Is Doom The Dark Ages on Game Pass? Theres quite the ownership chain now when it comes to id Software, which belongs to Bethesda, which belongs to ZeniMax, which now belongs to Microsoft. But does this mean Doom The Dark Ages will arrive on the Xbox publishers Game Pass service by default?Doom The Dark Ages finally fills the gap between Doom 64 and Doom 2016, taking place at the height of the war between the Sentinels of Argent Dnur and the legions of hell. Its a darker, grittier FPS than its predecessor, Doom Eternal, yet as our Doom The Dark Ages review attests, it hasn't lost any of its sheen in the gameplay department. Continue reading Is Doom The Dark Ages on Game Pass?MORE FROM PCGAMESN: Doom The Dark Ages review, Best FPS games, Doom The Dark Ages release date

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In the USSR during Stalins regime, show trials were a tool of political repression. The trials were orchestrated events that coerced confessions out of innocent people. The end was to consolidate Stalins power by removing any potential rivals. The Great Purge of the 1930s was the most brutal political cleansing event in which up to 1.5 million people were arrested, interrogated, and tortured; up to 1.2 million of them diedeither by execution or in a forced labor camp called a Gulag.What Is a Show Trial?Joseph Stalin, Secretary-General of the Communist Party of Soviet Russia, 1942. Source: Wikimedia CommonsCommunist show trials were a central part of the Stalinist regime in the USSR. They were essentially theatrical productions in which the judge and jury had both already decided that the defendant was guilty, and they did not consult evidence before issuing their verdict. The victims of the show trials were sometimes coached on what to say before going to the stand to ensure that everybody followed the same story, like a script.These performances often went above and beyond. For example, if the defendant were accused of being an enemy spy, the prosecutors would bring his mother or wife in for an interrogation. They would tell the woman that the accused had already confessed to the crimes when he had not. She was then required to testify that she knew he had been a spy all along and had committed crimes against the state, and she would agree because it was no use fighting with the truth if he had confessed.The prosecutors would then tell the man that his wife/mother had said to them that he had committed the crime and that she was going to testify as a witness, so he might as well just confess. To get him to agree to lie on the stand, they might offer immunity for his family or take the death penalty off the table, but they were under no moral obligation to keep their word.Why Would They Fake a Trial?Donetsk repressii by Andrew Butko, 2007. Source: Wikimedia CommonsShow trials originated during the Great Purge of the 1930s, and they were to eliminate anybody who challenged Joseph Stalin or the regime. The catalyst for the political purge was the 1934 assassination of Sergei Kirov, a Bolshevik revolutionary from the 1917 Russian Revolution.Whether or not Stalin played a role in the assassination is debatable. Still, ultimately, he used Kirovs death to ask the Politburo (the policymaking committee) for permission to cleanse the government of anybody who might betray the USSR or Stalin himself. The NKVD (the secret police) began arresting the so-called enemies, including Trotskyitessomeone who associated with or favored Leon Trotsky, a man who challenged Stalin.The crowded gallery of a show trial where those accused of crimes against the state in the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany were tried without fair defense. Source: FriezePolitical repression, show trials, and gulags were an open secret; the public attended the trials, and details of the proceedings were published both within and outside of the USSR. Stalin desperately needed to prove that there were enemies of the state, and foreign agents, or Western spies who posed a threat to the USSR and Stalin himself. He wished to jail or kill all potential political rivals before they could challenge him.Stalin and the rest of the communists throughout the USSR and their satellite states would continue the tradition of denouncing their rivals for decades.The Great PurgeMemorial to the Victims of Political Repression by Vyacheslav Bukharov, 2021. Source: Wikimedia CommonsThe Great Purge, sometimes called the Great Terror, should not be confused with the Red Terror, a period of political repression from 1918 to 1922 after the 1917 