How did
Stalin rule
the USSR
between
1928-1941?
Yezhov
• Stalin’s Terror State
• Purges are regular feature of Soviet
state
– 1921 150K “Radishes”/carreerists
– 1921-28 450 K Counter-revolutionaries
• Is the Great Terror simply a
continuation of the Purges?
– 1933-34 33% Expelled from Party
– Next step is quantitatively and
qualitatively different
– Stalin will eventually purge 1/3 and
execute 600,000 CPSU members
Yezhov
• The Timeline of the Purges
• Early Purges
– Not as violent or deadly as later
– Lose Party Membership cards and with
them rights to employment, housing and
special rations
• Not all are Party Expulsions
– Shakty Trial 1928
• 55 Engineers charged as saboteurs
• Real goal is to blame people for failure to
meet quotas
– Industrial Research and Planning Trial
1930
• Trial of GOSPLAN officials for poor
planning
• The Timeline of the Purges
Yezhov
– Ryutin Purges 1932
• Moscow Party Secretary calls Stalin an “Evil
Genius …”
• He is expelled from Party but avoids death
penalty which Stalin demanded
• Leads Stalin to believe that organized
resistance is still possible
– Serves as prelude to first major purge
• 1/3 of Party totaling 1 mi. lose party
membership accused as Ryutinites
• Purge organized by Nicolai Yezhov
– Purges intensify: Why?
• Stalin suspicious by nature and suffers from
paranoia
• Alec Nove suggests revolution from above
breeds those seeking vengeance (so Stalin
solution is kill them)
• Robert Service believes Stalin has personality
disorder and thinks in terms of getting even
• Violence is perfectly acceptable to him
• The Timeline of the Purges
Yezhov
– Mechanisms of control
• 1933-34 Police, Secret Police, labor
camps, border guards all placed under
NKVD
• Special Military Court created for
“serious crimes”
– Post-Kirov Purges
• 1934 17th Party Congress Sergei Kirov
(head of the Leningrad Party) gets more
votes than Stalin for Central Committee
• Kirov assassinated Dec. 1934 by
husband of Kirov’s lover
• Probable Stalin approved it or organized
it
• In two hours Stalin signs Decree Against
Terrorist Acts
• Claims Trotskyites/Leftist to blame and
rounds them up, many executed
• The Timeline of the Purges
Yezhov
– Post-Kirov Purges
• 114 shot immediately, 3000 Kamenev
(K)/Zinoviev(Z) supporters arrested,
1000’s deported
• Stalin Proteges brought in
• Now no area of Soviet Bureaucracy
Stalin doesn’t control
• Status of victims is high, K and Z are
arrested and imprisoned
• No one safe, arbitrary arrest and
summary execution is the norm
• Example: Of 1996 members at 1934
Congress; 1108 shot in next 3 years
• 98 of 139 Central Comm. Members shot
WHY?
• Violence a normal part of the Soviet
State?
How?
• NKVD
– Police, Secret Police, Camps, Border and
security guards
– Special Military courts
• Stalin’s cronies put in place after Kirov
Murder
–
–
–
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–
–
Yagoda, Yezhov, NKVD
Vyshinsky – Prosecutor
Zhdanov: Leningrad Party Leader
Beria, State Security
Poskrebyshov – Secretariat
No Party of Party Bureacracy Stalin
doesn’t control
• The Great Purge 1936-39
Yagoda
– Stalin declares State of seige
– Purge effects entire population
• Purge of the Party
– Memo in 1936 warns of TrotskyiteKamenenite-Zinovievite-LeftistCounter-Revolutionary Bloc
– K and Z, arrested 1935, tried and confess
their guilt to Kirov murder and
attempted overthrow of government
– Called the Trial of the 16 ( T, Z, K
Counter-revolutionary Line)
• Confess under torture
• Confessions mean others have no defense
• Public confessions also give Stalin
justification to continue the purge
– Yagoda who was replaced by Yezhov as
head of the NKVD
• The Great Purge 1936-39
Yagoda
– 1937 Trial of 17 (Anti-Soviet Trotskyist
Center)
• Alleged plot with Germans
• Most prominent is Lenin favorite Radek whoe
groveling confession implicates Bukharin
– 1937 Decree of Anti-Soviet Elements
• Regional quota arrests and executions
• NKVD ordered to execute 28% of those arrested
• Official list is 353,000 dead (underestimate)
– 1938 Trial of 21 (Trotskyite Rightists)
– B, R, T all tried, 18 others including
– Bukharin still accepts the infallability of the
Party and Stalin in his final speech
– 328,000 executed (again 3 is too low)
