The Great Terror Stalin’s ‘cleansing’ of the USSR during the 1930s

The importance of the ‘Kirov Purge’  The extent of Stalin’s involvement in Kirov’s murder will never be known for certain, but the purges which followed it were certainly the fulfilment of his wishes  Stalin was able to replace a huge amount of people whom he considered unreliable, and replace them with more pliant Stalinists

New faces  Yagoda, as head of the NKVD, was responsible for the purges which followed Kirov’s death  The new party boss in Moscow was Nikita Khrushchev, an ardent Stalinist  Andrei Vyshinsky was appointed State prosecutor  All of these men were eager to serve Stalin, appreciative of their new positions of power in a country where competition for jobs was very fierce

‘No one is safe’  One of the features of the Kirov Purge was the eminent status of many of the victims  Kamenev and Zinoviev, for example, were both arrested  This established the idea that no one, whatever their rank in the Party, was safe  The laws given to Yagoda meant that the NKVD had the power to arrest whoever they liked

The Purge of the Party  One might expect that now Stalin’s position was more secure, the oppression would stop  In the event, the absolute opposite occurred  One time heroes of the revolution were arrested and imprisoned  Most were branded with the label ‘Trotskyite’ even if they had no link at all to Trotsky

The trial of Kamenev and Zinoviev  Both men were put on public trial in Moscow, charged with the murder of Kirov, and plotting to overthrow the Soviet State  Both men pleaded guilty, and read their confessions out in court  They were executed along with 14 other men accused of terrorist activities

Why did they confess?  It still remains a little unclear why they confessed – they were, after all, tough Bolsheviks, who had risked their lives in the revolution  Most likely, they had been physically and psychologically tortured, and were utterly demoralized to be faced with public accusation and disgrace  Also, their families had probably been threatened, and they knew they would suffer if they didn’t confess  Another theory is that they were so loyal to the Party that they were ready to die to serve it. According to historian Leonard Schapiro: ‘The loyalty of these men to the idea of The Party was in the last resort the main reason for Stalin’s victory’

What was the significance of the Kamenev/Zinoviev trial?  The trial set an important precedent: if great men in the Party were willing to confess, weaker ones would be much easier to break  It helped to create an atmosphere of fear, in which those accused begged forgiveness, and admitted their crimes in public  Confessions led to more arrests, as others were often incriminated in statements given by the victims

A temporary setback for Stalin  It did not all go exactly according to plan, however  In September, Bukharin and Rykov were both acquitted in charges arising out of the earlier trials  Blaming Yagoda, Stalin replaced him as the head of the NKVD with Yezhov, an even more ruthless man. Yagoda now found himself in a very dangerous position  This indicates how the terror could consume all those who were involved in it, as the accusers turned into the accused

The Purge of the army  It is unlikely that Stalin’s control of the Party would have been sufficient to allow him complete control over the USSR  The army, as an independent force, would always pose a threat to his authority  So, in 1937, he began to attack its structure

Stage one: weakening the army  First, Stalin prepared the ground for his attack on the army  He did this by organizing a large number of transfers of senior officers  This broke up any groups which could have united against him

Stage 2: the trials  Then he had Vyshinsky announce that ‘a gigantic conspiracy’ had been uncovered in the Red Army  The most prominent victim was Marshal Tukhachevsky, the Chief of General Staff  The trial was secret, to avoid any army coup, and quick  The president of the court was Marshal Voroshilov, a committed Stalinist, and jealous rival of Tukhachevsky  The outcome was inevitable: Tukhachevsky and seven other generals, all of whom had been heroes of the civil war were found guilty, and shot

Stage 3: Destruction  To prevent any reaction from the military, the structure of the Red Army was then utterly destroyed  3 of the 5 Marshals of the army were removed, 75 of the 80 man Supreme military council were executed, and two thrids of the 280 divisional commanders were removed  In total, 35,000 commissioned officers were imprisoned or shot  The navy and the airforce both suffered the same fate

Effects of the military purge  Of all the elements of the great terror, the military purges are the ones which are hardest to understand  All three services were severely undermanned, and now staffed by inexperienced officers  The Soviet Union was crippled in terms of its defence against foreign powers – going against everything Stalin had said he stood for  This is the strongest piece of evidence that Stalin was completely out of touch with reality

The final show trials  The last series of show trials occurred throughout 1938  Bukharin, Tomsky, and Yagoda were among the victims  At one point, Bukharin tried to defend himself, but he was silenced by Vyshinsky’s shouts  In total, 21 prominent Party members were tried and exectuted during the last round of trials

The Bukharin irony  Bukharin had actually been the principal draftsman of the new constitution of 1936  Stalin had described this as ‘the most democratic in the world’  It had claimed that socialism in the USSR had brought an end to classes and to exploitation  It supposedly guaranteed the rights of freedom of expression, assembly, and worship  However, nowhere did it define the powers of the Party – Stalin had unlimited powers, because his powers were not defined by any legal document

The Purges and the People  The effects of the Purges were not limited to the Party and the army: all areas of Soviet life were affected by them  The constant state of fear that they engendered conditioned the character and behaviour of everyone  Also, ordinary people were targeted directly: one in eighteen of the population were arrested during the purges  Almost every family in the USSR suffered the loss of at least one of its members  The mass of the population were disorientated, afraid, and incapable of resisting the terror which characterised Stalin’s regime

Conclusions I  Isaac Deutscher: Stalin knew ‘that the older generation of revolutionaries would always look upon him as a falsifier of first truths, and usurper. He now appealed to the young generation which knew little or nothing about the pristine ideas of Bolshevism and was unwilling to be bothered about them.’  Leonard Schapiro: ‘Every man in the Politburo was a tried and proven follower of the leader, who could be relied upon to support him through every twist and turn of policy. Below the Politburo nothing counted’

Conclusions II  David Christian: Stalin had ‘the support, in particular, of younger party members, industrial managers, and government and poice officials who benefitted from the changes of the 1930s.’  From the Literary Gazette, Moscow, 1988: Stalin’s policies involved ‘the special sadism, the sophisticated barbarism, whereby the nearest relatives were forced to incriminate each other – brother to slander brother, husband to blacken wife’.