Revolution. The Red Terror was orchestrated by the Cheka (the first Soviet secret police, later the NKVD, and even later, it would be called the KGB) and the Bolsheviks, resulting in the deaths of up to 600,000 people.This era of political cleansing lasted from 1936 to 1938, but its most prolific year was 1937; overall, upwards of 1.5 million people were arrested, and at least 681,692 people were found guilty and executed, and another 116,000 people died in the Gulagsofficially. It is estimated that upwards of 1.2 million people died, but deaths in Gulags often went unreported.The 1930s Great Purge was the systematic mass murder of political opponents. Although the United Nations Genocide Convention does not include political killings in the definition of genocide, many academics have called the purge a political genocide. They did not just target politicians, though; they also went for Red Army leadership, kulaks (considered wealthy peasants), religious leaders, scientists, doctors, intelligentsia, ethnic minorities, and anybody else who may have been standing in the wrong place at the wrong time. People were imprisoned or sent to Gulags to serve sentences of performing hard labor for the crime of telling jokes or of writing poemsand repression of the arts is still present in Russia today.The Gulag SystemGulag location map by NordNordWest, 2015. Source: Wikimedia CommonsThe USSR has a long history of genocide and ethnic cleansing operations, and the Great Purge is just one example.Victims of the Purge were sent to a Gulag if they were not executed outright. Gulag, sometimes written as GULAG, is an acronym for Main Directorate of Correctional Labor Camps. It was a vast network of forced labor camps and prisons in the Soviet Union. Labor camps began in 1919 with an official decree on April 15, but the Gulag system was established in 1930 and was not officially abolished until 1960.It is estimated that 18 million people passed through 53 camps and 423 labor colonies (camps where prisoners were forced to work in heavy industries such as mining, logging, and construction). Official estimates are always lower, but somewhere between 2.3 and 17.6 million prisoners lost their lives (Predota). The Soviets hid, or never made, records, and bodies of prisoners who died in the Gulags were buried in mass graves and never spoken of again. Many thousands of families still have no idea when their loved ones died nor where they were buried.One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962) is a novel by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, a Russian who wished to tell the world what life was like in the USSR. The namesake, Ivan, was an inmate in the prison camp system after he was falsely convicted of being a spy. Solzhenitsyn has written several nonfiction books on the USSR and the Gulags, but his novel was the first of its kind.Memorial to the Victims of Political Repressions in the suburbs of Yekaterinburg by Vyacheslav Bukharov, 2021. Source: Wikimedia CommonsThe Soviet forced labor camps were akin to Nazi labor camps and operated during the same time. Before the Nazis even began relocating people, the Soviets began transporting people via cattle car in the 1930s to labor camps and relocation camps. They also invented mobile gas units to kill their prisoners in the 1930s. Then the Nazis took the idea to connect a trucks exhaust pipe to an enclosed space to gas prisoners inside.Prisoners in Soviet camps often died of starvation, executions, harsh working conditions, or extreme cold in the camps of Siberia. Roughly two-thirds of Russia is covered in permafrost, which never thaws, and they have vast deposits of natural resources such as coal, natural gas, and rocks and minerals. The Soviets used prisoners to perform the hard labor of extracting these resources to (literally) fuel their economy.Wall of sorrow at the first exhibition of the victims of Stalinism in Moscow by Dmitry Borko, 1988. Source: Wikimedia CommonsMass graves of victims are still being excavated today, such as the Kommunarkashooting grounds near Moscow, where over 6,600 bodies have been discovered. Sites have been uncovered throughout the USSR, such as in Ukraine, where there are now several memorials to pay tribute to the victims. In 2021, construction workers in Odesa, Ukraine, found at least 20,000 corpses buried in a mass grave. In Kurapaty, Belarus, in a forest outside Minsk, at least 30,000 but up to 250,000 people were killed by the Soviets and buried in mass graves.Adam Hochschild traveled through Russia, interviewing people, studying