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The Great Purge or the Great Terror (russian: Большой террор), also known as the Year of '37 (russian: 37-й год, translit=Tridtsat sedmoi god, label=none) and the Yezhovshchina ('period of Yezhov'), was
Soviet General Secretary The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
Joseph Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet Union, Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as Ge ...
's campaign to solidify his power over the party and the state; the purges were also designed to remove the remaining influence of
Leon Trotsky Lev Davidovich Bronstein. ( – 21 August 1940), better known as Leon Trotsky; uk, link= no, Лев Давидович Троцький; also transliterated ''Lyev'', ''Trotski'', ''Trotskij'', ''Trockij'' and ''Trotzky''. (), was a Russian ...
as well as other prominent political rivals within the party. It occurred from August 1936 to March 1938. Following the
death Death is the irreversible cessation of all biological functions that sustain an organism. For organisms with a brain, death can also be defined as the irreversible cessation of functioning of the whole brain, including brainstem, and brain ...
of
Vladimir Lenin Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov. ( 1870 – 21 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin,. was a Russian revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He served as the first and founding head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 to 1 ...
in 1924 a power vacuum opened in the
Communist Party A communist party is a political party that seeks to realize the socio-economic goals of communism. The term ''communist party'' was popularized by the title of '' The Manifesto of the Communist Party'' (1848) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engel ...
. Various established figures in Lenin's government attempted to succeed him. Joseph Stalin, the party's General Secretary, outmaneuvered political opponents and ultimately gained control of the Communist Party by 1928. Initially, Stalin's leadership was widely accepted; his main political adversary Trotsky was forced into exile in 1929, and the doctrine of "
socialism in one country Socialism in one country was a Soviet state policy to strengthen socialism within the country rather than socialism globally. Given the defeats of the 1917–1923 European communist revolutions, Joseph Stalin and Nikolai Bukharin encouraged th ...
" became enshrined party policy. However, by the early 1930s, party officials began losing faith in his leadership following the human cost of the
First Five Year Plan The first five-year plan (russian: I пятилетний план, ) of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was a list of economic goals, created by Communist Party General Secretary Joseph Stalin, based on his policy of socialism ...
and Soviet collectivization of agriculture. By 1934 several of Stalin's rivals, such as Trotsky, began calling for Stalin's removal and attempted to break his influence over the party. In this atmosphere of doubt and suspicion, a popular high-ranking official, Sergei Kirov, was
assassinated Assassination is the murder of a prominent or important person, such as a head of state, head of government, politician, world leader, member of a royal family or CEO. The murder of a celebrity, activist, or artist, though they may not have ...
. His death led to an investigation that revealed a network of party members supposedly working against Stalin, including several of Stalin's rivals. Many of those arrested in Kirov's assassination had also confessed plans to kill Stalin himself, including high-ranking party officials. The validity of these claims is still debated by historians, however there is consensus that Kirov's death was the flashpoint where Stalin and the party took action and began the purges. By 1936, Stalin's paranoia reached a crescendo. The fear of losing his position and the potential return of Trotsky drove him into authorizing the Great Purge. The purges themselves were largely conducted by the
NKVD The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (russian: Наро́дный комиссариа́т вну́тренних дел, Naródnyy komissariát vnútrennikh del, ), abbreviated NKVD ( ), was the interior ministry of the Soviet Union. ...
(People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs), the secret police of the USSR. The NKVD began the removal of the central party leadership,
Old Bolshevik Old Bolshevik (russian: ста́рый большеви́к, ''stary bolshevik''), also called Old Bolshevik Guard or Old Party Guard, was an unofficial designation for a member of the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Par ...
s, government officials, and regional party bosses. Eventually, the purges were expanded to the
Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (Russian language, Russian: Рабо́че-крестья́нская Кра́сная армия),) often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist R ...
and military high command, which had a disastrous effect on the military altogether. Three successive trials were held in Moscow that removed most of the Old Bolsheviks and challenges to Stalin's legitimacy. As the scope of the purge began widening, the omnipresent suspicion of saboteurs and counter-revolutionaries began impacting civilian life. The NKVD began targeting certain ethnic minorities such as the Volga Germans, who were subjected to forced deportation and extreme repression. During the purge, the NKVD widely utilized imprisonment, torture, violent interrogation, and arbitrary executions to solidify control over civilians through fear. In 1938, Stalin reversed his stance on the purges and declared that the internal enemies had been removed. Stalin criticized the NKVD for carrying out mass executions and subsequently executed
Genrikh Yagoda Genrikh Grigoryevich Yagoda ( rus, Ге́нрих Григо́рьевич Яго́да, Genrikh Grigor'yevich Yagoda, born Yenokh Gershevich Iyeguda; 7 November 1891 – 15 March 1938) was a Soviet secret police official who served as directo ...
and
Nikolai Yezhov Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov ( rus, Никола́й Ива́нович Ежо́в, p=nʲɪkɐˈɫaj ɪˈvanəvʲɪt͡ɕ (j)ɪˈʐof; 1 May 1895 – 4 February 1940) was a Soviet secret police official under Joseph Stalin who was head of the N ...
, who headed the NKVD during the purge years. Despite the Great Purge being over, the atmosphere of mistrust and widespread surveillance continued for decades after. Scholars estimate the death toll for the Great Purge (1936–1938) to be roughly 700,000. The term ''great purge'' itself was popularized by the historian Robert Conquest in his 1968 book ''
The Great Terror The Great Purge or the Great Terror (russian: Большой террор), also known as the Year of '37 (russian: 37-й год, translit=Tridtsat sedmoi god, label=none) and the Yezhovshchina ('period of Yezhov'), was Soviet General Secreta ...
