The Great Purge 1936-1939

The Great Purge 1936-1939

• TheGreat Purgewas a period in the1930sof mass repression in theSoviet Unionduring which theCommunist Partyleadership underJoseph Stalinused execution and mass imprisonment to destroy any potential political opposition. Fear was such a major component during the uprising of the Communist regime because each person was skeptical of the next persons move, so they would make preemptive moves that would help further themselves.
• Anyone perceived as a potential threat to the regime's authority -- including some of its strongest political supporters, and most senior army officers -- were systematically identified and either executed, incarcerated in theGulagprison system, or sent into forced labor or internal exile inSiberiaand other remote regions.
• The most intense period of the Purge was from1936to1938, whileNikolai Ivanovich Yezhovwas head of the ministry of internal affairsNKVD.
• InMoscow, several show trials were held, to convince domestic and foreign opinion of the existence of a vast anti-Soviet conspiracy and to serve as examples for the trials that local courts were expected to carry out elsewhere in the country.
• Almost all of theBolshevikswho had played prominent roles during the1917Russian Revolution, or inLenin'sSoviet government afterwards, were executed or exiled during this period.Leon Trotskywent into exile inMexico, but was murdered by a Soviet agent in1940. Of the senior revolutionary Bolsheviks, only Molotovand Stalin himself survived the Great Purges unscathed.
• There were four key trials from 1936 to 1938: the Trial of the Sixteen (August 1936); the Trial of the Seventeen (January 1937); the trial of Red Army generals, includingMarshal Tukhachevsky(June 1937); and finally theTrial of the Twenty Onein March 1938.
• The trials, however, were only a minor part of the Purges, and one of their purposes was to divert the world's attention from what was going on the rest of the country. Nearly a million people were executed by firing squad in the period1936-1939, and millions more were arrested and sent off to prison or labor camps, where most of them died. It is estimated that between 12 and 20 million people died in the Purges.
• By the summer of1938, everyone in power realized that the purges had gone too far, and Yezhov was demoted to People's Commissar of Water Transport on August 21.Lavrenty Beriathen became head of the NKVD. This signaled the end of the Great Purge, although the practice of mass arrest and exile was continued until Stalin's death in1953.

1)

Nikolai Yezhov

• Yezhov joined theBolsheviksafter theFebruary Revolution. He joined theRed Armyduring theCivil Warand by 1927 was a close associate ofJoseph Stalin.
• In September, 1936, Yezhov replacedGenrikh Yagodaas head of the Peoples Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD). Yezhov quickly arranged the arrest of all the leading political figures in the Soviet Union who were critical of Stalin.
• TheNKVDbroke prisoners down by intense interrogation. This included the threat to arrest and execute members of the prisoner's family if they did not confess. The interrogation went on for several days and nights and eventually they became so exhausted and disoriented that they signed confessions agreeing that they had been attempting to overthrow the government.

According to the historian Robert Conquest, Joseph Stalin "gives the impression of a large and crude claylike figure, a golem, into which a demonic spark has been instilled." He was nonetheless "a man who perhaps more than any other determined the course of the twentieth century."

Stalin, allegedly signing a death warrant.

"Blind chance rules a man's life in this country of ours,"said one NKVD officer, who found himself suddenly placed under arrest. For ordinary citizens, "Fear by night, and a feverish effort by day to pretend enthusiasm for a system of lies, was the permanent condition." (Conquest,The Great Terror: A Reassessment, p. 434.)

Nikolai Yezhov crushes the traitors in
a Soviet propaganda cartoon.

• 7 million Purge victims were in the labour/death camps, on top of the hundreds of thousands who had been slaughtered outright. In the worst camps, such as those of the Kolyma gold-mining region in the Arctic, the survival rate was just 2 or 3 percent

How many died?

• Arrests, 1937-1938 - about 7 million
  Executed - about 1 million
  Died in camps - about 2 million
  In prison, late 1938 - about 1 million
  In camps, late 1938 - about 8 million

“Death solves all problems - no man, no problem.”- Stalin

1934- The Communist Party celebrates its economic achievements at the 'Congress of Victors'. While Stalin is lavishly praised for his leadership more than 100 of the 2,000 delegates to the congress cross out his name on a secret ballot for the Central Committee. Only three delegates cross out the name of the Leningrad party chief, Sergei Kirov.

Believing that a conspiracy is now afoot to unseat him and overthrow the socialist revolution, Stalin has Kirov assassinated in December then begins a series of purges of party members suspected of disloyalty. Thousands from the Leningrad party office are deported to work camps in Siberia. Few will return alive.

At show trials held in Moscow between 1936 and 1938 dozens of former party leaders are forced to confess to crimes against the Soviet state. They are then executed. Among those put to death are Kamenev and Zinoviev, the former members of the troika that included Stalin. More than half of the delegates to the 'Congress of Victors' also disappear. By the end of 1938 almost every leading member of the original Bolsheviks has been killed.

