly to criticize communism as a whole is anyway just more of a stupid meme now really "duh duh "but that wasn't real communism"" is not really attempting to be the most serious and profeccional way to criticize communism It's just to laugh at their red faces.

I 100% agree with you on the point: " but that wasn't really communism is not really attempting to be the most serious and professional way to criticize communism". As a person who mostly supports the communist process, I can say there are legitimate concerns out there about this process. What is very alarming is how many anti-communists actually believe that making fun of "that wasn't real communism" is an actual critique of a movement dozens of the best political scientists, economists, and philosophers of the 19th and 20th centuries have spent their lives on. My point is that if anyone did more than a Wikipedia-level look into Communism, they'd see that it is not a set of ideas to be established. It is the movement which abolishes the present state of things (focused mostly on abolishing wage-labor, capital, and the idea of private property [not personal]). The result of this movement aims to be a classless, stateless society. This makes "communist state" an oxymoron. Think of communism as a verb rather than a noun, it is a process - the end result being the eliminating of the generalized commodity form (capitalism). Nowhere in any of Marx's writings did he write, "Starve the farmers and then purge your officers". Just like a gun can be used for violence or for stopping violence, communism has been used, historically, as an authoritarian's tool. This tool came with the "historical necessity" required to do these horrible things. (ex. Yes, we may be starving our people BUT we have to so that in a hundred years we will be in utopia) The use of communism in the 20th century was surprisingly comparable to the Catholic church before the reformation. Very few people were able to read in Latin and so the people had to listen to the clergy's interpretation of the Bible and other religious texts. The idea of utopia (heaven), was dangled in front the people and they were told that it could be yours so long as you buy one of these indulgences, be submissive to our authority, don't question it, and so on... So called "opportunists" such as Stalin and Mao acted like these preachers, using very inaccessible books (would take months of reading to get a good idea of the communist movement), to effectively oppress their people better than any capitalist-based dictatorship could. This is thanks to communism's "historical necessity" (which is also found is fascism). --note: historically necessity isn't inherently bad, but is a tool which can be easily abused This may seem like an attack on Communism, but remember, communism is not any state, but a process (movement). This is an attack on authoritarians who used communism as the backdrop of their tyranny. Relevant Meme: i.imgur.com/7YWX8oA.png -I've never commented on RU-vid so seriously before, was curious what it's like

