Stalin’s Purges

Known as the Great Purge

A period of time from 1936-1938 where political opponents, the military and even the NKVD were charged with various crimes and either executed or imprisoned.

Motives

Purging of political opponents

There were many show trials of prominent Bolsheviks who were accused of colluding with Trotsky to overthrow Stalin, or of having the intent to sabotage the Soviet regime.

Prominent show trials

However…

The evidence in the show trials were derived from preliminary examinations of the defendants and their confessions

It was later found that most, if not all of the accused were innocent

The cases were fabricated by the NKVD

The confessions were made under pressure of intense torture and intimidation.

The accused

Most of the accused were believed by Stalin to be plotting to overthrow him

Stalin feared that he had lost control of Kirov and in 1934 he was murdered by Nikolayev, a Communist Party member.

The murder of Kirov was used as an excuse to remove a total of 16 opponents who were critical of Stalin

Reactions Commission of Inquiry into the Charges Made against Leon Trotsky in the

Moscow Trials, otherwise known as the Dewey Commission

Set up in the United States by supporters of Trotsky to establish the truth

Headed by noted American philosopher and educator, John Dewey

Published a 422 page book called “Not Guilty”

Their findings:

“That the conduct of the Moscow Trials was such as to convince any unprejudiced person that no attempt was made to ascertain the truth.”

“That while confessions are necessarily entitled to the most serious consideration, the confessions themselves contain such inherent improbabilities as to convince the Commission that they do not represent the truth, irrespective of any means used to obtain them.”

“That Trotsky never instructed any of the accused or witnesses in the Moscow trials to enter into agreements with foreign powers against the Soviet Union [and] that Trotsky never recommended, plotted, or attempted the restoration of capitalism in the USSR.”

The Dewey Commission concluded that “We therefore find the Moscow Trials to be frame-ups."

Reactions

Alexander Orlov, a NKVD officer who escaped to the United States: “Stalin decided to arrange for the assassination of Kirov and to lay the crime at the door of the former leaders of the opposition and thus with one blow do away with Lenin's former comrades. Stalin came to the conclusion that, if he could prove that Zinoviev and Kamenev and other leaders of the opposition had shed the blood of Kirov, "the beloved son of the party", a member of the Politburo, he then would be justified in demanding blood for blood.”

The New Statesman (US newspaper): “Very likely there was a plot. We complain because, in the absence of independent witnesses, there is no way of knowing. It is their (Zinoviev and Kamenev) confession and decision to demand the death sentence for themselves that constitutes the mystery. If they had a hope of acquittal, why confess? If they were guilty of trying to murder Stalin and knew they would be shot in any case, why cringe and crawl instead of defiantly justifying their plot on revolutionary grounds? We would be glad to hear the explanation.”

Reactions

Some Western observers felt that the trials were fair, making judgements by assessing the confessions by the defendants, which were given in open court without any proof that the confessions were true.

Zinoviev’s testimony during the August, 1936 trial: “I would like to repeat that I am fully and utterly guilty. I am guilty of having been the organizer, second only to Trotsky, of that block whose chosen task was the killing of Stalin. I was the principal organizer of Kirov's assassination. The party saw where we were going, and warned us; Stalin warned as scores of times; but we did not heed these warnings. We entered into an alliance with Trotsky.”

Based on that statement, the reports below believed that the trials were fair.

A British MP, Denis Pritt, wrote that “Once again the more faint-hearted socialists are beset with doubts and anxieties," but "once again we can feel confident that when the smoke has rolled away from the battlefield of controversy it will be realized that the charge was true, the confessions correct and the prosecution fairly conducted.“

The Observer (UK newspaper), August 1936: “It is futile to think the trial was staged and the charges trumped up. The government's case against the defendants (Zinoviev and Kamenev) is genuine.”

Reactions

The New Republic (US newspaper): “Some commentators, writing at a long distance from the scene, profess doubt that the executed men (Zinoviev and Kamenev) were guilty. It is suggested that they may have participated in a piece of stage play for the sake of friends or members of their families, held by the Soviet government as hostages and to be set free in exchange for this sacrifice. We see no reason to accept any of these laboured hypotheses, or to take the trial in other than its face value. Foreign correspondents present at the trial pointed out that the stories of these sixteen defendants, covering a series of complicated happenings over nearly five years, corroborated each other to an extent that would be quite impossible if they were not substantially true. The defendants gave no evidence of having been coached, parroting confessions painfully memorized in advance, or of being under any sort of duress.