The campaign of terror, flamed by the secret police (the NKVD, or People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs - the forerunner of the KGB, or Komitet Gosudarstvenoi Bezopasnosti), extends throughout the party and into the general community, including the military high command. Also targeted are scientists, artists, priests and intellectuals.

All told, about one million are executed, in that will come to be known as 'The Great Terror', 'The Great Purge', or the 'Yezhovshina' (after the head of the NKVD, Nikolai Yezhov). At least 9.5 million more are deported, exiled or imprisoned in work camps, with many of the estimated five million sent to the Gulag never returning alive. Other estimates place the number of deported at 28 million, including 18 million sent to the Gulag.

Stalin personally orders the trials of about 44,000 and signs thousands of death warrants. He also ends early release from work camps for good behaviour.

1936- The Spanish Civil War begins on 18 July when Spanish Nationalists led byFrancisco Francostage a coup against the country's left-leaning Republican Government. Stalin provides support to the Republicans but is wary about antagonising Germany's Nazi dictator,Adolf Hitler, who is backing the Nationalists.

1937- On 30 July the NKVD issues Order No. 00447 setting out the "means of punishment of those to be repressed, and the number of those subject to repression." The operation is to begin on 5 August and be completed in four months.

"All kulaks, criminals, and other anti-Soviet elements to be repressed are to be divided into two categories," the order stats.

"a) The first category are the most hostile of the enumerated elements. They are subject to immediate arrest, and after their cases have been considered by a three-person tribunal (troika) they are TO BE SHOT.

"b) In the second category are the other less active though also hostile elements. They are subject to arrest and imprisonment in a camp for 8 to 10 years, and the most evil and socially dangerous of these, to incarceration for the same period in prison, as determined by the three-person tribunal."

The order then lists the numbers of individuals from regions around the Soviet Union to be "subject to repression." 75,950 are to be executed and 203,000 exiled.

At the same time, the purge of the Red Army begins. The purge results in the execution, imprisonment or dismissal of 36,671 officers, including about half of the 706 officers with the rank of brigade commander or higher. Three of the army's five marshals and 15 of its 16 top commanders are executed.

On 7 November, during a toast to mark the anniversary of the October Revolution, Stalin states that every enemy of the state will be destroyed. "Even if he was an old Bolshevik, we will destroy all his kin, his family," he says.

"We will mercilessly destroy anyone who, by his deeds or his thoughts - yes, his thoughts - threatens the unity of the socialist state. To the complete destruction of all enemies, themselves and their kin!"

1938- On 29 September Britain, France, Germany and Italy sign the 'Munich Agreement'. The agreement, which cedes the German-speaking area in the north ofCzechoslovakiato Germany, is an ill-fated attempt to avoid the Second World War.

Stalin interprets the agreement as a sign that he will not be able to count on either Britain or France if Germany becomes hostile.

1939- On 23 August the Soviet Union and Germany sign a nonaggression pact carving up Eastern Europe into German and Soviet spheres of influence, with the USSR claiming Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Finland, part of the Balkans and half ofPoland.

German troops invade Poland on 1 September. Britain andFrancedeclare war on Germany two days later. The Second World War has begun.

Stalin acts to secure the USSR's western frontier without antagonising Hitler. Soviet forces seize eastern Poland in September and enter Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania in October. War is declared on Finland at the end of November.

In Poland, soldiers and others who might resist the Soviet annexation are arrested en masse. By 1941, about two million have been imprisoned or deported to the Gulag. More than 20,000 Polish officers, soldiers, border guards, police, and other officials are executed, including 4,500 military personnel who are buried in mass graves in the KatynForest near the Russian city of Smolensk.

Meanwhile, Stalin helps supply the German war effort, providing the Nazi regime with oil, wood, copper, manganese ore, rubber, grain, and other resources under a trade agreement between the two nations. Stalin views the war against Germany as a conflict "between two groups of capitalist countries", saying there is "nothing wrong in their having a good fight and weakening each other."

Stalin is named 'Time' magazine's person of the year for 1939 for switching the balance of power in Europe by signing the nonaggression pact with Hitler, a decision that is described as "world-shattering". "Without the Russian pact," the magazine says, "German generals would certainly have been loath to go into military action. With it, World War II began."

In December 1939, to celebrate his 60th birthday, he is awarded the Order of Lenin and given the title 'Hero of Socialist Labour'.

2)

Among those dead(groups of ppl)

-slave labour (on canals, in logging, in gold and uranium mining); the arrests, tortures, confessions and executions which characterised the show trials of leading party members; the arrests of families of the accused (including children) almost as a matter of course; the extensive system of camps (the gulag) in which so many perished; the purge of the Red Army; the shooting of thousands of Polish officers at Katyn; the wholesale deportations of national groups during and after the war; the arrest and execution of foreign communists resident in the USSR; the suppression of the church, of free thought, music and literature, and of freedom itself.

