In February of 1936 Andrey Vyshinskii, a Soviet politician, jurist and diplomat wrote to Viacheslav Molotov, who was Stalin’s right-hand man in the Politburo and chairman of the Sovnarkom which was Council of Ministers,Vyshinksii called for the reduction of the Narodnyi Komissariat Vnutrennykh Del (the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs) administrative powers. The NKVD was a huge problem the Soviet Union, Vyshinksii only pointed out flaws and abused against the Soviet Citizens. The NKVD punished and persecuted many Soviet citizens as well as Americans during the time of war they also executed many of the Union Communist party. The main purpose of the NKVD was to protect the Soviet Union and to ensure this was accomplished through …show more content…
The title of one chapter, "Fear and Belief in the Great Terror," points to a great importance of the book. Thurston ideas in the book lead to believe that Stalin believed in and feared conspiracies, for he had evidence of contacts between the exiled Trotsky and oppositionists within the country, as well as of conspiracies in the military and NKVD (police) (pp. 25, 34, 50-53). Stalin's well-grounded fear, combined with the trauma of his wife's suicide in 1932, the shock of the Kirov murder in 1934, and the discovery of a conspiracy in the NKVD in late 1935 (pp. 19, 23, 25). For their part, secret police functionaries also "tortured and shot largely because they felt they had to get to the bottom of a huge conspiracy that threatened the nation" (p. 90). On the receiving end, many intellectuals and others vulnerable to arrest also believed in the system, and most believed that the arrests of possible conspirators were necessary, even if their own arrests were a mistake. Finally, argues Thurston, “the mass of workers had faith in the regime which gave them opportunities to move out of the village and to have a voice in production decisions and in criticizing their bosses (p.