1. Chapter X: The Great Terror
By the end of 1930’s Comrade Stalin cult of personality was everywhere
The 30’s were also known as the decade of highest purges directed by Stalin and his henchmen.
Why were there purges inside the Communist Party? Think about the privileges that came with membership

2. There are several potential reasons for the purges
Opportunists, joining because of the benefits that membership provides with.
Critics and rivals and their supporters
Conspirators in collaboration with the West
Read p. 190, S.4
Industrial sabotage; managers and directors responsible for not meeting the targets.
Serve as propaganda stance

3. Political opposition. Read p.192, S, 8
The assassination of Kirov Dec
Sweeping power given to the NKVD
Stalin personally involved in the crime investigation
The show trials p. 196
The execution of Zinoviev
Leningrad's party boss Kirov

4. Ezhovschina – the great purge
Named after the NKVD boss Ezhov who was Stalin’s important henchman at that time.
Trotskyites were especially targeted as the enemy of the state.
Since Trotsky was the minister of war before his dismissal that means that the Red Army itself must be purged of his sympathizers, after all, many of the army officers enjoyed Trotsky’s confidence.

5. Here we see the arrest of many generals like
Marshal Tukhachevski, the hero of the civil war.
By 1938 the leadership of the Red Army has been devastated and Hitler watches with interest how weaker the armed forces have become.
In August of 1937, Ezhov proposes the arrest of people by year’s end, with 28 % executed and the rest detained and sent to labor camps.
Ezhov himself would
Be eventually swallowed
By his own purges and
Shot dead in 1940.
Officially he never existed.

6. What was Stalin’s personal involvement in the great purges of the 30’s?
Read p. 199 S.26.
The Gulags. By 1939 around 3 million people lived and worked in the Gulags.
It was all about making it through from one day to another.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Read p. 201, S. 28

7. Ezhov gets himself arrested and disappears in 1939
There seems to be some sense of a return to normality announced by Stalin (p.202, S. 30)
Why did the terror happen anyway?
The were designed to establish personal dictatorship of Stalin by destroying anyone from the past, present or future who posed a threat to his grip on unlimited power.
Some historians think it was Lenin himself to be blamed for all the terror, as he himself set up the precedent.