Stalin and Mao were Marxist-Leninists. Marxist-Leninists believe in a "vanguard party" to guide the state to communism. Communism cannot begin in this way, or what you end up with is essentially a dictatorship. Communists must instead, rise up in a fashion more like the Paris Commune. In this fashion, the people rose up as a group, instead of standing behind a single party or figure. It's also true that central planning isn't an efficient system of allocation, this should not be the goal of communism. However, it is important to see the misallocation that happens all the time in private market economies. Firstly, the price of goods is determined by perceived demand and perceived supply. The consequence of this is that many businesses (especially grocery and fast food) literally throw away their commodity to raise the price of what they're selling. Second, the natural tendency of capitalism is to pool more and more resources into a smaller and smaller group of people. Monopolies are one side of this, but not the whole story. We see a smaller and smaller group of people having ownership of multiple homes, especially after 2008. Now that this smaller group of people control more and more of the housing market, it becomes less competitive and easier for them to price gouge us on rent. People have a hard time paying for this, as a result, we see 4 empty homes for every 1 homeless in the United States. I know many people who have to work multiple jobs (60 - 80 hours) just to support their expenses. With high housing prices, most of us are locked out of getting our own property, outside of living deep in a rural land where there are little to no jobs and negative, if not stagnant, economic growth. (major reason why we see great support for Trump in 2016 election). I'll take a look at "why nations fall", it's added to my list. -A quick note on welfare: The democratic socialist welfare states in the 20th century were amazing. If I had to choose between communism and them, I would pick them in a heartbeat. However, the problem with them is that they aren't sustainable. They relied on the extreme growth of production leading up to and rebuilding after World War 2 to create this extra capital that could then be redistributed. We, at least in the United States, are having more problems than ever now with our welfare programs and a sad amount of people want to see them all gone. It is true that you will have a very hard time starving to death in our developed countries. Historically, outside of famine and the borders of Marxist-Lenninst countries: food has been very accessible (see Rome's Bread and Circus policy). The problem with capitalism is not its denial of basic goods to the people, but rather it's antagonisms and the problems it cannot solve. First, the antagonisms. The number one problem the first communists had with capitalism was the stolen surplus value. You worked for an hour in the factory to create $80 worth of goods. You were paid $7 an hour (to make it generous), the raw resources cost $30 to harvest and get to you. It cost $15 to get them from the factory to a shop where someone who is paid $8 an hour sells it. Where did the other $20 go? Hopefully to the growth of the company (which is a problem in itself: "growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of a cancer cell"). However, we end up seeing many of the management being paid disproportionally for their work. Ex. did the CEO work 450 times harder than the factory worker? This problem is far more extreme in 3rd world countries than our 1st world countries (China, India, Bangladesh). However, as these countries with billions of people grow and surpass our economic power, don't be so surprised if our situation starts to slowly reverse. Another antagonism was the perceived supply and demand. There are many more antagonisms out there but I don't want to get too deep, it would take too long. Secondly, the problems capitalism cannot solve. The most visible problem that most people are seeing is the rise of automation. We have people who are actively working on machines that will replace them. As we hit great automation thresholds (self-driving trucks, cheap ordering kiosks for fast food, AI that can analyze data better than any accountant, lawyer, or statistician) we will see millions of people unemployed in short periods of time, with no job for them (lowering the wages of everyone). Another problem is biogenetics, we right now have the technology to modify genes (CRISPR). It is not just possible, but a fact, that by 30 or so years from now we will be able to modify the genes of unborn children, and maybe even ourselves. Right now the rich are rich 99% of the time from their inherited capital, not from any actual biological supremacy (as social Darwinists believe). With biogenetic editing locked off by high prices, the elite may be able to secure actual biological supremacy, securing their family's position of wealth indefinitely. Of course, we also have the environmental problems that capitalism has failed to solve for the past 200 years (some scientists knew about possible climate change since the industrial revolution). Again, this is just a few problems that capitalism to solve. If I wanted to get to all of them then I'd need to write a book. In summary, the problem with capitalism is not people starving. Capitalism is great at creating a route to survival. The problem is how this route to survival requires you to give more labor than you receive labor. As a result, many people need to work multiple jobs, jumping from job to job in order to follow their route to survival. Life isn't naturally easy, but it doesn't have to be so hard either. I hope you're living a better quality of life now. We have to remember that we're all on the side of humanity here.

Ari Unfortunately the people your comment is in response to are morons who can only parrot phrases they've heard elsewhere and can't think critically on a subject

Robert Li Woo Under 301 Club!

Robert Li I do

Robert Li Pepperidge Farm Remembers !

Read the title please.

I did.

+

Stenrod *snapping*

Killing and Deporting Kulaks I can too deny it.

B-but my family's three thousand acre farm was STOLEN by the Bolsheviks!!!@ They even took all my ponies!!! All we did was burn out fields and kill our livestock!

They tend to stay in their echo chambers discussing the excuses they can use to promote violence and start revolution.

Its a right wing strawman.

It's not a strawman. Commies use this retarded argument literally every single time you confront them with the reality of their failed ideology.

Ludwig Winter Failed huh? Who was the first in space? Ohh that's right the Soviet Union.

wtf I love communism now

Unfunny and Unoriginal Aryan work ethic

Sullivan Nix, nope, its wasnt. It was just a nother one party dictaturship with a red coat. Nothing more, nothing less. Iam not sure if humans are cappable for real communism. Its a political and idelogical extrem and we humans can only keep up for so long with extrems. Its like good and evil. Nobody is 100% either. With our species only grads are possible. Thats why a lawfull republic with the people as its souvereing is the best form of government and will be.

