15
Great Terror and Purges
Overview
A.
B.
C.
D.
E.
F.
G.
Introduction
Themes
Four Phases
The Number Question
Great Terror of 1937-8
Why?
Why this form and this scale?
A. Themes
1. Much historiographical and political
mythmaking
2. Archival revolution of 1990s
3. Stalin’s role as instigator, not director
4. Complex social process: multiple terrors
at different levels
5. Multiple reasons for the scale and
irrationality
B. Four Phases
1.
2.
3.
4.
Social terror, 1928-32
Retreating and retargeting, 1932-36
“Ezhovshchina” 1936-38
Purging the purgers 1938-39
C. Number Question
1. Historiography
2. Newest data
Category
W.
Hist.
Arrests
7 m.
New
Archival
Data
1.5 m.
Camps
7 m.
1.9 m.
Executions
1-2 m
680,000
D. Great Terror of 1937-38
1. Bychinskii Case
2. Victimology
a.
b.
c.
d.
e.
Party, state, military elites
“Class enemies”
Suspect ethnic minorities
Expendables
Random victims from general population
E. Why the Purges and Terror?
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Dogma: intensification of class struggle
Mounting foreign threats
Party opposition
Economic: mobilizing and scapegoating
Social tensions: Stalinists and
malcontents
F. Why This Form and This Scale?
1.
2.
3.
4.
State and police
Party’s internal chaos
Social conflict (delatology)
Stalin: role of the vozhd’
G. Conclusions
Belomor Canal: Celebratory
Volume
Ex-Basmachi at Belomor Canal
Lavrentii Beria
Ezhov
NKVD: Ezhov’s Top Staff
1937 Poster: Root out the Spies
and Saboteurs
Leningrad Pravda: Enemies of
Kolkhoz Before Soviet Courts
Stalin’s “Album”
Stalin Album
Stalin Archive List: Reports on the
Purges
Stalin Archive: List of Gifts
Iarsoslavl Victims (1)
Iaroslavl Victims (2)
Moscow Victims