Nicolas Werth is a French historian and an internationally renowned expert on communist studies, with a particular focus on the history of the Soviet Union. His work delves deeply into the darker aspects of totalitarian regimes and their impact on human lives. Werth analyzes the mechanisms of power, propaganda, and repression, uncovering the ways in which totalitarian states shaped and destroyed societies. His research contributes to an understanding of historical traumas and serves as a cautionary tale against ideological blindness.
During the spring of 1933, Stalin's police rounded up nearly one hundred thousand people as part of the Soviet regime's cleansing of Moscow and Leningrad and deported them to Siberia. This work weaves this episode into a broader story about the Soviet frenzy in the 1930s to purge society of all those deemed to be unfit.