Concordia University - Portland CU Commons Undergraduate Theses Spring 2019 Understanding the Purges Timothy George Grishkevich Concordia University - Portland,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://commons.cu-portland.edu/theses Part of the History Commons CU Commons Citation Grishkevich, Timothy George, "Understanding the Purges" (2019). Undergraduate Theses. 178. https://commons.cu-portland.edu/theses/178 This Open Access Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by CU Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Undergraduate Theses by an authorized administrator of CU Commons. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Understanding the Purges A senior thesis submitted to The Department of History College of Arts & Sciences In partial fulfillment of the requirements for a Bachelor of Arts degree in History by Timothy George Grishkevich Faculty Supervisor _________________________________________ ____________ Dr. Joel Davis Date Department Chair _________________________________________ ____________ Dr. Kimberly Knutsen Date Dean, College of Arts & Sciences ___________________________________________ ____________ Dr. Michael Thomas Date Provost __________________________________________________ ____________ Dr. Michelle Cowing Date Concordia University Portland, Oregon April, 2019 ABSTRACT How could Stalin reasonably justify within himself killing millions of people in a nation that he simultaneously wished to glorify? This is the basic question that will be explored in this thesis. What was Stalin’s reasoning, motivation, and purpose for sending so many to the Gulags? There has to be a better answer than “because he was bloodthirsty killer”. This was the basic motivation for the decision to explore this topic. How can a man that forcefully took the Soviet Union from a nation of poverty and peasants to nation that would be considered a world superpower for decades to come be dismissed as a lunatic? There was something missing.