schools kill creativity essay

Essay on a Ted Talk: Do Schools Kill Creativity?

Creativity is what ultimately nurtures innovation. And innovation is the future. The big question is – are creativity and innovation inherited in each of us? The answer is yes. 

Sir Ken Robinson, a creativity expert, in his Ted Talk claims that no child, even the most seemingly gifted one, is exceptional during the whole childhood. In his speech, Robinson claims that every child has an exceptional creative capacity. What happens is that it is the school and adults who squander kids’ potential and hold them back from discovering their inner geniuses.

The first argument Sir Ken Robinson makes in his speech is that the modern educational system does not encourage mistakes. Initially, kids are not at all afraid of being wrong. But many of them lose this capacity. 

“If you are not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original” – Ken says. If you look back at all the biggest inventions of humanity, you can clearly see that all of those have been made through sequences of mistakes. Thus, by making learners frightened of making mistakes, we kill children’s creativity.

In every educational system, there is a pretty common hierarchy of the subjects taught at school. The most important ones are considered to be math and languages. Then come humanities, whereas arts are typically at the very bottom of this hierarchy. 

According to Robinson, when we start educating children, we typically focus on what’s in their heads, leaving the arts and creativity out of the equation. This way kids simply grow out of their creative capacities.

So, do schools really kill creativity? Apparently, the answer is yes. In schools, creativity and innovation are not encouraged. And there is no tolerance for mistakes. We also shove kids into limited frameworks of what is generally believed they will need in their future. 

Finally, we tell kids who and what they can or cannot be way too often. And to ensure their successful future, as a teacher or parent, you can always change the way you think and give way to children’s creative urge.

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Do schools really “kill creativity”?

Blog 24 Apr 2018 8 Comments

In the most watched TED talk of all time, educationalist Sir Ken Robinson FRSA claims that “schools kill creativity”, arguing that “we don’t grow into creativity, we grow out of it. Or rather we get educated out of it”. Yet to Robinson, “creativity is as important as literacy and we should afford it the same status”.

My former colleague Tim Leunig FRSA, while working as Chief Scientific Advisor at the Department for Education, delivered a  TEDx talk that tackled Robinson’s argument  head on. “True creativity” he argues, “is based on knowledge which in turn is based on literacy”. Our schools, where children develop the literacy skills on which all further learning depends, are therefore not killing creativity, but cultivating it by providing the “foundations young people need to be properly creative”.

As evidence of how schools kill creativity, Robinson cites the example of a young girl called Gillian Lynne who, at the age of eight, was already viewed as a problem student with a probable learning difficulty due her inability to sit still and concentrate. When her mother sought a medical explanation for Gillian’s constant fidgeting and lack of focus, the doctor suggested they speak privately. As the two adults got up to leave, the doctor turned on the radio. Left alone in a music-filled room, young Gillian began to dance. Observing her through the window, the doctor turned to her mother.  “Gillian’s not sick” he said, “she’s a dancer”. Today, at the age of 92, Gillian can look back on a long career in ballet, dance and musical theatre which saw her become one of the world’s most successful choreographers, with hits like Andrew Lloyd-Webber’s Cats and Phantom of the Opera among her many achievements. Yet her school had all but written her off, mistaking her extraordinary talent for some form of behavioural problem or cognitive impairment.

As evidence of how schools cultivate creativity by imparting the knowledge on which it so often depends, Leunig goes back to the Enlightenment. He talks about the introduction of crop rotation, which allowed more people to live off the produce of England’s soil, a pre-requisite for the mass movement of people from the fields to the factories, mills and mines that powered the industrial revolution. He talks about the great breakthrough that allowed that revolution to happen: the invention of the steam engine by Thomas Newcomen . And he talks about the knowledge that led to this invention –  knowledge of how, when steam condenses in a vessel, a vacuum is produced, and of how therefore, a piston could be forced out of a cylinder when steam is injected into it, and sucked back in again when the steam condenses. And he points out how this one brilliant insight enabled the British to “power the factories, get water out of the mines, and get locomotives running across the country and steam ships taking goods to the furthest corners of the globe”. Not only was this arguably the most important invention in economic history Leunig argues, but it wouldn’t have been possible without knowledge.

Does how we define creativity matter?

What is striking about these two talks is how different are the definitions of creativity on which they are based. To Robinson, creativity is about imagination, self-expression and divergent thinking. In contrast, Leunig’s examples of creativity show how, through the use of logic and the application of scientific principles, existing knowledge can be marshalled to create innovative new solutions to longstanding problems. To Robinson, creativity is natural – something you’re born with. Whereas for Leunig, it is highly dependent on the prior acquisition of biologically secondary knowledge – something you need to be taught. For Robinson, creativity is an alternative to literacy, and is often displayed by those who struggle academically; people who display what Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner would describes as an alternative or non-cognitive form of intelligence (kinesthetic in Lynne’s case). For Leunig, creativity is a cognitive competence that gains form and substance within particular knowledge domains – domains to which which the illiterate cannot gain access. 

Why do these differences matter? And what are their implications for schools, particularly those that put a premium on the cultivation of students’ creativity?

The short answer is that they matter because they illustrate how meaningless it is to talk about creativity in abstract terms, as if the word describes the same thing in different domains when, as Robinson and Leunig’s dispute show, it clearly does not.

As Professor Dylan Wiliam explains in his 2013 paper Principled Curriculum Design :

"A huge amount of research on skill acquisition has found that the skills developed by training and practice are very rarely generalised to other areas and are, in fact, very closely related to the specific training."

It is certainly unhelpful, and probably wrong, therefore, to talk about ‘critical thinking skills’. Critical thinking is an important part of most disciplines, and if you ask disciplinary experts to describe what they mean by critical thinking, you may well find considerable similarities in the responses of mathematicians and historians. The temptation is then to think that they are describing the same thing, but they are not.

The same is true for creativity. Creativity is not a single thing, but in fact a whole collection of similar, but different, processes. Creativity in mathematics is not the same as creativity in visual art. If a student decides to be creative in mathematics by deciding that 2 + 2 = 3, that is not being creative, it is just silly since the student is no longer doing mathematics…Creativity involves being at the edge of a field but still being within it.

Similar arguments can be made for other ‘21 st Century Skills’ such as problem-solving, communication and learning how to learn. There is some evidence that students who learn to work well with others in one setting may be more effective doing so in other settings, so some transfer is definitely possible. However, the really important message from the research in this area is that if you want students to be creative in mathematics you have to teach this in mathematics classrooms. If you want students to think critically in history, you have to teach this in history.

How should creativity be taught in schools?

Rather than thinking about creativity as something that can be taught as a generic skill, or taught only in the so-called ‘creative subjects’, Wiliam suggests that schools should use it as a “tool for auditing the breadth of the curriculum being offered in each discipline or subject”. This means ensuring that all subjects are taught in what Guy Claxton calls an epistemically broad way. So rather than teaching history “as if it is about fact and dates, it should be taught as an epistemic apprenticeship into the discipline of history involving facts and dates and understanding bias in historical sources and chronology and cause and effect”.

Considering how contested is the question of what and how to teach school children, it is remarkable how broad is the consensus about the indispensability of the disciplines – each with its own structure and rules, language and logic, perspectives and habits-of-mind. Indeed, even Howard Gardiner, in a recent piece entitled “re-imagining learning” which, as the title promises, is highly critical of traditional school models and teaching methods , is clear about the limits of that re-imagining:

“Mastering disciplines, learning to communicate effectively, engaging civilly in discussion and argument – these have been, and should remain, at the forefront of all education. The ancients talked about the importance of understanding what is true (and what is not); what is beautiful (and what is not worth lingering over); and what is good (in terms of being a worthy person, worker and citizen). These educational goals should be perennial”

It is worth dwelling on this briefly. Because in that first statement – about mastering disciplines, learning to communicate effectively, engaging civilly in discussion and argument – Gardiner captures the essence of the Trivium – the three arts of ‘grammar’, ‘rhetoric’ and ‘dialectics’ that Martin Robinson FRSA argues provide the basis for what John Milton once described as “a complete and generous education”. And in the second – about understanding what is true (academics) what is beautiful (aesthetics) and what is good (ethics) – Gardiner encapsulates the essence of what we at the RSA mean when we talk about an education of the “head, hand and heart”.

So. Do schools “kill creativity”?

The short answer is ‘no’, although they certainly can if they forget two important lessons:

First, that if the maximum number of children are to be given the greatest possible chance of realising their creative potential, schools need to provide and rich and broad curriculum that includes the so-called creative subjects that are the visual and performing arts.

And second, that if they are serious about cultivating real creativity across the curriculum, they need to remember that creativity describes a whole collection of similar, but different processes. In other words, they need to understand the central place of the disciplines in education, and take them as their starting point in curriculum design.

The example cited by Robinson is thought-provoking, but it doesn't, in itself, address creativity. Dance is no more creative than writing. It is a medium of expression and as such gives tools to be creative. When the girl in the example found herself at dance school I have no doubt she would have been subjected to rigourous, disciplined training to perfect her plies, her jettes and her pirouettes. Once she had mastered them, I expect she had much more scope to creatively interpret the dances or the music, or to choreograph a new piece. The arts are no more inherently creative than the sciences. We just think of the arts as creative endeavours but creativity is not confined to them.

I'll confine my comments to the opening sentences citing Tom Leuning's arguments:

“True creativity” he argues, “is based on knowledge which in turn is based on literacy”. Our schools, where children develop the literacy skills on which all further learning depends, are therefore not killing creativity, but cultivating it by providing the “foundations young people need to be properly creative.”