archives, and visiting former camp locations to write the book The Unquiet Ghost: Russians Remember Stalin (2003). He describes how mass graves were frequently discovered in the USSR and just as soon covered up. A tunnel in the Ural Mountains of western Russia was discovered with thousands of bodies in it, and a mass grave of more than a thousand bodies was uncovered after severe flooding in Kolpashevo, Russia.Eliminating the IntelligentsiaVsevolod Meyerhold 2024 stamp of Russia. Source: Wikimedia CommonsOne of the main purposes of the Purge of the 1930s and show trials was to eliminate political opponents, but they also went after common folk and academicsotherwise called the intelligentsia. The Soviets called them the bourgeoisie, a middle class of educated, wealthy people whom the Soviets believed represented the ruling elite of the former Russian Empire; therefore, they were enemies of the communist state.Actor, director, and theater producer Vsevolod Meyerhold was arrested during the period of cleansing for being a formalistone who adhered to a literary theory called Russian Formalism. Under Stalin, this literary movement became an all-encompassing term for anything considered elitist art, not just literature, that contradicted Soviet Socialist Realism, a more traditional, figurative form of art. Thus, Formalists were seen as enemies during Stalins reign because they would not adhere to the new way of life and art, which differed from the avant-garde art of the early USSR.Meyerhold was arrested in June 1939. His wife was stabbed to death by home invaders, and he was tortured mercilessly by the secret police in Moscow, where he confessed to being a spy for Britain and Japan. He, like hundreds of thousands of others, confessed to a crime he did not commit so that the torture would end. After confessing, he was executed on February 1, 1940. In 1955, the Soviet Supreme Court absolved him of the charges, but it was too little too late.The Khrushchev Thaw and Political RehabilitationThe Soviet Union 1963 CPA 2824 stamp (Russian Civil War Hero Marshal of the Soviet Union Mikhail Tukhachevsky. Source: Wikimedia CommonsThe Khrushchev Thaw was a period of relaxation and a reversal of the repression caused during the Stalin years. Nikita Khrushchev, who held several government positions, including Prime Minister and First Secretary of the Communist Party, was highly critical of Stalin and made it a mission to rehabilitate/exonerate victims of the Purge (and other subsequent small pogroms or political repression).The above images of Russian stamps with photos of Meyerhold and Mikhail Tukhachevsky were part of a series of stamps commemorating victims of the repression. Tukhachevskywas a prominent military general, and just after he was demoted to commander of the Volga Military District, he was arrested in 1937. He was tortured and interrogated, and he made a false confession to being a German spy, and he was executed less than a month later.Stalin and the other prominent communists knew that victims would confess to just about anything if the circumstances were rightand the circumstances had to be torture.ReferencesHochschild, Adam. (2003). The Unquiet Ghost: Russians Remember Stalin. Mariner Books.Kovago, Jozsef. (1959). You Are All Alone. Praeger.Mertz, Dawn-Eve. (2024). Young Men Go West: The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and One Teenagers Risky Escape. Kleo Press.Rayfield, Donald. (2004). Stalin and his Hangmen. Random House.Sebag Montefiore, Simon. (2003).Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar. Weidenfeld & Nicolson.

At the beginning of the 2nd century BCE, two major powers vied for the Mediterranean. In the west, the Romans had recently defeated the Carthaginians and, having crossed to Greece, the Macedonians. Concurrently, Antiochus III (223-187BCE), king of the Seleucid Empire, earned the title the Great by re-establishing Seleucid power in Asia Minor, seizing Syria from the Ptolemies, and campaigning in central Asia.After the Roman victory over the Macedonians at Cynoscephalae in 197 BCE, Greece was contested by the Romans and Seleucids. Neither initially desired war but in less than a decade they were drawn into a fateful clash that ended at Magnesia.The Freedom of the GreeksAntiochus III, 1st century BCE, Italy. Source: Muse du LouvreAfter their removal of Macedonian control over Greece in 197 BCE the Romans did something unexpected. They withdrew their legions and proclaimed the Greeks free. The various Greek city-states, federal leagues, and kingdoms were to govern