Great Purge
The Great Purge or the Great Terror was a campaign of political repression in the Soviet Union which occurred from 1936 to 1938. It involved a large-scale purge of the Communist Party and government officials, repression of kulak and the Red Army leadership, widespread police …
What caused the Great Purge in the Soviet Union?
Motives for the Great Purge. Soviet Union leader Vladimir Lenin, head of the Bolshevik party, died in 1924. Stalin had to fight his way to political succession, but ultimately declared himself dictator in 1929. Upon Stalin’s rise to power, some members of the former Bolshevik party began to question his authority.
What was the Great Purge?
The Great Purge, also known as the “Great Terror,” was a brutal political campaign led by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin to eliminate dissenting members of the
How did Stalin’s Great Purge end?
To further complicate the matter, prisoners in the labor camps commonly died of exhaustion, disease or starvation. The Great Purge officially ended around 1938, but many believe Stalin wasn’t truly finished until his long-time rival Leon Trotsky was killed in August 1940. Trotsky was sentenced to death in absentia during the Moscow Trials.
What did Khrushchev say about the purges?
In a 1956 secret speech, Khrushchev called the purges “an abuse of power” and acknowledged that many of the victims were, in fact, innocent. Stalin’s acts of terror and torture broke the Soviet people’s spirits and effectively eliminated certain groups of citizens, such as intellectuals and artists.
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What was the purge of the Soviet Union?
The term " purge " in Soviet political slang was an abbreviation of the expression purge of the Party ranks. In 1933, for example, the Party expelled some 400,000 people.
What was the purpose of the Great Purge?
According to one interpretation, Stalin's regime had to maintain its citizens in a state of fear and uncertainty to stay in power (Brzezinski, 1958). Robert Conquest emphasized Stalin's paranoia, focused on the Moscow show trial of "Old Bolsheviks", and analyzed the carefully planned and systematic destruction of the Communist Party. Some others view the Great Purge as a crucial moment, or rather the culmination, of a vast social engineering campaign started at the beginning of the 1930s (Hagenloh, 2000; Shearer, 2003; Werth, 2003).
What is the Soviet Union portal?
Soviet Union portal. v. t. e. The Great Purge or the Great Terror ( Russian: Большой террор ), also known as the Year of '37 ( 37-ой год, Tridtsat sedmoi god) and the Yezhovschina ('period of Yezhov '), was Joseph Stalin's campaign of political repression in the Soviet Union that occurred from 1936 to 1938.
What was the reason for the purge of the NKVD?
Another justification for the purge was to remove any possible "fifth column" in case of a war.
How many people died in the Great Purge?
Official figures put the total number of documentable executions during the years 1937 and 1938 at 681,692, in addition to 136,520 deaths in the Gulag; whereas the total estimate of deaths brought about by Soviet repression during the Great Purge ranges from 950,000 to 1.2 million , which includes executions, deaths in detention and those who died shortly after being released from the Gulag, as a result of their treatment therein. This estimate summarises results of comparative analysis of various archival documents and, therefore, takes into account earlier arguments that official Soviet archival data may understate the actual number of deaths, be incomplete or unreliable. A common practice of falsification for lowering the execution numbers was disguising executions with the sentence ten years without the right of correspondence. All of the bodies identified from the mass graves at Vinnitsa and Kuropaty were of individuals who had received this sentence.
What was the social disorder caused by the upheavals of forced collectivization of peasants
From 1930 onwards, the Party and police officials feared the "social disorder" caused by the upheavals of forced collectivization of peasants and the resulting famine of 1932–1933, as well as the massive and uncontrolled migration of millions of peasants into cities. The threat of war heightened Stalin's perception of marginal and politically suspect populations as the potential source of an uprising in case of invasion. He began to plan for the preventive elimination of such potential recruits for a mythical "fifth column of wreckers, terrorists and spies."
When did the NKVD invade Poland?
A series of mass operations of the NKVD was carried out from 1937 through 1938 until the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939 targeting specific nationalities within the Soviet Union, based on NKVD directives against the so-called diversionist element, according to the notion of the "hostile capitalist surrounding" as defined by Nikolai Yezhov.