1.  "True creativity"? "properly creative"?- anyone who begins and ends any argument with phrases like that needs to examine and justify his concepts .....and the TED talk reveals that Leuning thinks "real creativity" is that which is leads to "making something better", "making something new" - and that these better new things will, for him be practical innovations.  Fair enough, but not the whole story - and one which could go hand in hand with Robinson's arguments - no need to set up these versions of creativity in opposition to each other.

2.  Is all knowledge "based on literacy"? Do the illiterate have no knowledge? 

3. "Our schools, where children develop the literacy skills on which all further learning depends"  - well here we have to question the nature of these "literacy skills" which "our schools" develop. "Our schools" - what and where are they? Some contemporary English schools do indeed help some children develop the kinds of literacy skills which enable them to become enthusiastic readers and writers, collecting, explaining and pursuing knowledge.  Other schools do not - and there are many reasons why some schools do and others do not.  Does "all further learning" really depend on literacy? 

4. "Our schools...... are therefore not killing creativity." That "therefore" springs from a set of unexamined assumptions about what is currently happening in "our" schools.   

Breakthrough ideas - a form of creativity - often emerge from those who have no 'knowledge'. 

I'm sure I'm not the only person who learned literacy at home before starting school, and many widely-acknowledged 'creative people' say they started learning when they left school!

I recall going to the inaugural lecture at 'RSA North' at Dean Clough when Sir Ernest Hall uplifted the audience, with lines like "one moment of inspiration is worth a thousand qualifications".  

I wish The RSA would invest in participative platforms for these kinds of debates rather than relying on channels like the website where an article is written (and promoted in the newsletter 7-8 months after it's published?!) and all Fellows can do is add screened, asynchronous comments. Not particularly creative is it?!

One of the key features of Ken Robinson's argument is that the standardisation and 'industrialisation' of the British schools system (and it's the same in Australia) kills creativity and stifles individual creativity - artistic and all other forms of creative thinking and creative expression. 

Ken is not just advocating for greater priority being given to the visual and performing arts, although he is a strong advocate for the arts. 

However, there is something to be said for 'traditional learning disciplines like reading, writing, grammar and spelling'. For example, it would be more respectful if the article, throughout, had the correct spelling for Howard Gardner!

More seriously, another question that is worthy of debate is whether The RSA - in its relationship with the RSA Fellowship - encourages creativity (if so, what type of creativity?) or kills creativity?  

Plato said something along these lines: “I would teach children music, physics, and philosophy; but most importantly music, for the patterns in music and all the arts are the keys to learning”.

Good analytical thinking, in scientific terms at least, is quite different from insightful thinking, where something 'pops into your head', often whilst in a state of relaxed cognition & undertaking autonomic stage psychomotor activities. These 'aha' moments are the result of new neural connections; they are new thought 'created in the mind' for the first time as new synaptic connection has taken place. 

One thing is broadly agreed by the literature around this, and it is that an examination is a totally inappropriate evaluation metric, due to time constraints and emotional understandings. So therefore, unless we evaluate learner performance to take account of this, how can we argue for or against? 

Another wonderful insight can be found by looking at alternative subjects and the commentaries coming from their potential employers. Sense of initiative? Common Sense? Without curiosity and a willingness to see beyond the obvious, how will our learners ever respond?

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Do schools kill creativity?

How Education Quashed Your Creativity

Why it's difficult to find creative answers..

Posted August 13, 2021 | Reviewed by Davia Sills

• Our education (K-college) is excessively focused on getting right answers, rather than promoting creative responses.
• An overemphasis on standardized testing negatively impacts our creativity.
• The kinds of questions we're asked in school severely limits our creative output.

For much of our lives, we are predisposed to look for a single solution to a single problem (e.g., What is 2 + 2? What is the state capital of North Dakota? Who wrote the Declaration of Independence?). We have been “brainwashed” to think that for every problem, there is one, and only one, way to solve that problem. Much of our educational experiences have been focused on learning the right answers to pre-established questions. Seldom have we been offered the opportunity to consider that there might be a multitude of potential responses to any problem. The “one-problem, one-answer” syndrome has been thoroughly ingrained into almost every educational curriculum, irrespective of grade level or subject matter.

Sir Ken Robinson put this all into perspective when he wrote, “…too often our educational systems don’t enable students to develop their natural creative powers. Instead, they promote uniformity and standardization. The result is that we’re draining people of their creative possibilities and… producing a workforce that’s conditioned to prioritize conformity over creativity.” In short, our educational system is focused more on getting the right answers (thinking inside the box) than on promoting creative possibilities (thinking outside the box).

What are the ramifications?

The implications can be staggering. Logic supports the notion that an excessive focus on a one-right-answer mentality forces us into a “don’t take any risks” mindset. This obsession with getting the right answer (a proven consequence of an over-emphasis on standardized testing) conditions us not to take chances… it teaches us not to be creative. That’s because when we make too many mistakes, we get a low test score. Get a low score, and you may deprive yourself of a college education (as a result of your SAT scores), a chance at graduate school (via your GRE scores), or an occupational advancement (via your score on the LSAT [law school] exam, MCAT [medical school] exams, or PAPA [teacher certification assessment], for example).

Simply put, we are not taught how to be creative; rather, our education is focused more on “mental compliance” than it is on innovative expression. Robert Sternberg writes, “Creativity is a habit. The problem is that schools… treat it as a bad habit…. Like any habit, creativity can either be encouraged or discouraged.”

Michael Roberto, in his book Unlocking Creativity, further cements this view when he states, “Our schools [are] discouraging creative students in a variety of ways. A stream of research has shown that teachers claim to value qualities such as independent thinking and curiosity, yet they reward behaviors such as obedience and conformity.” As an educator for more than 50 years, that concerns me!

Because of the prevalence of exams in our lives (it has been estimated that students take nearly 2,500 tests, quizzes, and exams during their school years, grades K-12), we have a tendency to stay in a comfort zone: a focus on right answers. Occasionally, we may be asked to voice a creative response in class (“What do you think are some of the long-range consequences of our current trade policy with China?”), but are hesitant to do so on the belief that the teacher may be looking for a specific and particular response. Perhaps our creative answer is not the one the teacher was looking for. We may have stepped outside the bounds of what was expected and into the territory of the unknown.

The objective of most classroom lessons often becomes: Right answers get rewarded; innovative or inventive responses are frequently censured. In short, we are creating a generation of factual masters and a decided dearth of creative thinkers.

How to enhance your personal creativity

Fortunately, there are ways we can boost creative thinking at any age.

1. Ask the right questions.

On a Zoom meeting, a conference call, monthly department meeting, or any other kind of group discussion, try to avoid asking the following questions: “What is the answer?” or “What is the solution?” By posing those queries, you are severely limiting a multiplicity of responses simply because the group is now focused on finding the answer or the solution… rather than on generating a vast array of potential answers or solutions. More appropriate questions might include, “What are some possibilities here?”; “How many different ways can we look at this?”; or “What are some of the impediments we have to overcome?” In short, ask questions for which there may be a wide variety of responses, rather than questions that limit the number or type of responses.

Convincing research has overwhelmingly demonstrated that we tend to think based on the types of questions we are asked [emphasis added]. (Incidentally, during your educational career , you were asked approximately 400 classroom questions a day, or roughly 72,000 questions during any school year. There’s an abundance of data to show that about 80 percent of those questions were literal or simple recall questions.) Thus, if we ask questions for which there is the expectation of a single “correct” answer, that’s all we’ll get. On the other hand, if we pose questions that naturally generate a multiplicity of responses, then the collective creativity of the group is enhanced considerably.

2. Work backward.

Imagine writing a press release for a brand-new product long before you have even begun to design that product. Well, that’s what the folks at Amazon do. When they conceive a new product, the team sits down and drafts a full and complete press release for that product as their initial step. What are the most compelling features of the new product? What are the most significant values of the new product to consumers? What is their primary audience, and how will they target the new product to that audience? What benefits will customers get from the new product? Enormous time and energy are devoted to crafting a compelling press release long before (months or years) the product is ever ready for the marketplace.

In short, product developers must travel into the future and imagine the day the product is released to the public. Then, they are tasked with moving backward in time to conjure up the steps (in reverse order) that will be necessary to make that press release a reality. Backward thinking offers a new reality. A study in 2004 conclusively proved that when participants were tasked with completing a project from back to front (rather than the more logical front to back), they achieved higher levels of creativity. The researchers noted that participants were forced to utilize abstract, high-level, and conceptual thinking rather than logical, concrete, and time-worn thinking.

Kathryn Haydon. “When You Say You’re Not Creative…” Psychology Today.com (January 4, 2019). ( https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/adventures-in-divergent-thinkin… ).

Ken Robinson. Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative . (New York: Wiley, 2011).

Robert J. Sternberg and T.I. Lubert. Defying the Crowd: Cultivating Creativity in a Culture of Conformity . (New York: Free Press, 1995).

Michael A. Roberto. Unlocking Creativity: How to Solve Any Problem and Make the Best Decisions by Shifting Creative Mindsets . (New York, Wiley: 2019).

Anthony D. Fredericks. Ace Your First Year Teaching: How to be an Effective and Successful Teacher . (Indianapolis, IN: Blue River Press, 2017).

Jeff Dyer and Hal Gregersen, “How Does Amazon Stay at Day One?,” Forbes , August 8, 2017.

