Dealing with opposition Flashcards
1
Q
Reasons for the Cold war
A
- concern for national security
- fear of contamination from the West
2
Q
WW2
A
Returning Prisoners of war were sent to Soviet gulags
3
Q
Which government department was despicable for ensuring all people obeyed the law
A
The Procuracy
4
Q
NKVD
A
Dvided into the MVD and the MGB
MVD:
In charge of Internal Affairs
MGB:
Later the KGB
In charge of espionage
5
Q
Post-war terror
A
- no means as great as the 1930s
- tens of thousands were arrested between 1945 and 1953
- 12 million wartime survivors were sent to labour camps
6
Q
The four cases against opposition
A
- Leningrad case
- The Mingrelian Case
- The Doctors’ Plot
- Anti-Semitism
7
Q
The Leningrad Case
A
- Leningrad party had always shown independence from the central government
- some were senior positions in Moscow
- On the basis of false evidence, several leading officials were arrested
- including Head of Gosplan
- Later some were found to have been executed
8
Q
Anti- Semitism
A
1948= Golda Meir became Israeli ambassador to the USSR
- she was cheered everywhere she went in the USSR by Soviet Jews
- Stalin disliked this and it was made worse when the new state of Israel was set up in 1948 turned out to be pro-purge
- Jewish director of the Jewish theatre in Moscow died in a car crash
- Jewish wives of Molotov and Kalinin were arrested in 1949
9
Q
The Mingrelian Case
A
- In 1951 a purge was launched in Georgia against the followers of Beria; they were accused of collaborating with Western powers.
- Beria was of Mingrelian ethnic extraction and it seems as if this purge was aimed at weakening his authority
10
Q
The Doctors’ Plot
A
- Doctor (and MGB informer) in the Kremlin hospital in 1948 accused 9 doctors of failing to diagnose Zhadnov properly resulting in his death.
- In 1952 Stalin ordered the arrest of the doctors accusing them of Zionist conspiracy .
- Stalin spread rumours that Jews were being paid by the USA and Israel to kill Zhdanov and other members of Soviet leadership.
- The Minister of State Security (Ignatiev) was instructed to obtain confessions (threaten with execution if he failed to do so)
- Thousands of doctors were arrested and tortured
- Thousands of Jews were deported from cities and towns to remote regions were a new network of labour camps had been set up
- Press created so much Anti-Jewish hysteria that non-Jews were too frightened to go to hospital believing they would be killed.
- Before the execution of 9 doctors’ took place, Stalin died.
