Chapter eighteen - The Yezhovshchina

Question 1

What happened after order 00447?

Answer 1

Within a month, 100,000 had been arrested and 14,000 were sent to the gulags - pressure became so much that NKVD committees began selecting individuals at random

Question 2

How many people were executed between 37 and 38?

Answer 2

650,000 due to anti-Bolshevik activities

Question 3

How many party members were expelled between 36 and 38?

Answer 3

850,000 - only 10% of the original 1920 membership survived

Question 4

What was the military purge?

Answer 4

23,000 experienced officers removed from their positions. The Red Army grew from 1 to 5 million in preparation for war.

Question 5

Numbers within the gulags?

Answer 5

1935 - 800,000
1938 - 8 million

Question 6

How many died in the gulags?

Answer 6

1934 -53 - over 1 million died in the gulags

Question 7

What was the quota in order 00447?

Answer 7

Arbitrary arrest of 250,000, of which 28% were to be shot

Question 8

When was order 00447?

Answer 8

July 1937 - drawn up by Yezhov and approved by the Politburo

Question 9

How many informers were there?

Answer 9

Estimation that there was one informer to every 400 inhabitants

Question 10

Military commanders that were executed?

Answer 10

May 1937 - he ordered the arrest of Tukhachevsky (Chief of staff and deputy commissar for defence) and Gamarnik (head of Red Army’s political commissars). They were accused of espionage and plotting with Trotsky, together with six other top military commanders executed in June 1937.

Question 11

What was the great purge of the Red Army?

Answer 11

Included 2 Marshals of the Soviet Union (the highest military rank since 1935), 11 war commissars, all 8 admirals and those that replaced them, and all but one of the senior air force commanders.

Question 12

How many officer corps were purged?

Answer 12

Approximately 50% of the officer corps in all three services, as well as a substantial number of military intelligence were executed or imprisoned, although around a quarter of those imprisoned were reinstated by the middle of 1940

Question 13

What happened to the Comintern official who spoke out against the terror?

Answer 13

June 1937 - Pyatnitsky spoke out and the following morning Yezhov ‘unearthed’ evidence that he had been an agent of the tsarist secret police. He was removed from the central committee, stripped of Party membership, arrested and executed in October 1938

Question 14

What happened to the military officials who refused to approve executions of those they believed evidence?

Answer 14

1937 - 38 - Up to 74 military officials were shot

Question 15

What happened to Bukharin?

Answer 15

Third show trial in March 1928
Bukharin held out for three months and sent 34 personal letters to Stalin but threats to his wife and young son eventually broke him down

Question 16

What were the numbers in the gulags?

Answer 16

From approximately 800,000 in 1935 to anything between 5.5 and 9.5 million by the end of 1938

Question 17

What were the conditions in the gulags?

Answer 17

Meagre rations, inadequate clothing, poor and overcrowded accommodation, excessive work - some worked to death. Mortality rates were between 4 and 6 times higher than those in the rest of the USSR

Question 18

What were the deportations of minorities?

Answer 18

1937 - a large Korean minority was deported from the Far Eastern region to Central Asia when war with Japan threatened
Poles and Germans were deported from near the Western frontiers
Extensive purges were carried out in the newly annexed parts of Poland and the Baltic States in 1939 and 40.
In 1941, over 400,000 Volga Germans were deported to Siberia and Central Asia

Question 19

What happened to the party leadership of the non-Russian republics?

Answer 19

They were entirely replaced in 1937 and 38 with those who were more prepared to bow to Moscow’s wishes

Question 20

Anti-Semitic attitudes?

Answer 20

2 million Jewish people were incorporated into the Soviet union in 1939 and 40 as a result of the invasion of Eastern Poland and the Baltic Republics, many rabbis and religious leaders were arrested in these areas

Question 21

What was Trotsky doing in exile?

Answer 21

He had been in exile since 1929 and he maintained a high profile with a constant output of writing, which justified his past behaviour and criticised Stalin. In The Revolution Betrayed (1937) Trotsky wrote about the rapid degeneration of the Communist party

Question 22

What happened to Yezhov?

Answer 22

Stalin used Yezhov as a scapegoat, accusing him of excessive zeal and the 18th Party Congress declared that the mass cleanses were no longer needed. Yezhov was arrested and secretly shot in February 1940. He was replaced by Beria

Question 23

What happened to Trotsky?

Answer 23

August 1940 - Trotsky had been tracked down to Mexico city. Agent Mercador posed as an admirer to get into his study and plunged an ice pick into Trotsky’s head. He received a sentence of 20 years for the attack but his mother was awarded the order of Lenin

Question 24

When did Stalin’s wife commit suicide?

Answer 24

1932

Question 25

What are the explanations for the terror?

Answer 25

Terror was an integral part of the communist system - Stalin just applied it more ruthlessly
Part of the economic change
The agenda of the local party activists
A response to the threat of the military coup involving the Germans
Terror was self-escalating

Question 26

How many officers were shot?

Answer 26

23,000

Question 27

What happened to the size of the Red Army?

Answer 27

Increased from just under 1 million in 1936 to 5 million by 1941

Question 28

How many of the central committee were arrested?

Answer 28

Khrushchev states that 98 out of 139 members of the CC elected at the 17th Party Congress were arrested and shot. Of the 1966 delegates to the Congress, 1108 were arrested

Question 29

How many officers were imprisoned or shot?

Answer 29

In total 35,000, although over 11,000 were reinstated by the middle of 1940

Question 30

How can we not be sure of how many were killed?

Answer 30

The results of the 1937 census was suppressed and the census takers were shot
The NKVD burned much of their archive as the Germans approached Moscow in 1941

Question 31

Estimates of arrests 1937 - 38?

Answer 31

7 - 8 million

Question 32

Estimates of executions 1937 - 38?

Answer 32

1 - 1.5 million

Question 33

Estimation of population of camps 1937 - 38?

Answer 33

7 - 8 million

Question 34

Estimation of those who died in camps between 1937 and 38?

Answer 34

2 million

Question 35

Estimation of victims of the 1932 - 33 famine?

Answer 35

7 million

Question 36

Total deaths 1929 - 1953?

Answer 36

20 million