Anthony D. Fredericks, Ed.D. , is Professor Emeritus of Education at York College of Pennsylvania. His latest book is In Search of the Old Ones: An Odyssey Among Ancient Trees (Smithsonian Books, 2023).

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Do Schools Really Kill Creativity?

Jonathan Sun

BKC affiliate Jonny Sun offers his insights into creativity and authenticity in the digital age, and what schools are doing right—and wrong—when it comes to digital literacy.

“In my experience, students feel seen when we discuss the internet with them in complex ways that respect the fact that they have an incredible amount of experience with the internet—and perhaps, in many cases, more complex experiences than those who teach them,” Sun says.

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Opinion: schools kill creativity, but they don't have to, a popular ted talk describes ways in which schools inhibit creativity by training students to be grade-focused and risk-averse. some educators say creativity, being essential for innovation, needs more encouragement..

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TED Explained – Sir Ken Robinson: Do Schools Kill Creativity?

Talk Summary:

As we grow up, do we lose our imagination and creativity? Why? Does the education system strip us of our originality and individuality? Does this society condemn mistakes? Does our education put us under the pressure to reach a certain ideal? In this TED talk, Sir Ken Robinson discusses how human creativity is being suffocated by education systems and societal expectations. He explains that because our society stigmatizes mistakes, we become less willing and less able to produce original content, in fear of failure and nonacceptance.  To view the transcript of Sir Ken Robinson’s talk, please click here.

TED Explained:

‘Good morning. How are you? It’s been great, hasn’t it? I’ve been blown away by the whole thing. In fact, I’m leaving.’

1. “Blown away” is an idiom, which mea ns it is not to be interpreted in the literal sense. (i.e. someone literally being blown away by the wind!) Rather, it means “To cause someone great pleasure or surprise; To greatly impress someone” . It is always used positively . For example: I was blown away by the performance! It was so interesting and funny, I really loved it.

“The second is, that it’s put us in a place where we have no idea what’s going to happen, in terms of the future, no idea how this may play out.”

  2.  “Play Out” is a phrase. This phrase is used on processes and how they develop, turnout, unfold, take place etc . For example: I wonder how this business meeting will play out… I’m not sure if they’ll agree with our proposal.

‘But if you are, and you say to somebody, you know, they say, “What do you do,” and you say you work in education, you can see the blood run from their face . They’re like, “Oh my god,” you know, “why me?”’

3. “To see the blood run from someone’s face” is an idiom. This idiom is used to convey negative feelings , eg. fear, embarrassment, shock, or dislike etc. As you can imagine, when a person feels the above emotions, the blood runs from their face, and their face turns pale . For example: When Peter was told he had been fired, the blood ran from his face. He was shocked.

(Other variations of this idiom include: the colour drained from his face/ the blood drained from his face.)

‘All kids have tremendous talents and we squander them (talents), pretty ruthlessly.’

4. “Squander” is a verb . It means to waste something foolishly (usually money). For example: He squandered all of his money on beer and gambling. OR You should never squander your money. Instead, save it up and spend it carefully and wisely.

‘And we run our companies like this, by the way, we stigmatize mistakes. And we’re now running national education systems where mistakes are the worst thing you can make.’

5. This verb comes from the noun “stigma” , which is defined as “a social disgrace” . In other words, something that society considers to be bad or have a bad reputation, or leaves a bad mark. It goes without saying that this word is used negatively. For example: Ex-prisoners always feel stigmatized when trying to return to normal society.

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Home — Essay Samples — Education — Education System — Do Schools Kill Creativity: Traditional Education

Do Schools Kill Creativity: Traditional Education

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Published: May 17, 2022

Words: 1313 | Pages: 3 | 7 min read

• (N.D) Pros & Cons of Standardized Tests. (2019, May 28). Retrieved from https://gradepowerlearning.com/pros-cons-standardized-tests/
• Robinson, K. (n.d.). Do schools kill creativity? Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity
• Dalile, L. (2012, June 10). How Schools Are Killing Creativity. Retrieved from https://www.huffpost.com/entry/a-dictator-racing-to-nowh_b_1409138?guccounter=
• Lynch, M. (2016, September 05). Is education killing imagination? Retrieved from https://www.theedadvocate.org/is-education-killing-imagination/
• Saulat, F. (2018, March 20). The Education Factory: How the U.S. Education System is Killing Creativity. Retrieved from http://georgiapoliticalreview.com/the-education-factory-how-the-u-s-education-system-is-killing-creativity/
• Demers, I. G. (n.d.). Why Do High School Students Lack Motivation in the Classroom? Toward an Understanding of Academic Amotivation and the Role of Social Support. Retrieved 2006.
• Myoung-jin, K., & Jeong-a, L. (2016). Students in Seoul have hard time with studying and low-wage work. Retrieved from http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/761463.html
• Colagrossi, M. (n.d.). 10 reasons why Finland's education system is the best in the world. Retrieved from https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/09/10-reasons-why-finlands-education-system-is-the-best-in-the-world

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Rhetorical Analysis Essay Example

11 December 2023

last updated

This rhetorical analysis essay example emphasizes the problems that the educational system has right now. Using the Ted Talk by Ken Robinson, “Do Schools Kill Creativity,” it was found that various institutions fail to educate students in the expected way as they cannot encourage their creativity. Such issues arise due to the low income in various professions. Also, it happens due to strict educational frameworks where test-solving skills matter the most. The author explains why such a tendency is a problem for society. He delivers his argument by using ethos, pathos, and logos. Additionally, the use of rhetorical appeals helped Robinson to call to action so that listeners change their perception of what is right and wrong when it comes to students and their development.

Introduction

For my rhetorical analysis essay example, I have chosen a speech by Ken Robinson, who argues that the public education system in America kills creativity. Ken Robinson’s speech, “Do schools kill creativity” has become one of the most popular TED Talks. It sparks the idea that we are “educating people out of their creativity.” Unfortunately, schools encourage students to stand on what is taught socially and intellectually without questioning. Even when students are allowed to be creative, they face a lot of restrictions on what they do. Therefore, schools discourage creativity in the majority of cases, limiting people’s potential and stealing their shine. A thorough view of the speech demonstrates that Robinson is concerned about the issue. He achieved this goal by making proper use of pathos, ethos, and logos appeals throughout his speech.

Pathos Analysis

First of all, Robinson used a pathos appeal to captivate the attention of his audience. He begins by narrating the story of a student named Gillian who had trouble staying focused in class. Her parents, who thought she had ADHD, took her to a specialist to determine how her condition could be treated. Luckily, specialists told her mother that their child was not sick, saying, “she’s a dancer, take her to dance school” (Robinson, 2006). Unfortunately, Gillian became one of the most creative and popular ballet dancers of all time. At this point, Robinson appeals to pathos so that the audience connects emotionally to the disappointment that the speaker feels when it comes to the existing education system. Unfortunately, a lot of people are underestimated and oppressed due to the inability of educators to understand their talent.

Pathos is determined by the level Robinson succeeds in connecting to his target audience. By using a story that provides a contrast between ADHD and talent, the speaker explains how blur is the line between creativity and misunderstanding. Hence, if specialists advised her parents differently, they would have spent a lot of time and money on ADHD treatment to force her to focus on subjects at school, which were not significant for her future career (Robinson, 2006). Unfortunately, the education system stigmatizes mistakes through tests and strict learning programs. However, children need an individual approach to determine the way how to teach them and how to reach their highest potential.

Ethos Analysis

Furthermore, an ethos appeal within the speech convinces listeners of how the system could be improved to promote creativity. Robinson wants the audience to realize that each person has potential. Additionally, he uses key statements of persuasion in his speech. It is evident when he mentions that, “all kids have tremendous talents” (Robinson, 2006). He persuades his audience by telling them that all children, in the right environment, would be very creative. Hence, using the credibility of a university professor, people believe the speaker that all students are bright. He earns such trust because people think that a person who deals with them each day says so, which is a perfect example of the use of rhetorical appeals.

Logos Analysis

Nevertheless, Robinson also demonstrates the use of a logos appeal in his argument about the negative effects of the public school system. According to his report, more than half of American employees (51%) are not engaged in their work today, which results in an average of $250 billion loss in productivity (Robinson, 2006). Unfortunately, after students receive their first degree, they are required to continue their education to be successful scientists. As a fact, such a choice means that they are choosing a low-income life. As a result, he expresses a logos appeal by persuading his audience to rethink creativity within the public education system. Hence, such a relationship relies on the salary available for creative people. Unfortunately, they must seek a solution somewhere else.

Moreover, a logos appeal is present within Robinson’s speech when he explains the importance of creativity and how he convinces the audience to take the initiative to change the public education system as a whole. Midway through his speech, he mentions how children are turned away from engaging in the things they like to do because it would not secure them a job in the future. For instance, a child who likes playing the piano cannot do that because a career as a pianist is overly unrealistic (Robinson & Aronica, 2016). Unfortunately, their talents do not matter when it comes to money. He demonstrates a logos appeal by showing that it is not right to deny people an opportunity to do what they want by showing what is better for society, using the difference in salaries.

Combinations of Rhetorical Appeals

In his speech, Robinson’s ethos appeal is in line with pathos to convince his audience of the importance of creativity. He uses humor to retell his experiences as a university lecturer and what he noticed about creativity in his students. He metaphorically mentions that they “live up in their heads” (Robinson, 2006). It is humorous to believe that lecturers who have to teach creativity “live in their heads” and refuse to explore what is outside the standard curriculum. At this point, his position as a professor confirms the credibility of the speaker’s words. Additionally, humor enhances people’s emotional connectedness to the subject. As a result, learning institutions, by nature, are not creative environments. These facilities inspire those who complete tests that have strictly identified answers. Also, they punish those who try to learn something outside the box.

