The Secret Police Under Stalin

Question 1

The Soviet secret police was transformed under Stalin - expand on this claim

Answer 1

Stalin developed a new doctrine to justify the radical extension of terror. This led to a change in the culture of the secret police

Question 2

Stalin maintained terror under the NKVD? What were his reasons for doing so?

Answer 2

His paranoia and need to maintain his narcissistic self image as the hero of the revolution

Question 3

Who was Genrikh Yagoda?

Answer 3

From 1924 to 1934: He was a deputy chairman of the OGPU

from 1930: He was in charge of the system of forced-labour camps in the Soviet Union.

In 1934: He became a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party and was put in charge of the newly organized Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD) - into which the secret police had been absorbed.

Question 4

The NKVD under Genrikh Yagoda: what did he play an important role in?

Answer 4

Yagoda played an important role in the Great Terror

Question 5

How did Yagoda play an important role in the Great Terror?

Answer 5

He collaborated with Stalin in turning the NKVD against the Communist Party

His appointment as NKVD chief was a turning point in Soviet politics

Question 6

There is evidence that Yagoda was instrumental in engineering the…

Answer 6

Assassination of Sergey Mironovich Kirov - Leningrad party secretary and a member of the Politburo

Question 7

What did Pagoda prepare as head of the NKVD?

Answer 7

The first of the public purge trials (August 1936)

Question 8

What happened in the first of the public purge trials?

Answer 8

Zinovyev and Kamenev (and a number of their associates) confessed to a series of astonishing charges and were immediately executed

Question 9

Why was Yagoda replaced?

Answer 9

Yagoda himself became a victim of the widespread purges that he had helped to carry out

Question 10

When was Yagoda removed from office and replaced?

Answer 10

September 1936

Question 11

What happened to Yagoda after he was removed from office and replaced?

Answer 11

He was arrested (1937) and became a defendant at the third public purge trial (March 1938)

He was accused of being a member of a Trotskyite conspiracy intent on destroying the Soviet Union through sabotage

He was convicted and sentenced to death on March 13 - he was shot soon afterwards

Question 12

Who was the leader of the NKVD from 1936-38?

Answer 12

Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov

Question 13

Yezhov played an important role in…

Answer 13

radicalising the NKVD

Question 14

What did Stalin do to justify more extensive terror?

Answer 14

He put forward a new theory - the doctrine of sharpening class struggle

(intensification of the class struggle under socialism)

Question 15

Explain the doctrine of sharpening class struggle

Answer 15

Stalin argued that the class struggle would continue to intensify as socialism advanced - Capitalists fought harder as socialism succeeded (their last desperate efforts)

Therefore political repression was necessary to prevent them from succeeding in their presumed goal of destroying the Soviet Union

Question 16

What did the reforms introduced by Yezhov reflect?

Answer 16

His reforms reflected the doctrine of sharpening class struggle by turning the secret police into a ruthless organisation capable of enforcing ever growing terror

Question 17

The NKVD implemented the Great Terror under Yezhov. What did this accelerate?

Answer 17

Accelerated the arrest to imprisonment process

Question 18

The NKVD implemented the Great Terror under Yezhov. What did this increase?

Answer 18

Increased executions

Question 19

The NKVD implemented the Great Terror under Yezhov. What did this widen?

Answer 19

Widened surveillance of the Soviet population

Question 20

What did Yezhov introduce to speed up the process of getting confessions from NKVD victims?

Answer 20

The conveyor belt system

Question 21

What did the conveyor belt system involve?

Answer 21

The system involved groups of NKVD agents working in shifts around the clock

This meant torture and interrogation could continue relentlessly until prisoners confessed

Question 22

What did the terror attack under Yezhov?

Answer 22

All aspects of Soviet life:
- The Party
- The army
- Industry and collective farms

Question 23

Yezhov: Terror attacked all aspects of Soviet life. What was the result? (between 1937 and 1938)

Answer 23

What historian Donald Rayfield describes as the “Yezhov bloodbath”

This period became known as “Yezhovchina” - meaning that the whole of Soviet society was engulfed in Yezhov’s terror

Question 24

Yezhovchina transformed the government districts of Moscow and Leningrad into…

Answer 24

ghost towns. Mass arrests of government officials left entire apartment blocks empty

Question 25

Yezhovchina - mass terror example

Answer 25

During this period, around 1.5 million, approximately ten per cent of the male adult population, were arrested by the NKVD. Of these around 635,000 were deported, often to Siberia, and over 680,000 were executed

Question 26

How did the terror cause massive economic problems?

Answer 26

Deporting and executing factory managers, economic planners and government officials removed the experts needed to run Stalin’s command economy. Therefore during the first years of the Third Five-Year Plan production rated either declined or stagnated

Question 27

How did Stalin emerge from the terror?

Answer 27

Stalin emerged from the terror stronger than ever. The terror removed almost everyone from government who had fought in the Civil War or who had worked with Lenin, and therefore could claim to have authority independent from Stalin. Moreover, Stalin replaced these officials with his own supporters, people who owed loyalty to him alone

Question 28

The terror claimed the lives of…

Answer 28

Yagoda and Yezhov. Yagoda was tried as part of the Trial of the 21. Yezhov and over 300 of his closest associated were shot in 1940

Question 29

Yezhov claimed that his only crime was…

Answer 29

not killing enough Russians

Question 30

What did the NKVD under Beria preside over?

Answer 30

The NKVD under Beria presided over the Gulag system which helped to strengthen control by harnessing forced labour in support of greater economic productivity

Question 31

After the Second World War Beria’s NKVD continued to persecute the Soviet people - give two examples of this

Answer 31

“The Leningrad Affair”
“The Doctors’ Plot”

Question 32

“The Leningrad Affair”

Answer 32

In 1949, Stalin launched a purge against officials in the Leningrad Party. Stalin claimed that the Leningrad Party acted independently as if it were “an island in the Pacific”. Around 200 Party members were arrested and forced to confess to crimes against the Party

Question 33

“The Doctors’ Plot”

Answer 33

During 1952 and 1953 many of Stalin’s medical staff were arrested for trying to poison Stalin. Notably, anti-Semitism may have been a cause of this purge as many of the doctors were Jewish, or had Jewish names, and Stalin was a well-known anti-Semite. Stalin died before the doctors could be executed, and following his death they were released