Stalin and the Purges Flashcards
Why were the purges so important to Stalin
-They became the chief mechanism for removing anyone he regarded as a threat to his authority
-Began in 1932
-Attempts were made to criticise him in the early 1930s,
however these were ineffectual as it led Stalin to
believe that organised resistance to him was still
possible
-Thus provoking him develop the purges into a
systematic terror, as he still believed that there was still
the possibility of organised resistance from within his
party
-Colleagues, party members and of course ordinary
people were all effected
What was Stalin’s instruments of control
- The civilian police
- Labour camp commandants and guards
- Border and security guards
The post-Kirov purges 1934-6
-In Leningrad on 1st December 1934, Leonid Nicolaev
walked into the communist party headquarters and shot
dead Sergei Kirov
-There is a strong probability the murder had been
approved, if not planned, by Stalin himself
-Stalin was quick to exploit the murder
- Kirov was a popular figure and a known criticiser of the
speed of Stalins industrial drive
-Stalin quickly filled his position with a fierce supporter
-Kamanev and Zinoviev were arrested
-Stalin wanted to send out a clear message that no one,
whatever their status was safe
-An impression of this can be gained from the fate of the
representatives of the party congress in 1934
-Of the 1996 delegates that attended, 1108 were executed
-From here on Stalin had become the party
The Great Purge 1936-9 overview
-It had been expected that once Stalin’s mastery had been established, the purges would stop
-However this was not the case, in fact they intensified
-Stalin called for still greater vigilance against the
enemies within who were in league with the Soviet
Union’s foreign enemies
-between 1936 to 1939 a progressive terrorising of the Soviet Union occurred
-Stalins Great purge stemmed down into three stages
What did Stalins ‘Great Purge’ break down into
The purge of the party
The purge of the armed services
The purge of the people
The purge of the party
-in 1936 Kamanev and Zinoviev and fourteen other
leading members of the Bolshevik party were accused
of involvement in the Kirov murder and after a public trial
were executed
-The execution of such prominent figures, who were
forced into confessing out of psychological and physical
torture made it extremely difficult for other victims to
plead their own innocence
-By making the people deliver humiliating confessions in
court, Stalin was able to reveal the scale of the
conspiracy against him and prove the need for the
purging to continue
-Between 1937 and 1938 in Stalin’s home state of Georgia, two state prime-ministers were removed, four
fifths of the regional party secretaries were dismissed and thousands of lesser officials lost their posts
The purge of the army
- 1937 the military came under threat
-Stalin’s control of the union could not be complete if the armed forces had continued as an independent force
-Stalin wanted to lessen the possibility of centres of
resistance being formed when the attack came
-With this, it was announced in May 1937 that there had been a gigantic conspiracy found within the Red army
-Leading founders of the Red army were arrested
-Trial held immediately and secretly to prevent a military coup
-Tukhachevsky and his fellow generals were shot
-To prevent any chance of a military reaction, a wholesale destruction of the Red army occurred
-All 11 war commissars removed from office
-35,000 commissioned soldiers either imprisoned or shot
-Soviet Navy and Air Force virtually decimated
-At the height of the purges whole lorry loads of officers were being taken away for execution a day
The purge of the people
- Stalin’s total dominance over the party, government and military did not mean the end of the purges
- Purges were a way of forcing the regions and nationalities into subordination to Stalin
- One person in every 8 of the population were arrested during the purges
- Almost every family suffered a loss of at least one of its family members
- NKVD squads entered selected localities and removed hundreds of inhabitants for execution
- The village of Butovo, just outside Moscow, became notorious for being the NKVD killing grounds, with over 20,000 being buried there
The chaos of the Purges
-In the headlong rush to uncover further conspiracies
-Interrogators themselves became victors and joined
those they had condemned in execution cells
-Fear had the effect of destroying moral values and
traditional loyalties
-The one aim became survival
Who should hold the most responsibility for the purges
Ultimately, the precise division of responsibility between the individuals involved in the Terror of 1934 -1938 is blurred by the scale, chaos and complexity of the purges. primary burden of responsibility lies with Stalin. While it is unclear whether he was personally involved in the assassination of Sergei Kirov, it is incontrovertible that Stalin used the murder as a pretext to initiate a wider purge of the party in order to consolidate his political authority. His overzealous paranoia of internal opposition and external threats led him to extend this purge to broad sections of society, notably with his personal authorization of NKVD Order 00447. Stalin had a personal interest in their implementation. Conquest points out that it is no coincidence that all those delegates who had voted against Stalin in the 1934 party congress were dead by 1936.
