During the 1930s, the Soviet Union, under the leadership of Joseph Stalin, experienced a wave of repression and terror that came to be known as the Great Terror.

This period saw the widespread use of secret police, forced labor camps, and executions to suppress perceived threats to the regime.

We'll be examining the causes and consequences of the Great Terror, and exploring how it impacted Soviet society and the lives of ordinary people.

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A popular view of the war at sea is that of Britain pushed right to the edge, mounting shipping losses leading to fears of starvation in Britain and possible capitulation. Military historian Max Hastings suggests otherwise, pointing to the shortcomings and failings of Germany's U-Boat fleet and the growing expertise and technological superiority of the allied navies.

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Why did the patchwork Habsburg empire collapse in 1918? The pressures of war and the competing identities and loyalties of the men that fought in the Austo Hungarian armies both have a significant part to play. This podcast explores the overlapping national, regional and ethnic identities, loyalties and ambitions.

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When Leon Trotsky was murdered by NKVD agent Ramon Mercader in 1940, his ideas lived on. The Trotskyist Fourth International and the American Socialist Workers Party in particular claimed (though this was disputed by his widow Natalia) to be the inheritors of his beliefs. Trotsky's critique of the USSR and its capitalist enemies stated that the Russian Revolution had effectively been killed in its infancy, and that instead a bureacratic state had replaced a revolutionary society. Some of Trotsky's former disciples eventually distanced themselves from his beliefs, embracing American conservatism and free market capitalism, most famously the recanting revolutionary James Burnham.

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In this episode of the Explaining History Study Extra, we explore Lenin's death and the consequences for the power struggle to succeed him. We examine the legacy of the New Economic Policy and War Communism and the divisions in the party they led to.

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By 1916 Winston Churchill's wartime reputation was in tatters after the disaster of the Dardanelles Campaign. His self belief was his most powerful asset, particularly as so many of his parliamentary colleagues mistrusted him. He was brought back into David Lloyd George's war cabinet, though even the new prime minster was wary of him. Lloyd George, who had used the conscription issue to remove Herbert Asquith, eventually led Britain to victory, but this was partially in spite of Churchill, not because of him.

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This is the first Explaining History study extra recording for students. In this podcast we hear about the origins of Italian fascism and the experience of striking workers and returning soldiers after 1918. The desire for national unity and social order that had motivated many Italians to fight hardened into violent anti communism when they witnessed chaotic scenes of strikes and anti war protests on arrival home.

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In the second year of the Great War, the British began to consider the future of the Middle East once the Ottoman Empire had been defeated. The Ottomans were proving to be far more effective fighters than the British had anticipated, but the discovery of oil at Mosul had made the control of the Middle East a priority. Prime Minister David Lloyd George summoned Sir Mark Sykes, a British diplomat and explorer to demonstrate how British and French ambitions in the region could both be accomodated. This is the first of several podcasts on the division of the Ottoman Empire after the First World War.

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Neoliberalism in Britain has shaped the political, economic and social fabric of the nation in its entirety for almost half a century. As a cluster of ideological positions which evolved from the interwar years onwards, it existed as a fringe doctrine. Britain's current economic and political chaos suggests that the ideology has finally reached its point of collapse, just as the UK's new prime minister, Liz Truss has endorsed it in ever more radical and extreme ways. This podcast reflects upon Neoliberalism as a doctrine and its hold over both of Britain's two main political parties.

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After the first attempt at a national uprising by the fascist generals in Spain ended in failure, Madrid became a dangerous and violent city dominated by anarchist militias. Many had no trust for the Republican government and their ranks were bolstered by murderers and other violent prisoners let loose from the city's jails. In 1936 many of the Madrid police and civil guard had joined with the fascist insurrection and the last hold outs of the failed uprising within the city were brutally massacred after they fired repeatedly on civilians.

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