Considering the combination of ethos, pathos, and logos, Robinson utilizes rhetorical appeals to make sure the audience gets ready to change. Hence, this rhetorical analysis essay example identified many stories and facts that helped the audience relate to the issue and understand what is wrong with it. In turn, this rhetorical analysis example may expand views on a topic. Additionally, the author provided examples of stories of success, while students showed their creativity to the public without fear (Robinson, 2006). As a result, the mixture of persuading techniques helped the author to deliver the needed message to the audience. He expects the audience to spread the idea to others – students need freedom of expression. However, when it comes to implementing change, we also have to encourage equal pay for all. Such change matters when we put on what people can and cannot do in their lives.

In conclusion, Ken Robin’s TED talk proves that schools are indeed killing creativity in children. However, to succeed in winning the attention of his audience, he uses a combination of ethos, pathos, and logos appeals. Firstly, he indicates a pathos appeal by grabbing the audience’s attention by connecting to them emotionally. Additionally, he also uses his personal experience to entertain his audience and help them to relate to the issue. Secondly, he illustrates ethos by using his position in the educational system to persuade his audience. As a result, people are certain that he is credible when it comes to students. Finally, he also uses logos to prompt a reaction from listeners by presenting facts and offering solutions. In turn, this rhetorical analysis essay example is helpful for those who want to share their thoughts on different speeches, talks, and other types of works.

Robinson, K., & Aronica, L. (2016).  Creative schools . New York, New York: Penguin Books.

Robinson, K. (2006). Do schools kill creativity. TED. https://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity

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Students in a Moscow School Debate the Once-Undebatable

By Philip Taubman, Special To the New York Times

• Oct. 20, 1988

For years the study of Soviet history at Secondary School 831 in Moscow was less an exercise in understanding the country's heritage than in denying it.

Yevdokiya Syto, a teacher, had relatives who were expelled from the Communist Party and imprisoned, but the history curriculum did not allow her to tell students about the great terror that swept the country in the 1930's.

Maksim Pechnikov, now in his last year of high school, was told by his parents about family members who were thrown out of the party and executed by firing squad under Stalin, but he dared not mention the cases to his classmates.

The history textbooks long used at the school treated the 1930's as a time of economic achievement, making no mention of the famine and purges that killed millions.

All that is changing now. With the encouragement of Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the Soviet leader, School 831 and thousands of others across the country have set aside old textbooks and fears and are openly confronting a turbulent past that teachers and students knew existed but could barely acknowledge in the classroom.

The students still dress in navy blue school uniforms, and classrooms are still adorned with posters extolling the virtues of Communism, but the intellectual atmosphere - in topics ranging from history to economics to capitalism - is bubbling with curiosity and candor.

''The things my grandmother once told me in whispers - about her brother who was sent to prison, another who was executed - we can now talk about at school,'' Mr. Pechnikov said.

''The atmosphere is entirely different,'' he added.

The absence of a single, officially approved version of history forced the cancellation last spring of written history exams for 10th-form students like Mr. Pechnikov, the equivalent of American high school seniors. No decision has been made yet on whether to resume written exams at the end of the current school year.

As with many of the other changes initiated by Mr. Gorbachev, the remaking of high school history courses has not been easy and is far from complete. It was clear during a recent visit to School 831, a spartan, three-story concrete building in northern Moscow, that the evolution of the curriculum has produced unusual spontaneity and uncertainty in the classroom.

Teachers at the school, which in American terms covers grades 3 through 12, have substituted current journals, magazines and newspapers for the outdated, circumscribed textbooks that were for decades the bibles of high school history classes.

Andrei Y. Kulakov, a history teacher, shook his head when a visitor asked about the books. ''They are almost useless,'' he said.

The choice of reading material, Mr. Kulakov said, is his alone, a startling departure from the traditional system in which every source of information was screened and sanitized by the authorities. Shortcomings Discussed

During a discussion with 10th form students about economic differences between Communism and capitalism, Mr. Kulakov encouraged a spirited debate about the benefits of each system, and several students talked openly about shortcomings in the Soviet system. There was little sign of the rote learning that has long dominated Soviet education.

When Mr. Kulakov raised the issue of how manufactured goods are valued, the dozen or so students in his corner classroom, paired off two to a desk, consulted among themselves for a few moments, and then hands shot up.

''Many Soviet enterprises work on obsolete equipment,'' one student said. ''That means many of the goods are costly to produce, but because their quality is low, their utility value is essentially zero because no one wants to buy them.''

Unfazed, Mr. Kulakov replied, ''You're right, and such a situation can be viewed as a burden on society.'' A Sense of Liberation

Mr. Kulakov, whose enthusiasm and willingness to tackle controversial material apparently made him something of a maverick at the school, reported a sense of liberation among some of his colleagues as curriculum controls have eased.

''It's possible to be honest now in a way it was not even two or three years ago,'' he said.

For Mrs. Syto, an energetic woman who has been teaching history for more than two decades, the expanding boundaries of discussion have lifted a veil that separated her personal and professional lives.

''I lived in that time,'' she said of the 1930's. ''So much is in my memory, so many people in my family suffered, but there was little I could say in class. I mentioned some things, but we could not go into much detail.'' Stalin 'Not a Simple Figure'

Students, freed from the rigid constraints of earlier years, have discovered differences of opinion.

''Stalin is not a simple figure to analyze,'' said Irina Prytkova, a 10th form student. Like most of her classmates, she is 16 years old.

''His brutality and assertion of the cult of personality were reprehensible, but he has also a genius. Look at the way he handled the postwar conference at Potsdam.''

Maksim Pechnikov, her classmate, reddened as Miss Prytkova talked. ''I can't agree,'' he interrupted. ''How can you call a man great who was a sadist?'' he asked. 'Up to His Elbows in Blood'

Yevgeny Leizarovich, another classmate, interjected: ''Don't forget his treatment of Bukharin and the destruction of other Communists. He was up to his elbows in blood.''

Miss Prytkova, who said she wants to be a lawyer, defended her position. ''You may not like everything he did,'' she said, ''but Stalin made certain there was discipline. Some of the measures he used - insisting on tough control against fraud and embezzlement - some of these policies would be useful today.''

Mr. Pechnikov, who hopes to make a career in the military, said: ''But Ira, all those controls were based on sheer terror. It was not rational.''

When Miss Prytkova suggested that at least Stalin was a great war leader, her classmates looked livid.

''He practically destroyed the officer corps during the purges,'' Mr. Pechnikov said. Startled by Reactions

Somewhat startled by the vehement reactions, Miss Prytkova made a tactical retreat.

''I know,'' she said, ''that no matter how great a genius Stalin was, he can never atone for his crimes before the Soviet people.''

When asked by an American visitor whether they were changing their view of other historical figures, including Trotsky, long depicted as the archvillain of the revolution, Mr. Pechnikov said: ''Trotsky was portrayed strictly as a negative figure. Anything about his contributions was omitted. I think we need a more balanced view.''

How much of the current openness will be reflected in the new textbooks is unclear. Mr. Kulakov questioned whether credible new textbooks could be written by the historians who prepared the last ones.

A few days after Mr. Kulakov expressed his doubts, Mr. Gorbachev, addressing a commission that is preparing a new history of the Communist Party, offered some advice that echoed the changed atmosphere at School 831.

The new history, he said, must ''give an honest and frank analysis of the causes of deformations, and thoroughly investigate why the emergence and growth of authoritarian bureaucratic distortions and their consequences were not prevented.''

The Moscow Trials and the "Great Terror" of 1937-1938: What the Evidence Shows

Grover Furr July 31 2010

[To be added at the end of Part One of "Stalin and the Struggle for Democratic Reform" ]

Since my two-part essay "Stalin and the Struggle for Democratic Reform" was written in 2004-5, a great deal more evidence has been published concerning the Opposition, the Moscow Trials of 1936, 1937, and 1938, the Military Purges or "Tukhachevsky Affair", and the subsequent "Ezhovshchina", often called "the Great Terror" after the title of the extremely dishonest book by Robert Conquest first published in 1968.

The newly-available evidence confirms the following conclusions:

* The defendants at the Moscow Trials of August 1936, January 1937, and March 1938, were guilty of at least those crimes to which they confessed. A "bloc of Rights and Trotskyites" did indeed exist. It planned to assassinate Stalin, Kaganovich, Molotov, and others in a coup d’�tat , what they called a "palace coup" ( dvortsovyi perevorot ). The bloc did assassinate Kirov.

* Both Rights and Trotskyites were conspiring with the Germans and Japanese, as were the Military conspirators. If the "palace coup" did not work they hoped to come to power by showing loyalty to Germany or Japan in the event of an invasion.

* Trotsky too was directly conspiring with the Germans and Japanese, as were a number of his supporters.

* Nikolai Ezhov, head of the NKVD from 1936 to late 1938, was also conspiring with the Germans.

We now have much more evidence about the role of NKVD chief Nikolai Ezhov than we had in 2005. Ezhov, head of the NKVD (People’s Commissar for Internal Affairs), had his own conspiracy against the Soviet government and Party leadership. Ezhov had also been recruited by German intelligence.