themselves. This Roman settlement created ambiguity. Roman troops had withdrawn but everyone still looked, expectantly or nervously, across the Adriatic to Rome. Few could doubt that the Romans were a major power in Greece but the limits of their interest were uncertain.While the Romans were proclaiming the freedom of the Greeks Antiochus was bolstering the Seleucid Empire. In Asia Minor, this saw the Seleucids take or threaten cities previously under the control of the Macedonians, places that the Romans could claim they had liberated. Crossing into Europe Antiochus built a strong Seleucid presence in Thrace. For Antiochus, he was within his rights as a Hellenistic king to re-establish control over the territory which his ancestors had held.Diplomatic exchanges between Antiochus and Rome in the years 197-192 BCE were cautious and tense but not overtly hostile. Some scholars have suggested that while neither side pushed for war there was a misunderstanding that drove them to it. Antiochus controlled his empire through direct occupation or treaties. Roman control was more informal and based on political friendship and the propaganda of freedom for the Greeks. What to the Romans looked like an area under their influence and bound to them seemed to Antiochus a land the Romans had little interest in and one which, in some regions at least, was well within his dynastys sphere of interest.The War in GreeceSilver coin of Antiochus III, 3rd-2nd century BCE, Syria. Source: British MuseumIt was the smaller powers between the two empires that provoked war. The Seleucid revival in Asia Minor left the small Attalid kingdom of Pergamon vulnerable. King Eumenes II (197-159 BCE) turned down a Seleucid alliance and talked up the danger of Antiochus. This task was not difficult. Antiochus advances in Thrace could be seen as threatening to both the Roman settlement of Greece and ultimately Italy. These fears grew when Romes bitterest enemy, Hannibal the Carthaginian, visited Antiochus court in 195 BCE.In Greece, the Aitolian federal state had grown dissatisfied with its previous partnership with the Romans. As they looked to secure their ambitions they turned to Antiochus. In 192 BCE, the Aitolians attempted to seize control of central and southern Greece. A series of coups they plotted largely failed but with the situation in Greece now unstable they called on Antiochus to arbitrate their disputes with the Romans.Antiochus seized the opportunity. If the Roman settlement in Greece could be replaced by a Seleucid system of alliances there would be no more need to negotiate with the Romans about how their policy of freedom applied to Seleucid lands. At the very least any future war would take place in Greece and Antiochus would gain allies.Antiochus badly miscalculated the Roman reaction. In late 192 BCE, he landed in Greece with a small force of up to 18,000 troops, clearly looking to the Aitolians and future Greek allies for support. While they did make progress and some reluctant allies, the Roman response was decisive and soon the legions were dispatched back to Greece.According to Grainger, the limited size of Antiochus force may show that the king did not expect the Romans to fight and that a lighter presence was more likely to win over Greek allies. But it meant that Antiochus was not prepared to fight in Greece. He hastily retreated to the famous mountain pass at Thermopylae in 191 BCE but was defeated trying to hold the pass. Having received little support from the Greekseven the Aitolians sent only a small force to ThermopylaeAntiochus was forced to withdraw to Asia. The Greek expedition was over less than a year after it had begun.Modern view of Thermopylae. Source: Livius.orgInvasion of AsiaAfter the disaster in Greece Hannibal warned Antiochus that the Romans would not stop in Europe. The king tried to negotiate but following their swift victory and with more reinforcements on the way the Romans were uninterested.While the Roman army dealt with the Aitolians in Greece the combined forces of Rome, Rhodes, and Pergamon fought for control of the Aegean Sea. The Rhodians played a crucial role as they prevented Hannibal from bringing reinforcements, and froze him out of the war, before joining the Romans to defeat the Seleucid fleet at Myonessus in 190 BCE.Having lost control of the sea Antiochus withdrew from the coast and prepared himself in the center of Asia Minor. The Roman invasion force under the recently elected consul Lucius Cornelius Scipio could now make over to Asia. This command had been secured by the consuls