The Great Purges In Arthur Koestler's Darkness At Noon

“History had a slow pulse; man counted in years, history in generations” (Arthur Koestler, Darkness at Noon). 1938 was a difficult period in time for Europe especially for Germany and Russia. In Russiafrom September 1936 to August 1938, the period of The Great Purge took place or differently called the great terror when millions of people were killed or died from different causes such as hunger, thirst, sickness etc. The great Purge was a campaign of political repression in the Soviet Union. What The Great Purge consisted of was the purge of the Communist Party and government officials, repression of peasants and the Red Army leadership, and widespread police surveillance. This purge was accomplished by imprisonment and arbitrary executions. This time in history is known as “Yezhovshchina” translated as “times of Yezhoz” because Nikolai Yezhov was the

Arthur Koestler is an extremely reliable witness because he was part of the communist militant. He wasfocused more on the trial of Bukharin which was held in 1938. The setting of this book is during the 1938 purge when Stalin was putting up with his dictatorship by eliminating potential rivals within the Communist Party such as military and professionals. “Revolutionary theory had frozen to a dogmatic cult, with a simplified, easily graspable catechism, and with No. 1 as the high priest celebrating the Mass”(Arthur Koestler, Darkness at Noon). In this book, an old Bolshevik was captured, imprisoned and tried for disloyalty of the party that he once tried to create. The main character of this book is a 50 year old Bolshevik who was “a number of men who were the victims of the so called Moscow trials”. His name is Nicholas Samanovitch Rubashov. Other important characters of this book are Ivanov who was the commander from the civil war and old friend of Rubashov and Gletkin who was a young man who had new