Great Purge

Great Purge
Part of the purges of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
People of Vinnytsia searching through the exhumed victims of the Vinnytsia massacre, 1943
LocationSoviet Union, East Turkestan, Mongolian People's Republic
Date1936–1938
TargetPolitical opponents, Trotskyists, Red Army leadership, kulaks, religious activists and leaders
Attack type
Deaths700,000[1][2] to 1.2 million[3]
(higher estimates overlap with at least 116,000[3] deaths in the Gulag system, and 16,500 to 50,000 deaths in the deportation of Soviet Koreans)
PerpetratorsJoseph Stalin, the NKVD (Genrikh Yagoda, Nikolai Yezhov, Lavrentiy Beria, Ivan Serov and others), Vyacheslav Molotov, Andrey Vyshinsky, Lazar Kaganovich, Kliment Voroshilov, Robert Eikhe and others
MotiveElimination of political opponents,[4] consolidation of power,[5] fear of counterrevolution,[6] fear of party infiltration[7]

The Great Purge, or the Great Terror (Russian: Большой террор, romanizedBolshoy terror), also known as the Year of '37 (37-й год, Tridtsat sedmoy god) and the Yezhovshchina (Ежовщина, 'period of Yezhov'),[8] was Soviet General Secretary Joseph Stalin's campaign to consolidate his power over the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and Soviet state. The purges also sought to remove the remaining influence of Leon Trotsky. The term great purge, an allusion to the French Revolution's Reign of Terror, was popularized by the historian Robert Conquest in his 1968 book The Great Terror.[9]

Following the death of Vladimir Lenin in 1924, a power vacuum opened in the Communist Party, the ruling party in the Soviet Union (USSR). Various established figures in Lenin's government attempted to succeed him. By 1928, Joseph Stalin, the party's General Secretary, had triumphed over his opponents and gained control of the party.[10] Initially, Stalin's leadership was widely accepted; his main political adversary, Trotsky, was forced into exile in 1929, and his doctrine of "socialism in one country" became enshrined party policy. However, in the early 1930s, party officials began to lose faith in his leadership, largely due to the human cost of the first five-year plan and the collectivization of agriculture. By 1934, several of Stalin's rivals, such as Trotsky, began calling for Stalin's removal and attempted to break his control over the party.[11]

In this atmosphere of doubt and suspicion, the popular high-ranking official Sergei Kirov was assassinated. The assassination, in December 1934, led to an investigation that revealed a network of party members supposedly working against Stalin, including several of Stalin's rivals.[12] Many of those arrested after Kirov's murder, high-ranking party officials among them, also confessed plans to kill Stalin himself.[13] The validity of these confessions is debated by historians, but there is consensus that Kirov's death was the flashpoint at which Stalin decided to take action and begin the purges.[14][15]

The purges were largely conducted by the NKVD (People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs), which functioned as the interior ministry and secret police of the USSR. Starting in 1936, the NKVD began the removal of the central party leadership, Old Bolsheviks, government officials, and regional party bosses.[16] Soviet politicians who opposed or criticized Stalin were removed from office and imprisoned or executed by the NKVD. Eventually, the purges were expanded to the Red Army and military high command, which had a disastrous effect on the military.[17][18] As the scope of the purge widened, the omnipresent suspicion of saboteurs and counter-revolutionaries began impacting civilian life. The NKVD targeted certain ethnic minorities such as the Volga Germans, who were subjected to forced deportation and extreme repression. Throughout the purge, the NKVD sought to strengthen control over civilians through fear, and frequently used imprisonment, torture, violent interrogation, and executions during its mass operations.[19]

In 1938, Stalin reversed his stance on the purges, criticized the NKVD for carrying out mass executions, and oversaw the execution of Genrikh Yagoda and Nikolai Yezhov, who headed the NKVD during the purge years. Scholars estimate the death toll for the Great Purge (1936–1938) to be roughly 700,000.[20][21] Despite the end of the Great Purge, the widespread surveillance and atmosphere of mistrust continued for decades. Similar purges took place in Mongolia and Xinjiang. While the Soviet government desired to put Trotsky on trial during the purge, his exile prevented this. Trotsky survived the purge, though he would be assassinated in 1940 by the NKVD on the orders of Stalin.[22][23]

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference Kuhr was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference Xavier was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference EllmanComment was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  4. ^ Conquest 2008, p. 53.
  5. ^ Brett Homkes (2004). "Certainty, Probability, and Stalin's Great Party Purge". McNair Scholars Journal. 8 (1): 13.
  6. ^ Harris 2017, p. 16.
  7. ^ James Harris, "Encircled by Enemies: Stalin's Perceptions of the Capitalist World, 1918–1941," Journal of Strategic Studies 30#3 [2007]: 513–45.
  8. ^ In Russian historiography, the period of the most intense purge, 1937–1938, is called Yezhovshchina (lit. 'Yezhov phenomenon'), after Nikolai Yezhov, the head of the NKVD.
  9. ^ Helen Rappaport (1999). Joseph Stalin: A Biographical Companion. ABC-CLIO. p. 110. ISBN 978-1576070840. Retrieved 29 September 2015.
  10. ^ "Joseph Stalin". History.com. Retrieved 2 December 2021.
  11. ^ "Trotsky's Struggle against Stalin". The National WWII Museum | New Orleans. 12 September 2018. Retrieved 22 August 2022.
  12. ^ "Who Killed Kirov? 'The Crime of the Century'". www.wilsoncenter.org. Retrieved 3 December 2021.
  13. ^ People's Comissariat of Justice of the U.S.S.R. (1938). Anti-Soviet 'Bloc of Rights and Trotskyites' Heard before the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the U.S.S.R., Verbatim Report. People's Comissariat of Justice of the U.S.S.R. ASIN B0711N78KN.
  14. ^ Knight, Amy (1999). Who Killed Kirov. Hill & Wang.
  15. ^ Getty, John Arch; Getty, John Archibald (1987). Origins of the Great Purges: The Soviet Communist Party Reconsidered, 1933–1938. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521335706.
  16. ^ "Tokaev Comrade X 1956" – via Internet Archive.
  17. ^ Whitewood, Peter (13 June 2016). "Rethinking Stalin's Purge of the Red Army, 1937–38". University Press of Kansas Blog. Retrieved 3 December 2021.
  18. ^ Uldricks, Teddy J. (1977). "The Impact of the Great Purges on the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs" (PDF). Slavic Review. 36 (2): 187–204. doi:10.2307/2495035. JSTOR 2495035. S2CID 163664533.
  19. ^ Figes 2007, pp. 227–315.
  20. ^ "Introduction: the Great Purges as history", Origins of the Great Purges, Cambridge University Press, pp. 1–9, 1985, doi:10.1017/cbo9780511572616.002, ISBN 978-0521259217, retrieved 2 December 2021
  21. ^ Homkes, Brett (2004). "Certainty, Probability, and Stalin's Great Purge". McNair Scholars Journal.
  22. ^ "Leon Trotsky – Exile and assassination | Britannica". www.britannica.com. Retrieved 27 April 2022.
  23. ^ Schatman, Max (1938). Behind the Moscow Trials.

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