more famous brother Publius Scipio Africanus, the most renowned Roman general of his day and the man who had defeated Hannibal.Image of a Rhodian trireme, Lindos. Source: Wikimedia CommonsAntiochus made one final bid for peace after the Romans landed in Asia. However, there was no sense of compromise from the Romans and the terms offered imposed heavy costs on the Seleucids and demanded the surrender of all Asia Minor. Antiochus could not agree to these terms and withdrew from the coast some 60 kilometers inland and awaited the Romans at Magnesia and Sipylum.Advance to MagnesiaThe Scipios led the first Roman army to reach Asia, consisting of 30,000 to 40,000 troops, to confront Antiochus. At its core were 20,000 heavy infantry consisting of two Roman legions and two Italian Latin contingents, each around 5,400 strong. 3,000 lightly armed Pergamene and Achaian troops and 3,000 cavalry, of which 800 were again from Pergamon, were to support the battle-winning infantry. Smaller numbers of Cretans, Macedonians, and Thracians made up the rest of the army. The Romans were also accompanied by 16 African elephants though they played little part in the battle and were kept back as they were outnumbered by Antiochus larger Indian elephants.The Seleucid army was said to be much larger and much more diverse. While our sources claim Antiochus was relaxed about the prospect of a Roman invasion of Asia he had made extensive preparations. According to Professor Bezalel Bar-Kochva, the army Antiochus gathered at Magnesia drew on the resources of his vast empire and gathered 60,000 infantry and 12,000 cavalry.Roman Republican soldier, 2nd century BCE. Source: Muse du LouvreAt its heart was the famed Macedonian phalanx of massed pikemen. These 16,000 soldiers would form the center of Antiochus line. The nearby regions of Cappodocia and Galatia provided contingents with others coming from Seleucid territories in Media, modern Iran. Split into two equal contingents were 6,000 cataphracts, heavily armored horsemen. Macedonian armies had a long cavalry tradition but the addition of armor was an innovation Antiochus may have picked up from campaigns further east. Another notable feature of this army was the deployment of scythed chariots. With blades sticking out from the wheels these chariots looked terrifying and had been used before by the Seleucids without becoming a common feature.In late 190 BCE (some accounts put the battle in January 189 BCE) these two armies stood at opposite ends of a flat plain between two rivers outside Magnesia. The Romans were outnumbered but the sources generally give the impression that the Romans were confident and eager for battle. The Romans had defeated Hellenistic armies before. Roman victories in Greece and the Aegean and Antiochus abandonment of his territories in Europe at the Roman approach surely boosted their confidence further.Battle of MagnesiaThe Macedonian phalanx. Source: Livius.orgAfter the arrival of the Romans at Magnesia neither side moved. Antiochus, on chosen ground, could wait for the Romans to come to him. Lucius Scipio could not. It was late in the year and the Romans had to decide whether to fight or disburse to winter quarters. After some hesitation Scipio ordered the army to advance to a slightly narrower part of the plain. Seeing the enemy advance Antiochus also decided the time for battle had come.The Romans deployed their forces in their traditional formation with three lines of heavy infantry in the center, Eumenes with the Pergamene and Greek cavalry and auxiliaries on the right, and their left next to a river. Antiochus largely matched this layout but with some interesting variations. Interspersed among the phalanx in the center were groups of elephants adding to the terrifying spectacle of the wall of pikemen. To both the left and the right Antiochus stationed his cataphracts and supporting cavalry. The king himself was with the right wing while to the left the scythed chariots lined up.Seleucid or Parthian Cataphract, 3rd-2nd century BCE, Iraq. Source: British MuseumThe day of the battle began with mist and clouds which reduced visibility. The later Roman historian Livy states this gave an early advantage to the Romans since Antiochus larger army was so spread out that the king could not see the full picture across the battlefield.Once the battle began, Antiochus plan became clear. This was not to be another battle between legion and phalanx. Instead, Antiochus pinned his hopes on his cataphracts and chariots. The plan started with spectacular success. The armored cavalry