Like the Rights and Trotskyites, Ezhov and his top NKVD men were counting on an invasion by Germany, Japan, or other major capitalist country. They tortured a great many innocent people into confessing to capital crimes so they would be shot. They executed a great many more on falsified grounds or no grounds at all.

Ezhov hoped that this mass murder of innocent people would turn large parts of the Soviet population against the government. That would create the basis for internal rebellions against the Soviet government when Germany or Japan attacked.

Ezhov lied to Stalin, the Party and government leaders about all this. The truly horrific mass executions of 1937-1938 of almost 680,000 people were in large part unjustifiable executions of innocent people carried out deliberately by Ezhov and his top men in order to sow discontent among the Soviet population.

Although Ezhov executed a very large number of innocent people, it is clear from the evidence now available that there were also real conspiracies. The Russian government continues to keep all but a tiny amount of the investigative materials top-secret. We can’t know for sure exactly the dimensions of the real conspiracies without that evidence. Therefore, we don’t know how many of these 680,000 people were actual conspirators and how many were innocent victims.

As I wrote in 2005, Stalin and the Party leadership began to suspect as early as October 1937 that some of the repression was done illegally. From early in 1938, when Pavel Postyshev was sharply criticized, then removed from the Central Committee, then expelled from the Party, tried and executed for mass unjustified repression, these suspicions grew.

When Lavrentii Beria was appointed as Ezhov’s second-in-command Ezhov and his men understood that Stalin and the Party leadership no longer trusted them. They made one last plot to assassinate Stalin at the November 7, 1938 celebration of the 21 st anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution. But Ezhov’s men were arrested in time.

Ezhov was persuaded to resign. An intensive investigation was begun and a huge number of NKVD abuses were uncovered. A great many cases of those tried or punished under Ezhov were reviewed. Over 100,000 people were released from prison and camps. Many NKVD men were arrested, confessed to torturing innocent people, tried and executed. Many more NKVD men were sentenced to prison or dismissed.

Under Beria the number of executions in 1938 and 1940 dropped to less than 1% of the number under Ezhov in 1937 and 1938, and many of those executed were NKVD men, including Ezhov himself, who were found guilty of massive unjustified repression and executions of innocent people.

Some of the most dramatic evidence published since 2005 are confessions of Ezhov and Mikhail Frinovsky, Ezhov’s second-in-command. I have put some of these on the Internet in both the original Russian and in English translation. We also have a great many more confessions and interrogations, mostly partial, of Ezhov, in which he makes many more confessions. These were published in 2007 in a semi-official account by Aleksei Pavliukov.

Anticommunist Scholars Hide the Truth

All "mainstream" – that is, anticommunist – and Trotskyist researchers falsely claim that there were no conspiracies. According to them, all the Moscow Trial defendants, all the military defendants, and all those tried and sentenced for espionage, conspiracy, sabotage, and other crimes, were innocent victims. Some claim that Stalin had planned to kill all these people because they might constitute a "Fifth Column" if the USSR were attacked. Other anticommunists prefer the explanation that Stalin just tried to terrorize the population into obedience.

This is an ideological, anticommunist stance masquerading as an historical conclusion. It is not based upon the historical evidence and is inconsistent with that evidence. Anticommunist historians ignore the primary source evidence available. They even ignore evidence in collections of documents that they themselves cite in their own works.

Why do the anticommunist "scholars", both in Russia and the West, ignore all this evidence? Why do they continue to promote the false notions that no conspiracies existed and that Stalin, not Ezhov, decided to execute hundreds of thousands of innocent people? The only possible explanation is that they do this for ideological reasons alone. The truth, as established by an examination of the primary source evidence, would make Stalin and the Bolsheviks "look good" to most people.

Collectivization of Agriculture Saved The World from Nazis and Japanese…

We have an example of this ideological bias in the way anticommunist scholars and writers treat the Bolshevik collectivization of agriculture. Anticommunists have long attacked it as immoral and unjustified. Yet collectivization provided the capital for the crash industrialization of the USSR. And only industrialization made a modern Red army possible.

Without a technologically-advanced modern army the Nazis would have conquered the USSR. Then, with the resources and manpower of the USSR and the rest of Europe behind them, the Nazis could have invaded the British Isles. Nazi armies would have been a far more formidable foe against all Allied powers. Meanwhile the Japanese, strengthened by the petroleum of the Soviet Far East, would have been a far more formidable enemy for the USA in the Pacific war.

Millions more Slavs and Jews – "Untermenschen" to the Nazis – and millions more Europeans and American soldiers – would have been killed. That this did not occur can be attributed, in large part, to the Soviet collectivization of agriculture. This is an obvious conclusion. There was simply no other way than by collectivizing agriculture that the USSR could have industrialized, and thus stood up to the Nazis and Japanese.

The only alternative was the one promoted by the Right and Trotskyite conspirators: to make peace with the Germans and Japanese, even if that meant granting them huge trade and territorial concessions. That would have greatly strengthened the Axis powers in their war against the U.K. and the USA.

For purely ideological reasons anticommunists cannot admit that collectivization made it possible for the Axis to be defeated.

… And So Did The Defeat of the Conspirators in 1936-1938

Whether they were able to seize political power through a "palace coup", or whether they would have to rely on a German and/or Japanese attack as they only way they might be able to overthrow the Stalin government, the Opposition conspirators were planning some kind of alliance with the Axis.

In fact they would have had no choice, as they realized themselves. A USSR weakened by internal revolt, with or without an invasion from abroad, would have had to make trade, territorial, and ideological concessions to its major potential adversaries simply in order to avoid invasion and inevitable conquest.

At a minimum, a USSR led by some combination of conspirators would have made treaties with Germany and Japan that would have provided the Axis powers with huge natural resources, possibly with manufactured goods as well. The military conspirators were contemplating going much farther than mere trade with the Axis. They were contemplating an outright military alliance with Germany. That would have meant millions more soldiers to fight alongside the German Wehrmacht.

Therefore, in foiling the machinations of the Rights, Trotsky and his supporters, and the Military conspirators, Stalin saved Europe from Naziism – again!

No doubt this is why anticommunist "scholars" insist, in the face of all the evidence, that there were no conspiracies in the USSR and no collaboration with the Germans and Japanese. Once again they refuse to admit these truths on purely ideological grounds because doing so would seem to justify Stalin’s actions.

Bukharin, Not Stalin, To Blame for the Massive Repressions

One interesting aspect of this is that Nikolai Bukharin, leading name among the Rightists and one of its leaders, knew about the "Ezhovshchina" as it was happening, and praised it in a letter to Stalin that he wrote from prison.

It gets even better. Bukharin knew that Ezhov was a member of the Rightist conspiracy, as he himself was. No doubt that is why he welcomed Ezhov's appointment as head of the NKVD -- a view recorded by his widow in her memoirs.

In his first confession, in his now-famous letter to Stalin of December 10, 1937, and at his trial in March 1938 Bukharin claimed he had completely "disarmed" and had told everything he knew. But now we can prove that this was a lie. Bukharin knew that Ezhov was a leading member of the Rightist conspiracy -- but did not inform on him. According to Mikhail Frinovsky, Ezhov's right-hand man, Ezhov probably promised to see that he would not be executed if he did not mention his own, Ezhov's, participation (see Frinovsky's confession of April 11, 1939 ).

If Bukharin had told the truth -- if he had, in fact, informed on Ezhov -- Ezhov's mass murders could have been stopped in their tracks. The lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent people could have been saved.

But Bukharin remained true to his fellow conspirators. He went to execution -- an execution he swore he deserved "ten times over" * -- without revealing Ezhov's participation in the conspiracy.

This point cannot be stressed too much: the blood of the hundreds of thousands of innocent persons slaughtered by Ezhov and his men during 1937-1938, are on Bukharin's hands.

Objectivity and Evidence

I agree with historian Geoffrey Roberts when he says:

In the last 15 years or so an enormous amount of new material on Stalin … has become available from Russian archives. I should make clear that as a historian I have a strong orientation to telling the truth about the past, no matter how uncomfortable or unpalatable the conclusions may be. … I don’t think there is a dilemma: you just tell the truth as you see it. ("Stalin’s Wars", Frontpagemag.com February 12, 2007. At http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/35305.html )

The conclusions I have reached about the "Ezhovshchina" will be unacceptable to ideologically-motivated people. I have not reached these conclusions out of any desire to "apologize" for the policies of Stalin or the Soviet government. I believe these to be the only objective conclusions possible based on the available evidence.

I make no claim that the Soviet leadership was free from error. Stalin’s vision of a socialism leading to communism was obviously faulty in that it did not come to pass. During Stalin’s time, as during the short period of Lenin’s leadership, the Soviets made a great many errors. Error is, of course, inevitable in all human endeavor. And since the Bolsheviks were the first communists to conquer and hold state power, they were in unknown waters. It was inevitable, therefore, that they would make a great many mistakes – and they did.

However, any objective study of the evidence and the historical record shows that there was simply no alternative to forced collectivization and industrialization – except defeat at the hands of some combination of capitalist powers. Likewise, the fact that the Right, Trotskyite, and Military conspiracies really did exist but were snuffed out by the Soviet leadership, which managed to out-maneuver Ezhov and foil his conspiracy as well, proves that once again the USSR – "Stalin" – saved Europe from Naziism and all the Allies from an immense number of additional casualties at the hands of the Axis powers.

* Bukharin's two appeals for clemency, both dated March 13, 1938, were reprinted in Izvestiia September 2, 1992, p. 3. They were rejected, and Bukharin was executed on March 15, 1938. I have put them online in English here.