How many votes did Stalin have against Kirov?
When Kirov had been elected to the central committee earlier that year, he had only three votes against, the fewest of any candidate, while Stalin had 292 votes against. What was new about the Great Purge that Stalin now instigated was that, for the first time, members of the ruling Communist Party featured prominently among its victims. ...
What happened on December 1st, 2019?
1 December 2019. It was on December 1st, 1934, that a gunman burst into the offices of Sergei Kirov, the Mayor of Leningrad (now St Petersburg) and shot him dead. Stalin used the assassination as a pretext to launch his Great Purge of dissident Communist officials and any party members who did not toe Stalin's official line one hundred percent.
What happened to the Bolsheviks in 1917?
Many Bolsheviks, famous for their roles in the 1917 Revolution, were seized and convicted in show trials, expelled from the party and then executed. Many of them "confessed" to being involved in Kirov's murder.
Where was Trotsky killed?
Leon Trotsky was killed in Mexico. No-one was safe. Robert Conquest refers to this period as "The Great Terror," (the title of his book on the subject), deliberately calling to mind the Reign of Terror that gripped the French Revolution.
Was Kirov loyal to Stalin?
Although Kirov was loyal to Stalin, popular opinion at the time, supported by some later historians, was convinced that Stalin had personally ordered the murder fearing that Kirov's popularity was making him a potential rival to Stalin himself.
Was Leon Trotsky safe?
Many dissidents opposed to Stalin who had fled abroad were hunted down and murdered by killer squads sent to eliminate them. Leon Trotsky was killed in Mexico. No-one was safe.
Who covered the Kirov trial?
Many of them "confessed" to being involved in Kirov's murder. Western left-wing journalists, of the type Lenin had called "useful idiots," covered the trials and reported them as open and fair.
Why did the Communist Party purge Stalin?
The purge came as a reaction to dissatisfied Communist Party members who saw Stalin as an undemocratic bureaucrat with an appetite for corruption, but it also served to cause fear among the population and break the will of anyone who posed a potential threat to Stalin’s leadership.
How many people were killed in Stalin's Great Purge?
Stalin’s Great Purge: Over A Million Detained, More Than Half A Million Killed. Left: Joseph Stalin; Right; Memorial plaque with photos of victims of the Great Purge who were shot in the Butovo firing range near Moscow. The Great Purge, also known as the Great Terror, was Stalin’s way of dealing with political opposition.
Why was Bukharin sentenced to death?
Nevertheless, he was sentenced to death for he allegedly sought to assassinate Lenin and Stalin, murder Maxim Gorky by poison, partition the Soviet Union, and hand out its territories to Germany, Japan, and Great Britain.
What was Stalin's idea of wiping the slate clean after the Revolution?
Stalin’s idea of wiping the slate clean after the revolution and a bloody civil war that followed led to death hundreds of thousands, for once the purge was initiated on a party level, there was no stopping it from spilling into the rest of the country.
What did Stalin mean by "wolf in sheep clothing"?
The terms practically meant one thing: a wolf in sheep clothing. Stalin initiated this large-scale paranoia in which everyone represented a potential suspect (except him, of course). First, they came for the old Bolsheviks. Then it was time for the government officials and military officers.
What words did Stalin use to describe the victims?
9. The Targets. Stalin often used terms such as “saboteurs”, “subversives”, “fifth column”, “enemy of the people”, “reactionary” and “counter-revolutionary”. All these words were enough to land a person in jail or get them killed.
How did the Moscow trial work?
While the Moscow Trial’s were conducted in courtrooms, the secret police utilized a much quicker and brutal method, by employing three-member committees that were responsible for extrajudicial killings of everyone that was accused of being an anti-Soviet element. The accused were trialed and found guilty on sight.
Who denounced the purge and began a process of de-Stalinization in the 1950s?
CIA World Factbook: BBC Country Page: National Geographic: Kyiv Post English News Nikita Khrushchev denounced the purge and began a process of de-Stalinization in the 1950s. The policy of mass execution largely ended by late 1938, but political arrests and . repressions continued until Stalin’s death in 1953.
