About the Author

David Shearer is Associate Professor of History at the University of Delaware.

Reviews

“This is a pioneering work that radically revises traditional understandings of Stalin's terror of 1937–38. Based on a meticulous reconstruction of the dynamics and periodization of police campaigns of repression in the 1930s, Shearer demonstrates how social policing in the form of public-order campaigns determined the contour of the terror. State security and public order merged in the hunt for enemies, resulting in the massive social engineering of Soviet society. This is a major new conceptualization based on an unrivaled mastery of the sources.”—Lynne Viola, University of Toronto
*Lynne Viola*