The Voices of the Dead

"Swept up in the maelstrom of Stalin's Great Terror of 1937-38, nearly one million people died. Most were ordinary citizens who left no records and, as a result, have been completely forgotten. This book is the first to attempt to retrieve their stories and reconstruct their lives, drawing upon recently declassified archives of the former Soviet Secret Police in Kiev. Hircaki Kuromiya uncovers the hushed voices of the condemned and chronicles the lives of dozens of individuals who shared the same dehumanising fate-falsely arrested, executed and dumped in mass graves." "Kuromiya investigates the truth behind the fabricated records, filling in at least some of the details of the lives and deaths of ballerinas, priests, beggars, teachers, peasants, workers, soldiers, pensioners, homemakers, fugitives, peddlers, ethnic Russians, Ukrainians, Poles, Germans, Koreans, Jews and others. In recounting the extraordinary stories gleaned from the secret files, Kuromiya not only commemorates the dead and forgotten but also sheds new light on Soviet society and provides original insights into the enigma of Stalinist terror."--Jacket.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.