Yezhov must also bear a heavy burden of responsibility for feeding Stalin’s paranoia with falsified evidence of a conspiracy and, thereby, amplifying the purges into the ‘Great Terror’. Moreover, Yezhov played a direct role in enacting the later purges in his capacity as head of the NKVD.
local officials should carry the responsibility for the arrests and executions that exceeded the quotas imposed by the central government, though even here it is important to remember that many of these extensions were signed by Stalin himself. Although Stalin was unable to ratify all the execution documents submitted to him by local officials
To conclude, while a number of individuals bear responsibility for aspects of the Terror, Stalin was its chief architect and orchestrator. He must carry the main burden of personal responsibility for one of the bloodiest episodes in Soviet history.
How much responsibility should Yezhov, head of the NKVD (1936-38) obtain for the purges?
However, when addressing responsibility for the purges others must be addressed which others in shaped, fostered, and exploited Stalin’s paranoia in order to fulfil their own political ambitions.
One of the main individuals in this context is Nicolai Yezhov, the head of the NKVD from 1936 to 1938. Yezhov did more than anyone else to shape Stalin’s understanding of the threats facing his authority
Stalin based his decisions on information and reports provided to him by a select group of members within the Politburo of which Yezhov was a member ‘on whom Stalin was coming to depend.’ Through this influential position, Yezhov was able to feed Stalin evidence of a widespread conspiracy between Trotskyites, Zinovievites and foreign agents that were harbouring a campaign to overthrow the Communist State.
Moreover, as head of the NKVD, Yezhov must bear personal responsibility for his direct involvement in the Terror. Under his leadership, over 680,000 prisoners received death sentences (almost 1,000 per day).
How much responsibility should Stalin bear for the purges
Kirov had opposed Stalin on a range of issues, including the rapid pace with which Stalin was pursuing the economic policies of industrialisation and collectivisation. Kirov’s growing popularity in the Politburo, coupled with his readiness to confront Stalin on key policy decisions, posed a serious threat to Stalin’s authority
While there is no indisputable evidence to prove that Stalin was involved in the murder of Kirov, there is clear evidence to show that Stalin would have benefited from the assassination as a means of using it to initiate a much wider purge of the party. Stalin immediately attributed the blame for the assassination on his opponents in the left of the party, notably Zinoviev and Kamenev, and ordered their arrest along with those of other opposition members of the party in Leningrad and Moscow.
Victor Kravchenko, a close friend of Sergo Ordzhonikidze, who was a Politburo member and Commissar for Heavy Industries, recalled that in the days after the assassination ‘hundreds of suspects in Leningrad were rounded up and shot summarily, without trial. Hundreds of others, dragged from prison cells where they had been confined for years, were executed in a gesture of official vengeance against the Party’s enemies.
With the rapid ascendance of Hitler in Germany, Stalin was paranoid that a similar situation could arise which would enable his opponents to mount an effective challenge to his authority. Stalin’s reasons for choosing 1936 to begin the great purge was due above all ‘to the emergence of Hitlerite Germany…The purges, in short, were the Stalinist version of the civil war, timed to forestall any combination of internal opposition with external enemy.’ This paranoia led him to ramp up the purges, initially to root out critics and opponents, but increasingly to instil a culture of fear across the country to prevent uprisings and rebellion.
Led to order 00447
How much responsibility should Local officials hold for the purges
At the provincial level, the Terror was co-ordinated and extended by local officials who sought to gain from the purges. Many of these had personal motives to participate in the Terror, ranging from vendettas to attempts to find scapegoats for failures to meet centrally-imposed economic targets.
Furthermore, the evidence supports the view that local officials not only carried out the purges but amplified the Terror beyond the level required by the authorities in Moscow. Many regional leaders sent back to the centre not just the names of proposed troika members and proposed members to be shot or deported, but also suggested additional groups of victims.’ The original execution quotas required by Order 00447 were often exceeded, and much of this was at the request of local officials.
Provincial Committee Commissary Secretary requested that the execution quota for the Order be extended by 4000 persons
Local officials must, therefore, hold a degree of personal responsibility for amplifying the ‘Great Terror’ of 1936-1938.
What was order 00447
‘a campaign of punitive measures against former kulaks, active anti-Soviet elements, and criminals.’ These measures required that ‘Whites, criminals, Mensheviks and other anti-soviet parties, fascists, religious sectarians, etc. … are subject to immediate arrest and, after consideration of their case by troikas, to be shot.’ The purge led to the arrest of hundreds of thousands of people ‘in all walks of life, ranging from Catholic and Orthodox priests and Soviet Commissars to Ukrainian nationalists and humble party members.’ By the end of 1938, the NKVD had executed 386,798 Soviet citizens to fulfil the order.
Planned by Yezhov, signed by Stalin
