Comparison Of The Russian Revolution And Communism

A prime example of an utopian movement are the Bolsheviks, who were preoccupied by the idea of creating a harmonious social order, and preached about the complete abolition of private property, family, class differences, religion and state. As George Orwell notes in his essay on Koestler, it might not be remembered later on, but in early twentieth century there existed a confident expectation in Europe that the Russian Revolution and Communism would lead humanity to the long-awaited state of Utopia. (n. pag.) To prove this point, the French author André Gide shares his views on Communism in his political testimony:

Who can ever say what the Soviet Union had been for me? Far more than the country of my choice, an example and an inspiration,

Carried out on the orders of Joseph Stalin, the goal of the mass imprisonments was to purge the Soviet Nation out of all enemies of the state, counter-revolutionaries, and saboteurs. The victims of the purge “ranged from leaders in the Party to peasants who had unwittingly committed acts of sabotage by not learning with sufficient rapidity how to handle machinery.” (Calder 125) Millions of innocent people were either executed or sent to the Gulag labor camps, where they died of starvation, diseases, and overwork. The Great Purge reached its climax during the Moscow Trials, a series of public show trials, during which most of the Old Bolsheviks (members of the Bolsheviks party before the Russian Revolution of 1917) were tried for fabricated crimes, and executed. By killing all potential oppositionists, Stalin secured his position as the all-powerful leader of the Soviet Union. At first, the Western world didn’t want to accept the grim reality of the Great Purge; George Orwell writes, that “the most tragic thing in such events, is not the sole fact that they have happened, but the eagerness of Western individuals to accept them.” (quoted in Calder 127) However, as more and more evidence of the Stalinist horrors came to light, it left the whole world in shock and complete disillusionment with the Communist