The Great Purge

The Great Purge Soviet Union

The Great Purge of the Soviet Union is split into four distinct periods, shown below.

Origins of the Great Purge

When Premier Vladimir Lenin died in 1924, a power vacuum emerged in the Soviet Union. Joseph Stalin fought his way to succeed Lenin, outmanoeuvring his political rivals and gaining control of the Communist Party in 1928. While Stalin's leadership was initially widely accepted, the Communist hierarchy began to lose faith in Stalin during the early 1930s. This was mainly due to the failures of the First Five-Year Plan and the policy of collectivisation. The failure of these policies led to economic collapse. Therefore, the government confiscated grain from the peasantry to increase trade exports. This event – known as Holodomor – led to the deaths of approximately five million people.

Fig. 1 - Starvation during the Holodomor, 1933

After the famine of 1932 and the subsequent deaths of five million people, Stalin was under significant pressure. At the 17^th Communist Party Congress in 1934, nearly one-quarter of all delegates voted against Stalin, with many suggesting that Sergei Kirov took charge.

The Assassination of Sergei Kirov

In 1934, Soviet politician Sergei Kirov was assassinated. This exacerbated the mistrust and suspicion that was already shrouding Stalin's premiership.

Fig. 2 - Sergei Kirov in 1934

The investigation into Kirov's death revealed that several party members were working against Stalin; those involved in Kirov's assassination also supposedly 'admitted' plotting to murder Stalin himself. While countless historians doubt these assertions, all agree that the assassination of Kirov was the moment in which Stalin decided to take action.

By 1936, the atmosphere of suspicion and mistrust had become untenable. The rise of fascism, the possible return of rival Leon Trotsky, and increased pressure on Stalin's position as leader led him to authorise the Great Purge. The NKVD carried out the purge.

Heads of the NKVD

The NKVD had three leaders throughout the Great Purge: Genrikh Yagoda, Nikolai Yezhov, and Lavrentiy Beria. Let's look at these individuals in more detail.

Stalin's Great Purge

Stalin initiated the Great Purge to remove political figures who threatened his leadership. Consequently, the initial phases of the purge began with the arrests and executions of party members, Bolsheviks, and members of the Red Army. Once this was achieved, however, Stalin sought to consolidate his power through fear, expanding the Purge to include Soviet peasants, members of the intelligentsia, and members of certain nationalities.

Whilst the most intense period of the purge was over by 1938, the fear and terror of persecution, execution, and imprisonment remained throughout Stalin's reign and beyond. Stalin had established a precedent in which anti-Stalinists were removed under the guise of being anti-communist.

The Moscow Trials

Between 1936 and 1938, there were significant 'show trails' of former Communist Party leaders. These were known as the Moscow Trials.

First Moscow Trial

In August 1936, the first of the trials saw sixteen members of the "Trotskyite-Kamenevite-Zinovievite-Leftist-Counter-Revolutionary Bloc" tried. Prominent leftists Grigory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev were charged with the assassination of Kirov and plotting to assassinate Stalin. The sixteen members were all sentenced to death and executed.

Fig. 3 - Bolshevik revolutionaries Leon Trotsky, Lev Kamenev, and Grigory Zinoviev

Second Moscow Trial

The Second of the Moscow Trials saw seventeen members of the "anti-Soviet Trotskyite centre" tried in January 1937. The group, which included Grigory Sokolnikov, Yuri Piatakov, and Karl Radek, was charged with plotting with Trotsky. Out of the seventeen, thirteen were executed, and four were sent to prison camps.

Third Moscow Trial

The third and most famous of the Moscow Trials occurred in March 1938. The twenty-one defendants were allegedly members of the Bloc of Rightists and Trotskyites.

The most well-known defendant was Nikolai Bukharin, a prominent member of the Communist Party. After three months of imprisonment, Bukharin finally gave in when his wife and infant son were threatened. He was found guilty of counter-revolutionary activities and subsequently executed.

Fig. 4 - Nikolai Bukharin

Red Army Purge

During the Great Purge, approximately 30,000 Red Army personnel were executed; historians believe that 81 out of the 103 admirals and generals were killed during the purge. Stalin justified the Red Army's purge by claiming they were plotting a coup.

Purge of the Kulaks

Another group to be persecuted during the Great Purge was the Kulaks – the group of wealthy former-landowning peasants. On 30 July 1937, Stalin ordered the arrest and execution of the Kulaks, former Tsarist officials, and people who had belonged to political parties other than the Communist Party.

Purge of Nationalities and Ethnicities

The Great Purge targeted ethnic minorities and people of certain nationalities. The NKVD carried out a series of Mass Operations concerned with attacking certain nationalities. The NKVD's 'Polish Operation' was the largest Mass Operation; between 1937 and 1938, over 100,000 Poles were executed. The wives of those arrested or killed were sent to prison camps, and the children were sent to orphanages.

As well as the Polish Operation, NKVD Mass Operations targeted nationalities such as the Latvians, Finnish, Bulgarians, Estonians, Afghans, Iranians, Chinese, and Greek.

The Purge of the Bolsheviks

Most of the Bolsheviks involved in the Russian Revolution (1917) were executed. During the October Revolution in 1917, there were six original members of the Central Committee of the Communist Party; by 1940, the only one still alive was Joseph Stalin himself.

The End of the Purge

The last stage of the purge occurred in the summer of 1938. It saw the execution of the senior figures of the NKVD. Stalin argued that the NKVD had been taken over by 'fascist elements', with countless innocent citizens being executed as a result. Yezhov was swiftly executed, with Lavrentiy Beria succeeding him as head of the Secret Police.

Fig. 5 - NKVD Chiefs

By the end of the Great Purge in 1938, Stalin had established a compliant society kept in line with a precedent of fear and terror. The purge had seen the terms 'anti-Stalinist' and 'anti-communist' conflated, with Soviet society worshipping the cult of Stalin's personality.

Whilst historians mark the end of the Great Purge in 1938, the removal of perceived political opponents continued until Stalin' died in 1953. Only in 1956 – through Khrushchev's policy of de-Stalinization – was political repression diminished and the terrors of the purge fully realised.

Effects of the Great Purge

One of the most severe examples of political repression in modern history, the Great Purge had a

significant effect on the Soviet Union. As well as the huge loss of life – an estimated 750,000 – the Purge allowed Stalin to silence his political opponents, consolidate his power base, and establish a totalitarian system of governance in the Soviet Union.

While political purges had been a common tenet of the Soviet Union since its inception in 1917, Stalin's purge was unique: artists, Bolsheviks, scientists, religious leaders, and writers – to name but a few – were all subject to Stalin's wrath. Such persecution ushered in an ideology of terror that would last for two decades.