Additional Bibliography

Ezhov’s interrogations: I have translated all of Ezhov’s interrogations available to me as of July 2010 and put them online here:

http://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/research/ezhovinterrogs.html (Russian original: http://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/research/ezhovpokazaniia.html )

Lubianka. Stalin I NKVD – NKGB – GUKR "SMERSH". 1939 – mart 1946 . Moscow, 2006.

• Frinovsky confession of April 11, 1939, pp. 33-50. http://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/research/frinovskyeng.html (Russian original here: http://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/research/frinovskyru.html )
• Ezhov confession of April 26, 1939, pp. 52-72. http://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/research/ezhov042639eng.html (Russian original: http://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/research/ezhovru.html )

Petrov, Nikita, Mark Jansen. "Stalinskii pitomets" – Nikolai Ezhov . Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2008, pp. 367-379.

• Ezhov confession of August 4, 1939. http://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/research/ezhov080439eng.html (Russian original: http://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/research/ezhov080439ru.html )

Furr, Grover and Vladimir L. Bobrov, "Bukharin's Last Plea: Yet Another Anti-Stalin Falsification." http://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/research/bukhlastplea.html - translation of Russian original published in Aktual’naia Istoriia for February 2009 at http://actualhistory.ru/bukharin_last_plea

Furr, Grover and Vladimir L. Bobrov, "Nikolai Bukharin's First Statement of Confession in the Lubianka" in English translation, Cultural Logic 2007 - http://clogic.eserver.org/2007/Furr_Bobrov.pdf

Furr, Grover and Vladimir L. Bobrov, "Pervye priznatel'nye pokazaniia N.I. Bukharina na Lubianke." Klio No. 1 (2007). http://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/research/furrnbobrov_klio0107.pdf

Furr, Grover and Vladimir L. Bobrov, eds. "Lichnye pokazaniia N. Bukharina." Klio (St. Petersburg), No. 1 (2007). http://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/research/furrnbobrov_klio0107.pdf

Furr, Grover. "Evidence of Leon Trotsky's Collaboration with Germany and Japan." In Cultural Logic for 2009. http://clogic.eserver.org/2009/Furr.pdf

Holmstr�m, Sven-Eric. "New Evidence Concerning the 'Hotel Bristol' Question in the First Moscow Trial of 1936". Cultural Logic 2008. At http://clogic.eserver.org/2008/Holmstrom.pdf

Furr, Grover.Khrushchev Lied: The Evidence That Every "Revelation" of Stalin's (and Beria's) Crimes in Nikita Khrushchev's Infamous "Secret Speech" to the 20th Party Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union on February 25, 1956, is Provably False. Kettering, OH: Erythros Press & Media LLC, 2011. At Amazon.com ; at Erythros Press & Media : at Abebooks.com ; at Abebooks.co.uk (United Kingdom)

Furr (‘Ferr’), Grover Antistalinskaia podlost’ ("Anti-Stalin Villanies"). Moscow: Algoritm, 2007. Home page: http://www.algoritm-kniga.ru/ferr-g.-antistalinskaya-podlost.html Brief summary in this interview: "The Sixty-One Untruths of Nikita Khrushchev" (Interview with Grover Furr). http://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/research/litrossiainterv0608_eng.html (original here: http://www.litrossia.ru/article.php?article=3003 )

Pavliukov, Aleksei. Ezhov. Moscow: Zakharov, 2007.

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The Moscow Trials

(march 1962).

This article was first published in Survey , No. 41, April 1962, pp. 87–95. Prepared for the MIA by Paul Flewers.

AT the twenty-second congress of the CPSU, N.S. Khrushchev once again raised the question of the “great purge”, this time in open session and with more detailed references to individual instances of Stalin’s persecution of his opponents. Khrushchev did not directly mention the three great Moscow trials, but the whole tenor of his reply to the discussion on the party programme made it clear that these trials were frame-ups. His remarks on the Kirov assassination alone were sufficient to demonstrate this, since the Kirov affair was the king-pin of the entire structure of these trials.

The assassination, 25 years ago, of Sergei Mironovich Kirov – Secretary of the Leningrad party organisation and member of the Politbureau – was the signal for the merciless repression of all Stalin’s known, suspected or potential opponents in the party. The range and thoroughness of this action was matched by the domestic and international propaganda campaign that accompanied it: for the Stalinist objective was not merely the physical destruction of all those who might conceivably constitute a rallying point for opposition within the party; not merely the creation in the USSR of an atmosphere of terror in which self-preservation should become the overriding consideration for each individual; it was also the complete moral annihilation of the leading figures of the Russian Revolution. Only Lenin would remain untouched, a great messianic figure; and by his side would rise the figure of Stalin, his sole true disciple. Consciousness of the past history of the Russian Revolution was to be erased from the mind of man and a new history was to take its place, the Stalin legend.

The campaign launched for this purpose – which may truly be termed a brain-washing campaign – was on a colossal scale. Its highlights were the three great Moscow trials in August 1936, January 1937 and March 1938, when almost the entire Bolshevik “old guard” was found guilty of organising the murder of Kirov, of wrecking, sabotage, treason, plotting the restoration of capitalism, etc. And it was precisely the defendants at these trials who, with their self-accusations, their abject penitence, their acceptance and praise of Stalin’s policies, showed themselves as eager as the Stalinists to support this campaign. Never before in history had there been a conspiracy of such dimensions, conspirators of such former eminence, and at the same time conspirators so uniformly anxious to attest the unrighteousness of their cause and the utter criminality of their actions.

At once sordid and deeply tragic, combining the grim reality of apparently normal juridical procedure with the lack of any evidence against the accused other than their own nightmarishly unreal confessions, these trials shocked the liberal conscience of the entire world. Yet it was, strangely enough, in Great Britain, a country proud of its tradition of liberal thought and action, that the most influential voices were raised in their defence.

Thus A.J. Cummings, then a political columnist of considerable standing, although admitting to some difficulty in accepting the guilt of all the accused, wrote of the first trial that “the evidence and the confessions are so circumstantial that to reject both as hocus-pocus would be to reduce the trial almost to complete unintelligibility”. (News Chronicle , 25 August 1936) The Moscow correspondent of the Observer also wrote (23 August 1936) that: “It is futile to think that the trial was staged and the charges trumped up. The government’s case against the defendants is genuine.” Sir Bernard Pares ( Spectator , 18 September 1936) likewise expressed the view that:

As to the trial generally, I was in Moscow while it was in progress and followed the daily reports in the press. Since then I have made a careful study of the verbatim report. Having done that I must give it as my considered judgement that if the report had been issued in a country (that is, other than the USSR) without any of the antecedents I have referred to, the trial would be regarded as one which could not fail to carry conviction ... The examination of the 16 accused by the State Prosecutor is a close work of dispassionate reasoning, in which, in spite of some denials and more evasions, the guilt of the accused is completely brought home.

These statements were made use of by the Anglo-Russian Parliamentary Committee in presenting to the public its summarised version of the official report (itself not verbatim) of the first Moscow trial. Its account of the second trial (compiled by W.P. and Zelda K. Coates) was introduced by Neil Maclean, MP, with a preface by the Moscow correspondent of the Daily Herald , R.T. Miller, and contained two speeches by Stalin, “in that simple and clear style of which Mr Stalin is such a master”, as Maclean put it. Maclean in his introductory foreword asserted that:

... practically every foreign correspondent present at the trial with the exception, of course, of the Japanese and German – have expressed themselves as very much impressed by the weight of evidence presented by the prosecution and the sincerity of the confessions of the accused.

In the course of his preface Miller wrote that “the prisoners appeared healthy, well-fed, well-dressed and unintimidated”; that “Mr Dudley Collard, the English barrister ... considered it perfectly sound from the legal point of view”; and that the accused “confessed because the state’s collection of evidence forced them to. No other explanation fits the facts.” [1]

Leaving aside Mr Collard, whose well-known political sympathies might explain his easy acceptance of surface appearances, it is clear that none of these commentators had the slightest understanding of the political struggle raging in the Soviet Union; a struggle of which these trials and those that had preceded them from 1928 onwards (which these gentlemen had apparently totally forgotten) were a reflection. Nor could any of them have really made a serious study of the official report. The circumstances of the time made many politically conscious people desire above all to think the best of the Soviet Government, and the views quoted above, deriving in part from this very desire, in part from sheer ignorance, were very welcome to the Stalinists. If they did not wholly convince, they at least helped to lull suspicion.

