Editing Great Purge (section)

==Western reactions==
Although the trials of former Soviet leaders were widely publicized, the hundreds of thousands of other arrests and executions were not. These became known in the West only as a few former gulag inmates reached the West with their stories.{{sfn|Conquest|2008|pp=472–473}} Not only did foreign correspondents from the West fail to report on the purges, but in many Western nations (especially France), attempts were made to silence or discredit these witnesses;{{sfn|Conquest|2008|p=472}} according to Robert Conquest, [[Jean-Paul Sartre]] took the position that evidence of the camps should be ignored so the French proletariat would not be discouraged.{{sfn|Conquest|2008|p=472}} A series of legal actions ensued at which definitive evidence was presented that established the validity of the former labor camp inmates' testimony.{{sfn|Conquest|2008|pp=472–474}}

According to [[Robert Conquest]] in his 1968 book ''The Great Terror: Stalin's Purge of the Thirties'', with respect to the trials of former leaders, some Western observers were unintentionally or intentionally ignorant of the fraudulent nature of the charges and evidence, notably [[Walter Duranty]] of ''[[The New York Times]]'', a Russian speaker; the American Ambassador, [[Joseph E. Davies]], who reported, "proof&nbsp;... beyond reasonable doubt to justify the verdict of treason";{{sfn|Conquest|2008|p=468}} and [[Beatrice Webb|Beatrice]] and [[Sidney Webb]], authors of ''Soviet Communism: A New Civilization''.{{sfn|Conquest|2008|p=469}} While "Communist Parties everywhere simply transmitted the Soviet line", some of the most critical reporting also came from the left, notably ''[[The Guardian|The Manchester Guardian]]''.{{sfn|Conquest|2008|pp=465–467}} The American journalist [[H. R. Knickerbocker]] also reported on the executions. He called them in 1941 "the great purges", and described how over four years they affected "the top fourth or fifth, to estimate it conservatively, of the Party itself, of the Army, Navy, and Air Force leaders and then of the new Bolshevik intelligentsia, the foremost technicians, managers, supervisors, scientists". Knickerbocker also wrote about dekulakization: "It is a conservative estimate to say that some 5,000,000 [kulaks] ... died at once, or within a few years."<ref name="knickerbocker1941">{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=RwGwpIBHhgcC&pg=PA133|title=Is Tomorrow Hitler's? 200 Questions on the Battle of Mankind|publisher=Reynal & Hitchcock|author=Knickerbocker, H.R.|year=1941|pages=133–134|isbn=978-1417992775}}</ref>

Evidence and the results of research began to appear after Stalin's death. This revealed the full enormity of the Purges. The first of these sources were the revelations of Nikita Khrushchev, which particularly affected the American editors of the [[Communist Party USA]] newspaper, the ''[[Daily Worker]]'', who, following the lead of ''The New York Times'', published the [[On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences|Secret Speech]] in full.<ref>{{Cite web|author=Howard Fast|title=On Leaving the Communist Party|url=https://www.trussel.com/hf/onleave.htm|date=16 November 1957|access-date=2023-02-23|website=www.trussel.com}}</ref>