Koba the Dread: Outline
Teodor Dimitrov
1. Heavy industry: - Soviet Industry moved forward, and staggered about the place, like
a titanic infant, with every manner of thunderous accident, with peasant boys, twirling
off frozen scaffolding, with many deaths. Numerous lives are lost due to the extremely
poor working conditions, slavery, incredible inefficiency, millions of people forced to
move into the cities where housing was already at a great deficiency.
2. Kazaksthan: - Attempt to Collectivize and Denomadize the population. Kazakhstan
lost 80 % of its livestock and 40 % of its population due to famine and disease.
3. Congress of Victors – 1 : - 1937 is believed to be the onset of the Great Terror but its
beginning should be pinpointed in 1934 instead. The inefficient economy and the
failed attempts to Collectivize had killed 10 million peasants already, mass fleeing into
Moscow created extreme poverty, lack of whatever necessary household good one can
think of, six-fold inflation coincided with sharp cuts in wages and the extortion of state
loans.
4. Prolonged and Stormy Applause: - Another stupidity of the Stalin regime. Only
Stalin could stop the applauses of the public. If someone else stopped applauding
he/she would be given 10 years in prison.
5. Congress of Victors 2: - Insight into the absurdity of the Stalin regime. The author
introduces the notion that Stalin lived in a “parallel universe”. The facts were met by
introducing scapegoats for every famine or disease. Dread and fear made people
accept Stalin’s truth rather than the actual one. During the Congress a vote was held. A
delegate crossed out a name that would result in a negative vote. Stalin received 120
negative votes and later shot the vote-counters. Then Stalin proceeded to purge the
Congress resulting in 300 deaths of delegates. ]
6. Kolyma Tales: - Kolyma tales describes living in a Stalin camp. Some horrific
descriptions are given: “One prisoner hangs himself in a tree fork without using a
rope”, “Another’s rubber galoshes were so full of pus and blood that his feet sloshed at
every step”
7. The Kirov Murder: - The murder of Sergei Kirov, very high-level political figure,
gave forth the wave of Ruhr purge. Stalin wanted Kirov dead but he used the murder
as an excuse to commit to purging the lower caste.
8. Children: - In this part the author provides evidence that Stalin have had a love
interest in a girl called Svetlana.
9. Reason and the Great Terror – 1: - The biggest reason Stalin had for the Great
Terror is explained here. It is the legacy of Leninist Collectivization and the Purge.
However, Lenin had a different idea of purge, a “paper purge”, based on expulsions.
The notion of Eugenics tantalized Stalin. He became to associate himself with Ivan the
Terrible and Peter the Great. It is further explained that Stalin suffered from deep
cognitive misperceptions. He lived in his own world that was a Bolshevik world, not a
real world.
10. Reason and the Great Terror – 2: - The Nazi invasion was an avalanche of reality. It
made colossal demand: Stalin had to reach down, reach back, and find and resurrect
what was left of his sanity. Stalin’s mental health is again dissected and abolished in
this chapter. The real Purge begins as 2/3 of his military elite are destroyed. 43 000
officers are killed. .