Michael Parrish

Michael Parrish has produced a very useful book containing information on almost a 1000 senior Soviet officers, who were suppressed or died in the period 1939-1953. However the criteria for inclusion in the book is very blurred and in many cases you don’t know why a certain officer has been included as in the case of A.M. Antila (Commander of the Red Finnish forces 1939-1940), where his entry doesn’t provided information on him being a victim of suppression, nor does it state when he show more died. Some of the entries are very spare some with information and with the initials on each officer it is some time difficult to positively identify the officer. Full names would have provide the book as would a better proof reading as the book contains a number of mistakes an errors which may have been caught. This is btw. a common trait with another of Parrish’s books: The Lesser Terror: Soviet State Security, 1939-1953. Nevertheless it is a very useful book with a lot of information not previously published in English. show less