How Did Stalin Use Terror In The Russian Revolution

In terms of historical context, Pipes' view that Revolution of 1917 was a classic coup with no radical changes brought to the government can be supported by the use of propaganda and terror in both governments. The most famous aspect of Stalin’s Russia was the Terror due to his paranoia and desire to be an absolute autocrat. This can be seen by the enforced regulations by NKVD and public ‘show trials’. Later, it developed into a centrally-enforced ‘cult of Stalin-worship’ and a terrifying system of labour camps- the ‘ gulag’. Stalin’s terror can be compared to Tsar’s use of torture and Okhrana which was a secret police force of the Russian Empire. Despite the reforms in the early 19th century, the practice of torture was never truly abolished

The legendary storming of the Winter Palace was more like a routine house arrest since most of the forces defending the palace had already left for home’. For Figes “the Tsarist regime’s downfall was not inevitable, but its own stupidity made it so.”’ As Figes is a revolutionist historian, for him the Russian Revolution was an infinitely more complicated movement than what Soviet and liberal historians make it out to be. Unlike liberal historians, Orlando Figes tries to use economic, political and social reasons to build a holistic view on Russian society making the historian's view even more valid. Revolutionists explanation of October Revolution is based on the importance of the force of the masses which created the revolutionary nature of the society leading to cardinal reforms. Lenin was indeed a key figure and the Bolshevik party was able to meet the demand of the masses which raised their popularity. This view shows a direct conflict between a revolutionist and liberal ‘totalitarian’ schools that implements Lenin and Stalin as the only people that caused terror and emplaced control over