ABSTRACT
As the fateful years 1937-38 approached, in which archival records report 681,692 people were shot by the NKVD, Stalin found time to celebrate that “Life has improved, comrades. Life has become more joyous.” Although his hard-fought terror-control and discipline campaign against the peasantry, aimed at completing the revolution by creating a comprehensive command economy based on the criminalization of private property, business and entrepreneurship, had been savage, the Soviets it would seem had emerged victorious, crowned by colossal industrial successes.
