A full life well lived is admired by all. In the case of Robert Conquest, his well-lived life resulted in the education of Western peoples as to the truth of Soviet Communism and the despicable lives of its murderous leaders from Lenin to Stalin to Khrushschev. In his book, The Great Terror, published in 1968, he uncovered the facts surrounding the show trials or sham legal escapades that were instruments of terror in themselves. He documented the fake confessions, the summary executions, and the forced imprisonments of former revolutionaries no longer in favor(opponents) and military officers no longer trustworthy of Stalin's regime.
Educated at Oxford, he served in the military during WW II in Bulgaria and stayed there during the post war period and was able to observe close at hand the consequent dismembering of the Balkan States as independent countries. He was criticized by some westerners as a purveyor of lies and rumors, especially when he assigned mass murder to Stalin and his henchmen. He was easily vindicated when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989 and secret archives became available to Western scholars and historians.
Another significant contribution came when he published another history describing the forced famine in Ukraine where Lenin succeeded in destroying Ukraine's peasants and their agrarian society whose efforts helped to feed not only themselves but also a large portion of Russya itself.
Mr. Conquest joined the Hoover Center at Stanford in 1977 and became a resident scholar there for the rest of his long life or almost 40 years. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George W. Bush. His life of research and study did much to put the lie to leftist sympathizers who continued to swallow the Communist Party line.
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