*  *  *

The most outstanding and the most influential supporter of the Stalinist campaign in the country was D.N. Pritt, an MP, a KC, and formerly president of the enquiry set up to investigate the proceedings of the Reichstag fire trial. Pritt entered the campaign with an article in the News Chronicle (27 August 1936), later reprinted in pamphlet form, The Moscow Trial was Fair (with additional material by Pat Sloan). He then expanded his analysis and argument in a booklet of 39 pages entitled The Zinoviev Trial (Gollancz, 1936). In this he first of all suggests that the bulk of the criticism of the trial emanated from the extreme right-wing opponents of the Soviet government. Still, he admits that much of it was made in good faith and came from “newspapers and individuals of very high reputation for fairness”. However, he goes on to imply that these critics had not, as he had, really studied the whole of the available evidence, but had relied upon incomplete reports. Moreover, they had not his advantage of being an eyewitness of the trial and a lawyer into the bargain. Having established in the reader’s mind that all criticism coming from sources hostile to the Soviet regime is ipso facto baseless, and having made plain his own geographical and professional superiority to the “fair-minded” critics, he argues that:

It should be realised at the outset, of course, that the critics who refuse to believe that Zinoviev and Kamenev could possibly have conspired to murder Kirov, Stalin, Voroshilov and others, even when they say themselves that they did, are in a grave logical difficulty. For if they thus dismiss the whole case for the prosecution as a “frame-up”, it follows inescapably that Stalin and a substantial number of other high officials, including presumably the judges and the prosecutor, were themselves guilty of a foul conspiracy to procure the judicial murder of Zinoviev, Kamenev and a fair number of other persons. (pp. 3–4)

The most general and important criticism of the trial, Pritt says, is that it was impossible to believe that “men should confess openly and fully to crimes of the gravity of those in question here”. (p. 5) In fact, of course, the critics” difficulty was not to believe that “men” should confess to “grave crimes”, but that these particular men should confess in that particular manner to crimes so contrary to everything known of their very public political pasts, so contrary to their known political philosophy, and so manifestly incapable of achieving their alleged objectives. For among those 16 accused there were, as Khrushchev has now obliquely reminded us, “prominent representatives of the old guard who, together with Lenin, founded “the world’s first proletarian state”. ( Report on the Programme of the CPSU , Soviet Booklet No. 81, 1961, p. 108) These were now transformed, in the words of the indictment, into “unprincipled political adventurers and assassins striving at only one thing, namely, to make their way to power even through terrorism”. ( Report of Court Proceedings: The Case of the Trotskyite-Zinovievite Terrorist Centre , People’s Commissariat of Justice of the USSR, Moscow 1936, p. 18)

Pritt himself, however, does not appear to be wholly at ease about the lack of evidence adduced other than the confessions, for he suggests that the Soviet government would have preferred all or most of the accused to have pleaded not guilty, for then the “full strength of the case” would have been apparent. As it was, “all the available proof did not require to be brought forward”. (p. 9) He assumes the existence of this proof; he writes that we cannot possibly know “what further facts there were in the record that were not adduced at all”. Not, that is, whether further facts were available, but what facts.

Although there is constant mention of facts, Pritt never gets down to a consideration of verifiable factual evidence adduced in alleged corroboration of the confessions. The closest he gets to giving an example of this is when he refers to an alleged conversation between two of the accused in which “a highly incriminating phrase was used”. Each of the accused denied using it, but each said that the other had. Pritt found this highly significant. He does not explain why the accused should have shied at admitting the use of “incriminating phrases” when they had already confessed to capital crimes.

Pritt claims to have reached his conclusion on the basis of a careful study of the official report of the trial. Surely, then, he must have been aware that, when it was not simply a question of “incriminating phrases”, conversations about conversations, but of concrete facts, some very glaring discrepancies were exposed, such as, for example, the flatly contradictory evidence of two of the accused, Olberg and Holtzmann, and the alleged meeting at a non-existent hotel.

It hardly seems possible that a man of Pritt’s professional training could have failed to see that the whole structure of the confessions simply did not hang together. He did not even notice anything strange in the tale of those two desperadoes Fritz David and Bermin-Yurin, who, after spending two and a half years preparing a plan to kill Stalin at the Congress of the Communist International, decided, when it came to the point, that they could not shoot “because there were too many people”!

For Pritt “anything in the nature of forced confessions is intrinsically impossible”; it was “obvious to anyone who watched the proceedings in court that the confessions as made orally in court could not possibly have been concocted or rehearsed”; and not even the keenest critic had been able to find a false note (pp. 12–14). The picture he gives of himself is that of an utterly credulous bumpkin. Any reasonably objective student of Soviet politics must have been aware at the time that this trial and those that followed were frame-ups. It did not require Khrushchev to admit that “thousands of absolutely innocent people perished ... Many party leaders, statesmen and military leaders lost their lives”; that “they were ‘persuaded’, persuaded in certain ways, that they were German, British or some other spies. And some of them ‘confessed’.”

For the Moscow trials were all of a piece with those that had preceded them: the Shakhty trial in 1928; the Industrial Party trial in 1930; the Menshevik trial in 1931; and the Metro-Vickers trial in 1933. [2] No student of these trials would fail to see that they served a definite political purpose and that justice had been perverted to this end. The very occurrence, previous to the Moscow trials, of exactly similar confession trials – with all their “technical” failures (attempted retraction of confessions; an accused going insane; long dead men named as conspirators, etc) – should have been enough to raise doubts in the mind of the most prejudiced. But the supporters of Stalin clearly did not want to see the truth. [3]

Here, as elsewhere, it was the paramount task of the Communist Party to “sell” the trials. For this purpose, in addition to public meetings throughout the country and articles in the Daily Worker and other periodicals, a stream of pamphlets was published. The Moscow correspondent of the Daily Worker , W.D. Shepherd, wrote two pamphlets in 1936: The Truth About the Murder of Kirov (31 pages) and The Moscow Trial (15 pages). In 1937, two leading English communists, Harry Pollitt and R. Palme Dutt, wrote The Truth about Trotskyism: The Moscow Trial (36 pages), and in 1938 R. Page Arnot and Tim Buck dealt with the third trial in Fascist Agents Exposed (22 pages). Supplementing all this there were the so-called verbatim Reports of the Court Proceedings (published in English by the People’s Commissariat of Justice of the USSR), and the abridged version of the official report of the August 1936 trial, published by the Anglo-Russian Parliamentary Committee. This does not, of course, exhaust the list of published matter issued directly or indirectly by the Communist Party in defence at the trials. Party contributors to the Left Book Club publications naturally also supported the campaign. In this respect JR Campbell’s Soviet Policy and its Critics (Gollancz, 1938, 374 pages) and Soviet Democracy (Gollancz, 1937, 288 pages) by Pat Sloan, are notable.

The bulk of this material eschews any attempt at reasoning and concentrates on invective in the verbal knuckleduster style typical of the Stalinist school. Campbell’s book is a much more ambitious effort in that he admits knowledge of the Dewey Commission [4] , quotes from its proceedings, and also uses quotations from Trotsky’s writings, albeit within strict limits. Thus he quotes Trotsky’s words:

Why, then, did the accused, after 25, 30 or more years of revolutionary work, agree to take upon themselves such monstrous and degrading accusations? How did the GPU achieve this? Why did not a single one of the accused cry out openly before the court against the frame-up? Etc, etc. In the nature of the case I am not obliged to answer these questions.

Here Campbell stops and comments: “But if there is no answer then a most important element in the case of the Soviet government is upheld.” (p. 252) He does not follow the quotation further, which runs:

We could not here question Yagoda (he is now being questioned himself by Yezhov), or Yezhov, or Vyshinsky, or Stalin, or, above all, their victims, the majority of whom, indeed, have already been shot. That is why the Commission cannot fully uncover the inquisitorial technique of the Moscow trials. But the mainsprings are already apparent. ( The Case of Leon Trotsky , pp. 482–83)

A very striking illustration of the Stalinist technique – low cunning, contempt for the truth, contempt for the reader’s intelligence – is to be seen on page 213 of Campbell’s book in his quotation from Trotsky’s The Soviet Union and the Fourth International . He begins in the middle of a paragraph:

The first social shock, external or internal, may throw the atomised Soviet society into civil war. The workers, having lost control over the state and economy, may resort to mass strikes as weapons of self-defence. The discipline of the dictatorship would be broken down [5] under the onslaught of the workers and because of the pressure of economic difficulties the trusts would be forced to disrupt the planned beginnings and enter into competition with one another. The dissolution of the regime would naturally be thrown over into the army. The socialist state would collapse, giving place to the capitalist regime, or, more correctly, to capitalist chaos.

And on this, Campbell writes: “This was more than a prophecy. It was the objective of the conspirators.” The very next paragraph in Trotsky’s essay begins: “The Stalinist press, of course, will reprint our warning analysis as a counter-revolutionary prophecy, or even as the expressed ‘desire’ of the Trotskyites.”

Campbell’s book is a long diatribe against “Trotskyism” and of its 374 pages there is hardly one on which the name Trotsky does not appear. Since this was written after the third Moscow trial, he has caught up with the Soviet scenario, successively developed with each trial. The crimes of the accused are now “only a culminating point in the struggle which Trotsky and his followers have been waging against the Bolshevik party since 1903”.

One of the curiosities of this period is the book written by Maurice Edelman from the notes of a Peter Kleist, entitled GPU Justice (1938). [6] According to Edelman, Kleist was “by no means a communist”. Efforts to convey an impression of objectivity are evident. The book dispenses with the usual Stalinist bludgeoning invective and affects a dispassionate, disengaged attitude, but its phraseology and tone are unmistakably pro-Stalinist. The Soviet Union is a classless society; the GPU is simply a police force like any other (only superior, of course); it is a misconception to consider it a secret police; if you are innocent no one can make you guilty; talk of GPU torture is Polish fascist slander; he, Kleist, is treated considerately, without brutality, and, therefore, so is every other suspect. There are many little touches designed to bring out the humanity of Kleist’s captors. The Lubyanka and Butyrki prisons are depicted as rest-homes, where lengthy discussions (reproduced apparently verbatim) permit Stalinists to defend Stalin and Trotskyites to expose themselves as avowed wreckers and saboteurs in collaboration with the White Guards. The book could obviously only have been written by someone with a very clear idea of the party line, and at the same time someone anxious to appear non-partisan. The cloak of non-partisanship is worn pretty thin, however, by the author’s efforts to defend and extol, not merely “GPU justice”, but almost every aspect of Soviet life, including the forced labour camps. Finally, in an appendix, Kleist on the Moscow Trials , all pretence of impartiality is dropped. There one reads: “Why do they confess? was the typical journalistic question, and no one, except the communist papers, supplied the obvious answer: ‘Because they were guilty.’” (p. 211) In this section the stock Stalinist arguments are put forward by Kleist himself and not, as in the main narrative, through the mouths of others.

