Extra detail: The Yezovschina Flashcards
What were the NKVD committees ordered to do under NKVD Order 00447?
Classify kulaks and other ‘anti-Soviet elements’ into two categories
The first category was subjected to death by shooting and the second went to gulag labour camps
How were the upper quotas in the quota system established?
By area and social classes (e.g. proletairans, peasants, kulaks, bourgeoisie)
Were the quotas ever exceeded?
They techincally couldn’t be but it was very easy to get Yezhov’s personal approval to exceed limits, and sometimes Stalin intervened personally
What proportion of officer corps and military intelligence imprisoned in the purge of the Red Army were reinstated by 1940?
~25%
How many army leaders were arrested in the purge of the Red Army?
- 3 ‘Marshals of the Soviet Union’(including Tukhachevsky)
- 11 war commissars
- 8 admirals (which was all of them) and their replacements
- All but 1 of the senior airforce commanders
- ~50% of the officer corps
- Substantial amount of military intelligence
Give an example of someone who was arrested for speaking out against the trials and purges
Osip Pyatnitsky
- Comintern official and member of the Central Committee
- spoke out June 1937
- by next morning evidence that he’d been an agent of the tsarist secret police was uncovered
- removed from the Central Committee
- stripped of Party membership
- arrested
- imprisoned for a year
- executed Oct 1938
What position was Stalin in by the end of the purges?
One of supreme power
- he was a dictator
- had absolute control over the Party
- had a subservient population
- had removed potential rivals
- the Party was turned into a compliant tool
What did the Central Committee do pre-1936?
Control membership through explusion of those who failed to meet the high standards of discipline that Party membership demanded
What did the Central Committee do post-1936?
Not much
It had lost its power and the mass explusions of Party members were due to the personal intervention of Stalin and the NKVD