• Military Purge 1937-38
– Eliminate independence of the military
is next goal
– Stalin precedes purge with massive
transfers to disorganize any opposition
– Tukhachevsky and 7 generals arrested
tried, shot for spying for Germans/Japan
– In 18 months All 11 War Commissars
shot
– 3 of 5 Marshalls
– 91 of 101 on Military Council
– 14 of 16 Army Commanders
– 35,000 Officers about 50% of toatl
– All but one Air Force General and all
Navy Admirals shot
– All units end up understaffed,
inexperienced
• Purge of the people
• Stalin dominates Party, Gov’t,
Military but search for enemies
continues
– Yezhovschina
• Force regions and nationalities into
submission
• 2 Prime Ministers, 80% of Party Secretaries
and 1000’s of lesser officials lose jobs
– Despite high profile Show trials the
worst of the purges falls on the people
– 1/8 are arrested, virtually every family
has at least one victim
– NKVD squads arrest 100’s at a time,
20,000 bodies in one mass grave
– Quota system, no appeal, execution
“…to be carried out immdiately…”
– Fear is a way of life
– 1934 – 1 mi arrested
• Purge of the people
• Purges finally scaled down 1939
– NKVD and interrogators now purged
– Yezhov arrested 1938, Beria replaces
him
– 23,000 NKVD arrested
– Betray your own family to survive
– Innocence and guilt mean nothing, mass
of population is terrified and bewildered
• Later Purges
– Purges do not end with WWII but they
are scaled back
– During WWII Military failures labeled
sabotage and purges result
– After WWII Stalin is even harder, also
more suspicious of outside world
• Desertions in WWII lead to new purges of
Army after the war
• 1947 CC and P-buro abolished
• Leningrad Affair
– January 1949 Leningrad Trade Fair
organized by Leningrad leaders who were
heroes from WWII
– fair was attacked by official Soviet
propaganda
– falsely portrayed as a scheme to use the
federal budget from Moscow for Leningrad,
• Later Purges
• Leningrad Affair (con’t)
– Other accusations Leningrad's leaders
competing with Moscow-centered
communist government
– Over two thousand people from city
government arrested
– Also arrested were many industrial
managers, scientists and university
professors.
– first prosecution, on 30 September 1950
leaders were sentenced to death
– About 2,000 of Leningrad's public figures
were removed from their positions and exiled
from their city,
– Intellectuals were harshly persecuted for the
slightest signs of dissent
– Doctors Plot
• Later Purges
• Doctors Plot
– Dr. against Jewish Doctors that dominated
the Moscow medical profession
– Really done because Stalin’s daughter had an
affair with Jewish doctor
– Doctors accused of plot to murder Stalin
– Plan was to devastate medical profession like
the army, but Stalin dies before it is
implemented
• Post war Gulag
– 2.8 million captured soldiers arrested after
their return from Nazi captivity
– Only 500,000 return home
– New labor camps built – 1947 20 million in
the camps
– Purge trials now in Soviet occupied states in
Eastern Europe
• Purges and Stalin’s Power
– 1934 – 1 mi arrested
– 1937 - 8 mi. in labor camps
– 1939 – 5-7 mi. more arrested, 1 mi. shot,
2mi. Die in camps
– 1940 – Baltic states occupied and 2 mi
deported
– 1941 - ethnic deportations of ethnic
Germans, Kalmyks, Ukrainians,
Chechens, Tartars: 1.3 mi. die
– 1944-46 10 million to camps after
screening from Nazi occupied areas: 5-6
mi. die
– 1947-53 one million die from various
purges
•
Worse than Nazi holocaust and Stalin is so
isolated he is prisoner in his own system
• Why the Purges?
J. Arch Getty
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Stalin wants to retain power
Stalin wants sole credit for Soviet successes
Stalin’s Personality
There are some actual opponents (Ryutin,
Kirov) on issues like collectivization
• Revisionists
– Service argues Stalin need help and purges are
popular with some groups
– J. Arch Getty, Sheila Fitzpatrick
– Not just Stalin
– Party officials want to eliminate rivals
– Stalin can’t control all local officials
• Purges generate own momentum
– Background of forced collectivization and Nazi
rise breeds violence
– Yezhov/NKVD use purges to increase power
– Nomenklatura (new bureaucrats use purges to
get power/promotions
– conscience gone cold