To these arguments he adds one of his very own. It gives the appearance of having been inserted to show that in spite of his total agreement with the party line, he is nevertheless by no means a communist. For he says that, the GPU having established the guilt of the accused, they were “at this point quite conceivably offered remission of the death sentence”. This, he argues, “would account for the fluency of the confession and for the calm with which the majority of the prisoners heard the sentence of death” (p. 217). Apparently, Kleist regards this kind of double-crossing as a mark of the humanity of GPU justice.

His final sentence is worth noting:

In the years which have passed since this my release , the bursting into flames of the Spanish-Fascist rebellion, the risings and intervention of the Nazis in Austria and the promise of intervention in Czechoslovakia, have convinced me that whatever bewilderment is felt outside the Soviet Union at the unearthing of these Fascist conspirators, Fascist conspiracy in conjunction with Trotskyist conspiracy does exist and that its extirpation, so far from endangering the USSR, marks another peril avoided. (p. 218)

Leaving aside the peculiar logic of this passage, attention is drawn to the words emphasised. The book was published in 1938. Kleist was released in April 1937. Thus, no “years” could have passed since his release. The reader may work out for himself the chronology of the events to which he refers, all of which he says took place after his release.

The verdict of the British press was in general unfavourable to the Moscow trials. Among the dailies the Manchester Guardian stood out as their sharpest critic. In addition to its own editorial comment, it published cables from Trotsky rebutting the evidence and attacking Stalin’s policy, earning what is probably the rarest praise ever bestowed by a revolutionary on a “bourgeois” newspaper. “I know full well”, Trotsky telegraphed from Mexico (25 January 1937), “that the Manchester Guardian will be one of the first to serve the truth and humanity.” Typical of the Manchester Guardian ’s attitude was its statement of 28 August 1936: “He [Stalin] surrounds himself with men of his own making [7] and devotes all the power of the state to removing those who, however remotely, might become rival centres of authority.”

Nothing as bluntly condemnatory as this came, however, from The Times . Indeed, in 1936 and 1937, its attitude might justly be construed as favourable to Stalin. The trials, it thought, reflected the triumph of Stalin’s “nationalist” policy over that of the revolutionary die-hards. The conservative forces, with the overwhelming support of the nation, had now demonstrably gained the day. On this single point it was curiously at one with Trotsky himself, who wrote in an article in the Sunday Express (6 March 1938) that: “From beginning to end his [Stalin’s] programme was that of the formation of a bourgeois republic.” It was only with the 1938 trial that The Times expressed doubts as to the general trend of affairs in the Soviet Union. On balance one cannot say that The Times saw very clearly in this matter. [8]

The labour press was naturally in agreement with the views expressed by the Socialist International and the International Federation of Trade Unions (Louis de Brouckère and F. Adler on behalf of the LSI, and Sir W. Citrine and Walter Schevenels on behalf of the IFTU sent telegrams of protest on the occasion of each of the trials). Writing on the second trial in Reynolds News (7 February 1937), H.N. Brailsford said that it left him “bewildered, doubtful, miserable”; pointed however to the confessions – “If they had been coerced, surely some of them ... would have blurted out the truth”; referred then to the conflict of the evidence with known facts, and concluded: “In one Judas among 12 apostles it is easy to believe. But when there are 11 Judases and only one loyal apostle, the Church is unlikely to thrive.” In the Scottish Forward , Emrys Hughes” witty, ironic articles bluntly exposed the trials as “frame-ups”.

On the other hand, however, it was the communists alone who maintained a campaign consonant with their objectives. There can be little doubt that they did finally succeed in diverting the attention of left-wing opinion and those others whom they courted from the essential issues raised by the trials, and in persuading a very large body of public opinion that Stalin’s policy was right.

In this task they received powerful support from the New Statesman and Nation , which reached an audience not in general susceptible to direct communist approach. This journal gave an exhibition of dithering evasiveness and moral obtuseness rarely displayed by a reputedly responsible publication. The 1936 trial, “if one may trust the available reports, was wholly unconvincing” (28 August 1936). At the same time:

We do not deny ... that the confessions may have contained a substance of truth. We complain because, in the absence of independent witnesses, there is no way of knowing ... When we hear that so close and trusted a friend of Stalin as Radek, is suspected ... we are compelled to wonder that there may not be more serious discontent in the Soviet Union than was generally believed.” (5 September 1936)

An article on the second trial, Will Stalin Explain? (30 January 1937), stated that “the various parts of the plot do not seem to hang together”; but the confessions could not be doubted because that would mean doubting Soviet justice; on the other hand, “to accept them as they stand is to draw a picture of a regime divided against itself”. If there was an escape from this dilemma, would Stalin please tell them what it was?

In the absence of any answer from Stalin to this complaint, the journal had to be, and apparently was, satisfied with matters as they stood. For after the verdict it asserted that: “Few would now maintain that all or any of them were completely innocent.” (6 February 1937) Reference is made to a letter from Mr Dudley Collard (the letter noted earlier in this article) and the comment made: “If he is right, we may hope that the present round-up and the forthcoming trial will mean the final liquidation of ‘Trotskyism’ in the USSR, or at least of the infamous projects to which that word is now applied.”

The third trial again demonstrated the New Statesman and Nation ’s remoteness from reality and indifference to the moral issues raised: “The Soviet trial is undoubtedly very popular in the USSR. The exposure of Yagoda ... pleases everyone and seems to explain a great deal of treachery and inefficiency in the past.” But: “the confessions remain baffling whether we regard them as true or false, and the prisoners as innocent or guilty. There has undoubtedly been much plotting in the USSR.” (12 March 1938)

True or false; innocent or guilty: one could take one’s choice – what was important was that the confessions were baffling. Even more baffling were the mental processes by which an otherwise humane and intelligent man could write in a manner at once so callous and so superficial.

This type of confusion and refusal to face facts dominated the thinking of many left-wing intellectuals and the left wing of the labour movement during the 1930s. The experience of the great Russian purge destroyed no illusions, taught them nothing. And even today it is doubtful if there is a full appreciation of the profound effect those events had on Russian society and the men who lead it.

1. A member of the Fabian Society, Mr Collard performed the same service for the second Moscow trial as Pritt had done for the first (see D. Collard, Soviet Justice and the Trial of Radek , 1937). In 1936 he sent from Moscow a long telegram of protest against the appeal for mercy addressed to the court by Adler and Citrine. Yet in the New Statesman of 6 February 1937 he stated that “English reports of previous trials induced in me certain misgivings as to the genuineness of the charges”.

2. There were 53 accused at the 1928 trial – far too many for its proper staging. Right at the beginning it was announced that one, Nekrasov, had gone mad. Two other accused tried to withdraw their confessions during the course of the trial, giving a sickening glimpse of the preliminary investigation’s “rehearsal” horrors. At the next trial, in 1930, one Osadchy was brought into court under guard to give evidence as a member of the “conspiracy”. Osadchy had been one of the state prosecutors in the 1928 trial. With each trial the staging “improved”, but in the very nature of such trials perfection was impossible. Even at their “best” they could only deceive those suffering from what Ignazio Silone called the disease of juridical cretinism. It is worth noting that at the third Moscow trial the State Prosecutor, Vyshinsky, himself called attention to the connection between all these trials. ( Report of the Court Proceedings in the Case of the Anti-Soviet Bloc of Rights and Trotskyists , Moscow 1938, pp. 636–37)

3. It is worth recording that Moscow University recently conferred on D.N. Pritt the honorary degree of Doctor of Law. During the ceremony Academician Ivan Petrovsky, Rector of the University, praised Pritt as an “outstanding lawyer and selfless defender of the common people”.

4. See The Case of Leon Trotsky and Not Guilty (Secker and Warburg, 1937 and 1938).

5. The original reads: “The discipline of the dictatorship would be broken. Under the ...”, etc.

6. Recommended in Philip Grierson’s Books on Soviet Russia, 1917–1942 (1943) as “sober and matter-of-fact narrative; an admirable corrective to more sensational writings” (p. 125).

7. Among them, of course, N. Khrushchev, who, speaking from the roof of Lenin’s tomb to a parade of 200,000 workers after the 1937 trial, said: “By lifting their hands against Comrade Stalin they lifted them against everything that is best in humanity, because Stalin is the hope, Stalin is the expectation, Stalin is the lighthouse of all progressive humanity. Stalin, our banner! Stalin, our will! Stalin, our victory!” ( Daily Telegraph , 1 February 1937)

8. “Stalin’s policy of nationalism has been amply vindicated. Russia has made much industrial progress, social conditions are improving.” ( The Times , 20 August 1936) “Today the Russian dictatorship stages what is evidently meant to be the most impressive and terrifying of its many exhibitions of despotic power ... The customary overture has already been played by the Soviet press ... howling for the blood of those whom it denounces, in the grimly proleptic phrase, as “this Trotskyist carrion”.” ( The Times , 2 March 1938).

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Last updated: 17 February 2023