Almost as annoying as lost cause revisionists

50043211 it was still socialist...

Daniel Allan No communist nation ever was facisct. They may have had totalitarian but if they actually had been fascist their nations wouldn't become such shitholes, italy and germany had great economy before ww2 and living standards where higher than most capitalist nations.

You know what is more stupid to hear? Someone saying that USSR was real Communism and do you know why? Because even the very name of the country says what it was and you use it. USSR stands for : Union of Soviet Socialist Republics which means that USSR was Socialist not Communist.

Da gomrade! Also where's the food gone?

and most important: People started drinking alcohol because of stalin or purge or whatever, *not* because of communism! Communism had actually ended alcoholism by then!

the soviet union was a state, a communist state is an oxymoron. in communism there are no states. so obviously by simple logic the soviet union never achieved communism.

Get back in the bread line

I live in 21st century UK, not depression era USA nice banter though

From Western prison system, I'm afraid only Nazi extermination camps were comparably lethal to Gulag system.

Read his sources, he linked them in the description for a reason. And I wouldn't start debunking his points with "The life expectancy of the GULag system was similar to the western prision systems" your link claims that executions + GULAGs + Exiles by 1940 equal 2 million dead. (and that document only took into count the amount of documented deaths as in singular document per singular death, and lets be honest most of the dead were not properly documented if at all.) I'm willing to bet that amount of people have not died since 1940 in prisons of western countries, AKA 1936-2017 less people have died in western prison systems than 1936-1940 in GULAGs. The first statement of yours is so wrong that I'm not willing to go through the trouble to read on the rest.

interesting points, but... I have to admit your profile picture suggests some kind of bias and takes away from the credibility of your otherwise insightfull comment.

As someone who tends to think the Soviet Union is excessively demonized, while I'd like to take these claims at face value, could you throw down some sources/links for me?

GULAG could not have the same death rate as any Western prison simply because of far harsher conditions. Europe doesn't have anyplace that is comparable to Siberia. It's very cold and windy there, it snows in the winter, and it is undeveloped.

It would have surely worked if they'd only killed one more person.

Selpyilgen dоит шоггу сомяаюе ше неаг уоц. Сука ыуат сомяаюе. /$

Aryan Saxena You do know whilst Stalin did this he built a global superpower from a Russian slum in a matter of years. The mass industrialisation and social liberalisation is unmatched anywhere in the world.

The Democratic People's Republic of Nikita 2017 we have peoplw defending stalin...

Pepper Spray The majority of EU leaders such as Macron aren't even left wing lol

ImperialVaccum Macron is not a eu leader the leaders in the eu are not democratically elected that's why you have never heard of them

Technically, EU leaders are elected democratically, it's just that they're elected by individuals who were elected by the people in their respective member states. Representation at its best. I would also argue that using Macron in an argument that is trying to show how right-wing EU politics are is somewhat counterproductive.

They are selected by the government, not elected by parliament, at least in the uk. Sorry to spoil your correction.

Carbon 12 So are more than twice the bureaucrats running domestic institutions such as the NHS. I never hear people spitting Brexit talking points call that into question.

Crazykiller Studios Why??? What does that have to do with modern warfare?

Yagoda was executed, Yexhov was executed, Beria was executed.

yeah, love it. It is also from 2017 (so no worries that some stuff is out-dated) and Justin (Navy Chat etc.) knows him. Speaks Russian, visited the Archives in Russia. Published by Cambridge University Press. Basically, it fulfills all the criteria I want and has some extra stuff.

Thanks. At the moment i'm reading Richard Overy's "Russia's War". It's also a great book with some interesting comments about the purge.

@@MilitaryHistoryVisualized neither I nor my friends, including those interested in history, have heard of him. The fact that he speaks Russian and was published somewhere in England does not say that he is a good historian. Judging by the quotes that I saw - they are very controversial, to say the least. And, unfortunately, they look biased. You once mentioned Rezun - this is generally a charlatan, not a historian. In the Russian historical community, to put it mildly, they do not respect him.