3)

First Moscow Trial (Trial of the Sixteen)

The first trial was held from August 19 to August 24, 1936 in the House of Trade Unions; the principal defendants wereGrigory ZinovievandLev Kamenev. Both Kamenev and Zinoviev had been secretly tried in 1935 but it appears that Stalin decided that, with suitable confessions, their fate could be used for propaganda purposes.Genrikh Yagodaoversaw the interrogation proceedings. The full list of defendants is as follows:

1. Grigory Yevseyevich Zinoviev
2. Lev Borisovich Kamenev
3. Grigory Yevdokimov
4. Ivan Bakayev
5. Sergei Vitalyevich Mrachkovsky, a hero of theRussian Civil WarinSiberiaand theRussian Far East
6. Vagarshak Arutyunovich Ter-Vaganyan, leader of theArmenianCommunist Party
7. Ivan Nikitich Smirnov,People's Commissarfor communications
8. Yefim Dreitzer
9. Isak Reingold
10. Richard Pickel
11. Eduard Holtzman
12. Fritz David
13. Valentin Olberg
14. Konon Berman-Yurin
15. Moissei Lurye
16. Nathan Lurye

At first, Zinoviev and Kamenev refused to confess, but after harsh interrogations and threats against their families, they agreed to confess on condition of a direct guarantee from the Politburo that their lives and those of their families and followers would be spare

The main charge was forming a terrorist organization with the purpose of killing Joseph Stalin and other members of the Soviet government

Trial of Radek and Piatakov (Trial of the Seventeen)

In another trial in January 1937, the principal defendants wereKarl Radek,Yuri Piatakov,Grigori Sokolnikov,Nikolai Muralov,Mikhail Boguslavskyand others (17 persons altogether). All but four of them were sentenced to death; the remainder were sentenced to imprisonment inlabor camps

Radek was spared as he implicated others, includingNikolai Bukharin,Alexei Rykov, and MarshalMikhail Tukhachevsky, setting the stage for the Trial of Military and Trial of the Twenty One.

Trial of the Twenty One

The Trial

The third show trial, in March 1938, known asThe Trial of the Twenty-One, is the most famous of Soviet show trials because of the people involved and the scope of charges, which tied together all the loose threads from earlier trials. It included 21 defendants alleged to belong to the so-called "Bloc of Rightists and Trotskyites":

1. Nikolai Bukharin- Marxist theoretician, former head ofCommunist Internationaland member of Politburo
2. Alexei Rykov- former premier and member of Politburo
3. Nikolai Krestinsky- former member of Politburo and ambassador to Germany
4. Christian Rakovsky- former ambassador to Great Britain and France
5. Genrikh Yagoda- former head ofNKVD
6. Arkady Rosengoltz - former People's Commissar for Foreign Trade
7. Vladimir Ivanov- former People's Commissar for Timber Industry
8. Mikhail Chernov - former People's Commissar for Agriculture
9. Grigori Grinko- former People's Commissar for Finance
10. Isaac Zelensky - former Secretary of Central Committee
11. Sergei Bessonov
12. Akmal Ikramov - Uzbek leader
13. Faizulla Khodjayev - Uzbek leader
14. Vasily Sharangovich - former first secretary in Byelorussia
15. Prokopy Zubarev
16. Pavel Bulanov - NKVD officer
17. Lev Levin - Kremlin doctor
18. Dmitry Pletnev - Kremlin doctor
19. Ignaty Kamazov - Kremlin doctor
20. Venyamin Maximov-Dikovsky
21. Pyotr Kryuchkov

Trials of the Military

Main article:Case of Trotskyist Anti-Soviet Military Organization

The 1937 trial of high-up military commanders, also known as the "Tukhachevsky Affair", was asecret trial, unlike the Moscowshow trials. However, it featured the same type of frame-up of the defendants and it is traditionally considered one of the key trials of theGreat Purge.Mikhail Tukhachevskyand the senior military officersIona Yakir,Ieronim Uborevich,Robert Eideman,Avgust Kork,Vitovt Putna,B.M. FeldmanandVitaly Primakovwere accused of anti-Communist conspiracy and sentenced to death; they were executed on the night of June 11/June 12, immediately after the verdict delivered by a Special Session of theSupreme Court of the USSR. This trial triggered a massive purge of the Red Army.

Works Cited

1)"Great Purge - Discussion and Encyclopedia Article. Who is Great Purge? What is Great Purge? Where is Great Purge? Definition of Great Purge. Meaning of Great Purge." Welcome to Knowledgerush. Web. 21 Feb. 2010. <

2)"Joseph Stalin killer file." Moreorless - Heroes and killers of the 20th Century. Web. 21 Feb. 2010. <

Web. 18 Feb. 2010.

3)"YouTube - Footage from infamous Moscow show trial." YouTube - Broadcast Yourself. Web. 21 Feb. 2010. <

What was the great purge?

The Show Trials

Who initiated it?

Who did it affect?

How did it affect the people?

What was the result?

How did this affect Stalin’s dictatorship?