Different reactions

The reason for the different reactions was largely based on the person making the statement. Most believed that the trial was genuine because they did not know of the torture and imprisonment that the defendants had already gone through. Only a few newspapers questioned the validity of the confessions as they found inconsistencies within the confessions, but these newspapers were few and far between.

Purging of military

A series of closed-door trials of top military leaders, most of whom were eliminated. Also, a large number of Soviet armed forces were purged. The elimination of skilled and experienced officers was a major factor in the Red Army’s poor performance when it was invaded by Germany in 1941.

Top military commanders

Tukhachevsky and7 other top Red Army commanders were charged with conspiracy with Germany.

All eight were convicted and executed for their “crimes”.

Ordinary soldiers and officers

A total of 30,000 members of the armed forces were executed.

Included 50% of all army officers

Reactions

A writer, Suvorov, wrote in his book The Cleansing, that the impact was not as large as originally thought. He claimed that of all the victims:

Not more than one-third were actually officers

The second-third were commissars

The last third were NKVD officials with military ranks

Reactions

A report by William Stephenson, head of the British Secret Intelligence Service, on Reinhard Heydrich:

“The most sophisticated apparatus for conveying top-secret orders was at the service of Nazi propaganda and terror. Heydrich had made a study of the Russian OGPU, the Soviet secret security service. He then engineered the Red Army purges carried out by Stalin. The Russian dictator believed his own armed forces were infiltrated by German agents as a consequence of a secret treaty by which the two countries helped each other rearm. Secrecy bred suspicion, which bred more secrecy, until the Soviet Union was so paranoid it became vulnerable to every hint of conspiracy.

Late in 1936, Heydrich had thirty-two documents forged to play on Stalin's sick suspicions and make him decapitate his own armed forces. The Nazi forgeries were incredibly successful. More than half the Russian officer corps, some 35,000 experienced men, were executed or banished.

The Soviet chief of Staff, Marshal Tukhachevsky, was depicted as having been in regular correspondence with German military commanders. All the letters were Nazi forgeries. But Stalin took them as proof that even Tukhachevsky was spying for Germany. It was a most devastating and clever end to the Russo-German military agreement, and it left the Soviet Union in absolutely no condition to fight a major war with Hitler.”

Purging of NKVD

Even the NKVD was not spared

Stalin wanted those who knew too much about the purges to be disposed of as well

Announced to the country that “fascist elements” had taken over the security forces, resulting in innocent people being executed.

Senior officers of NKVD

Beria was appointed as the new head of NKVD

Investigated under orders from Stalin to find out who was responsible

Resulted in all the senior figures in the NKVD being executed

Results of purges

Mass graves

Propaganda posters telling the people to keep quiet over the purges

Results of purges

Images of executed or imprisoned people were doctored to remove them from photos, giving the impression that they did not exist. The person removed here is Yezhov.

Total number of people killed

The official Soviet estimates of the number of people executed was 681,692 people in total (including collectivization etc).

However, historians believe the number to be inaccurate, some estimates have shown that the number of people killed was as high as 2.5 times the Soviet estimates

Many estimations have the number of people executed in the range of 900,000 to 1.2 million people.

Reflections

After doing this research, I was somewhat amazed by the reactions by the Western media. Whereas the Russian media almost always concluded that the people accused were guilty and the trials fair, most of the Western media actually mirrored the Russian media’s opinion. Also, the senseless killing of thousands of innocent people is not one to be looked over either. It is a shame that a dictator would do this to his own people because of his own paranoia or blame shifting. The Russian people did not bring the Communists to power because they wanted this. They wanted better, peaceful lives and this was not at all what they expected or wanted.

Bibliography

The great purge. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/RUSpurge.htm

Great purges. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Great_Purges

purge trials. (2009). Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica 2009 Ultimate Reference Suite.  Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica.

The great purge/the great terror. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.pvhs.chico.k12.ca.us/~bsilva/projects/russia/stalin/great_purge.htm

The great purge. (2011). [Web]. Retrieved from http://www.life.com/gallery/60111/image/ugc1220141?xid=todaystopphotosrss