How did the USSR's purge affect the world?
Hundreds of thousands died while in Gulag prisons. The purge strongly affected the USSR’s intelligentsia—academics, artists, musi- cians, writers, and scientists. Many of the country’s famous writers and artists were arrested and killed, even those who had supported the Bolshevik Revolution.
When did NEP end?
Stalin put an end to NEP in 1928, even though Lenin had pre- dicted that it would have to last much longer. competing alliances due to disagreements over Lenin Gulag—The name given to the network ...
What was Vladimir Lenin's economic policy?
Vladimir Lenin’s New Economic Policy, a retreat from orthodox Marxism, allowed a degree of private trade, and artists and writers flourished in the country’s major cities. NEP was meant as a temporary measure to revive the economy after the dev- astation of the Russian Civil War and failed attempts at collectivization.
What happened to Lenin after his death?
Following his death in 1924, the founders of the Soviet Union formed ’s New Economic Policy and other leadership questions.
How many people died in Stalin's purges?
Number of Victims—It is unknown exactly how many people fell victim to Stalin’s purges. Estimates of those who died range from 600,000 to 3 million. According to official rec- ords, more than 1.5 million people were ar- rested and nearly 700,000 were shot.
Who was responsible for the purges and repressions of the 1930s?
It was largely responsible for carrying out the purges and repressions of the 1930s. The NKVD replaced the Cheka and was followed by the KGB. Stalin’s Purges and the Gulag. After consolidating power in the late 1920s, Joseph Stalin began implementing sweeping policy changes in the Soviet Union.
Overview
Background
From 1930 onwards, the Party and police officials feared the "social disorder" caused by the upheavals of forced collectivization of peasants and the resulting famine of 1932–1933, as well as the massive and uncontrolled migration of millions of peasants into cities. The threat of war heightened Stalin's and generally Soviet perception of marginal and politically suspect populations as …
Introduction
The term repression was officially used by the leader of the Soviet Union at the time, Soviet general secretary Joseph Stalin, to describe the prosecution of people considered counter-revolutionaries and enemies of the people. Historians debate the causes of the purge, such as Stalin's paranoia, or his desire to remove dissenters from the Communist Party or to consolidate his authority. T…
Moscow Trials
Between 1936 and 1938, three very large Moscow Trials of former senior Communist Party leaders were held, in which they were accused of conspiring with fascist and capitalist powers to assassinate Stalin and other Soviet leaders, dismember the Soviet Union and restore capitalism. These trials were highly publicized and extensively covered by the outside world, which was mesmeriz…
"Ex-kulaks" and other "anti-Soviet elements"
On 2 July 1937, in a top secret order to regional Party and NKVD chiefs Stalin instructed them to produce the estimated number of "kulaks" and "criminals" in their districts. These individuals were to be arrested and executed, or sent to the gulag camps. The party chiefs complied and produced these lists within days, with figures which roughly corresponded to the individuals who were already u…
Campaigns targeting nationalities
A series of mass operations of the NKVD was carried out from 1937 through 1938 targeting specific nationalities within the Soviet Union, on the order of Nikolai Yezhov.
The Polish operation of the NKVD was the largest of this kind. The Polish operation claimed the largest number of the NKVD victims: 143,810 arrests an…
Purge of the army
The purge of the Red Army and Military Maritime Fleet removed three of five marshals (then equivalent to four-star generals), 13 of 15 army commanders (then equivalent to three-star generals), eight of nine admirals (the purge fell heavily on the Navy, who were suspected of exploiting their opportunities for foreign contacts), 50 of 57 army corps commanders, 154 out of 186 division co…
Wider purge
Eventually almost all of the Bolsheviks who had played prominent roles during the Russian Revolution of 1917, or in Lenin's Soviet government, were executed. Out of six members of the original Politburo during the 1917 October Revolution who lived until the Great Purge, Stalin himself was the only one who remained in the Soviet Union, alive. Four of the other five were executed; the fifth, Leon Trot…