of the Seleucid, right under Antiochus himself, smashed through the Roman lines by the river. This was a rare occasion in which the heavy infantry of the Romans was broken by a cavalry charge. Following up this success was more difficult. The Roman left was broken, but not destroyed, and enough troops rallied around the Roman camp to halt Antiochus momentum, forcing the king to eventually turn around without achieving anything decisive.In contrast to the success on the right, everything went wrong on the Seleucid left. The use of scythed chariots backfired as the Romans and Eumunes targeted the horses with javelins, arrows, and sling stones until they became uncontrollable. The panicking horses turned back into their own lines disrupting the cataphracts. Seeing the disorder, Eumenes charged, and suddenly the Seleucid left was fleeing. In the center a similar story played out. The elephants stationed among the phalanx to give it extra strength became uncontrollable when targeted. As they broke they disrupted the cohesion the phalanx relied on to survive, and the Seleucid center joined the left in its rout.By the time Antiochus understood what was happening it was too late. Roman sources claim more than 50,000 Seleucids were killed at the cost of less than 400 Romans and Greeks. The numbers are probably exaggerated but once the infantry in the center was isolated it is unlikely many survived the massacre.Where the Battle Was LostSilver coin of Antiochus III with a Seleucid elephant, 3rd-2nd century BCE, Syria. Source: British MuseumAntiochus approach to the battle deserves some comment. A much later historian, Appian, criticizes Antiochus for concentrating on his cavalry rather than the phalanx which he left crowded in a narrow space. The innovation of placing elephants within the phalanx also did more harm than good. However, it is possible that the focus on cavalry shows a clear line of thought from Antiochus and an attempt to overcome previous failures.Antiochus was well aware that Hellenistic armies with their focus on the phalanx had struggled and been defeated by Roman legions. He was well-informed about the defeat of the Macedonian phalanx at Cynoscephalae in 197 BCE. During the expedition to Greece he had sent officers to the battlefield. There, Roman legions had broken up and destroyed a phalanx. Antiochus, therefore, avoided another contest of phalanx and legion.The turn to heavy cavalry and chariots was an attempt to innovate and win the battle elsewhere rather than simply waiting for the phalanx to lose against the legions. On the right this plan worked. Modern historians like Grainger and Bar-Kochva argue that the failure was in the use of chariots, a previously unreliable weapon, and the inadequate protection for them against enemy skirmishers.The plan he came up with for the battle of Magnesia shows Antiochus was an intelligent and innovative commander. Unfortunately he may have learnt the wrong lesson from Cynoscephalae. That battle was fought on uneven ground allowing the more flexible Roman legionnaires to disrupt the tight formation of the phalanx. The flat plain of Magnesia could have been a more suitable place to test the phalanx against the legion on its favored terrain.End of Seleucid Asia MinorMap showing the increase in Pergamene (blue) and Rhodian (green) following the Treaty of Apamea, 188 BCE. Source: Wikimedia CommonsAs Antiochus fell back toward Syria after the defeat, Seleucid power in Asia Minor and Anatolia went with him. A peace was soon agreed, the Peace of Apamea. Its terms spelled the end of Seleucid rule north of the Taurus mountains, essentially the Seleucids lost all of modern Turkey. As they had done in Greece, the Romans would not take these lands directly. Instead, Rhodes and Pergamon, who had both been essential to the Roman victory, divided the lands between them.The Seleucid Empire was not finished yet. But, in a short war that lasted just over two years, 192-190 BCE, the Romans had wiped out the progress Antiochus had spent decades on in the west. Stripped of some of its richest provinces, the Seleucids would never recover.Bibliography:Bar-Kochva, B (2008). The Seleucid Army:Organization and Tactics in the Great Campaigns. Cambridge University Press. New YorkChaniotis, A (2018). Age of Conquests:The Greek World from Alexander to Hadrian. Harvard University Press. Cambridge, Mass.Grainger, J.D (2015). The Seleukid Empire of Antiochus III: 223-187 BC. Pen & Sword.Gruen, E (1984). The Hellenistic World and the Coming of Rome, vol.1. University of California Press. London