''. Conquest's title itself was an
allusion Allusion is a figure of speech, in which an object or circumstance from unrelated context is referred to covertly or indirectly. It is left to the audience to make the direct connection. Where the connection is directly and explicitly stated (as ...
to the period from the
French Revolution The French Revolution ( ) was a period of radical political and societal change in France that began with the Estates General of 1789 and ended with the formation of the French Consulate in November 1799. Many of its ideas are conside ...
known as the
Reign of Terror The Reign of Terror (french: link=no, la Terreur) was a period of the French Revolution when, following the creation of the First French Republic, First Republic, a series of massacres and numerous public Capital punishment, executions took pl ...
. While the Soviet government desired to put Trotsky on trial during the purge, his exile prevented this. Trotsky survived the purge, though he would be assassinated in 1940 by the NKVD.


Introduction

The term '' repression'' was officially used by the leader of the
Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...
at the time,
Soviet general secretary The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
Joseph Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet Union, Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as Ge ...
, to describe the prosecution of people considered counter-revolutionaries and
enemies of the people The term enemy of the people or enemy of the nation, is a designation for the political or class opponents of the subgroup in power within a larger group. The term implies that by opposing the ruling subgroup, the "enemies" in question are ac ...
. Historians debate the causes of the purge, such as Stalin's paranoia, or his desire to remove dissenters from the Communist Party or to consolidate his authority. The purges began in the
Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (Russian language, Russian: Рабо́че-крестья́нская Кра́сная армия),) often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist R ...
, and the techniques developed there were quickly adapted to purges in other sectors. Most public attention was focused on the
purge In history, religion and political science, a purge is a position removal or execution of people who are considered undesirable by those in power from a government, another organization, their team leaders, or society as a whole. A group undertak ...
of certain parts of the leadership of the Communist Party, as well as of government bureaucrats and leaders of the armed forces, most of whom were Party members. The campaigns also affected many other categories of the society:
intelligentsia The intelligentsia is a status class composed of the university-educated people of a society who engage in the complex mental labours by which they critique, shape, and lead in the politics, policies, and culture of their society; as such, the i ...
, peasants—especially those lending out money or wealth ( ''kulaks'')—and professionals. A series of
NKVD The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (russian: Наро́дный комиссариа́т вну́тренних дел, Naródnyy komissariát vnútrennikh del, ), abbreviated NKVD ( ), was the interior ministry of the Soviet Union. ...
operations affected a number of national minorities, accused of being " fifth-column" communities. A number of purges were officially explained as an elimination of the possibilities of sabotage and espionage by the
Polish Military Organisation The Polish Military Organisation, PMO ( pl, Polska Organizacja Wojskowa, POW) was a secret military organization which formed during World War I (1914-1918). Józef Piłsudski founded the group in August 1914; it adopted the name ''POW'' in Novem ...
and, consequently, many victims of the purge were ordinary Soviet citizens of Polish origin. According to
Nikita Khrushchev Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev (– 11 September 1971) was the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964 and chairman of the country's Council of Ministers from 1958 to 1964. During his rule, Khrushchev s ...
's 1956 speech, "
On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences "On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences" (russian: «О культе личности и его последствиях», «''O kul'te lichnosti i yego posledstviyakh''»), popularly known as the "Secret Speech" (russian: секре ...
", and to historian Robert Conquest, a great number of accusations, notably those presented at the Moscow show trials, were based on
forced confession A forced confession is a confession obtained from a suspect or a prisoner by means of torture (including enhanced interrogation techniques) or other forms of duress. Depending on the level of coercion used, a forced confession is not valid in rev ...
s, often obtained through
torture Torture is the deliberate infliction of severe pain or suffering on a person for reasons such as punishment, extracting a confession, interrogation for information, or intimidating third parties. Some definitions are restricted to acts ...
, and on loose interpretations of Article 58 of the RSFSR Penal Code, which dealt with counter-revolutionary crimes. Due legal process, as defined by Soviet law in force at the time, was often largely replaced with summary proceedings by NKVD troikas. Hundreds of thousands of victims were accused of various political crimes (espionage, wrecking,
sabotage Sabotage is a deliberate action aimed at weakening a polity, effort, or organization through subversion, obstruction, disruption, or destruction. One who engages in sabotage is a ''saboteur''. Saboteurs typically try to conceal their identitie ...
,
anti-Soviet agitation Anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda (ASA) (russian: антисове́тская агита́ция и пропага́нда (АСА)) was a criminal offence in the Soviet Union. To begin with the term was interchangeably used with counter-revol ...
, conspiracies to prepare uprisings and coups). They were quickly executed by shooting or sent to the
Gulag The Gulag, an acronym for , , "chief administration of the camps". The original name given to the system of camps controlled by the State Political Directorate, GPU was the Main Administration of Corrective Labor Camps (, )., name=, group= ...
labor camp A labor camp (or labour camp, see spelling differences) or work camp is a detention facility where inmates are forced to engage in penal labor as a form of punishment. Labor camps have many common aspects with slavery and with prisons (espec ...
s. Many died at the penal labor camps of starvation, disease, exposure, and overwork. Other methods of dispatching victims were used on an experimental basis. In Moscow, the use of
gas van A gas van or gas wagon (russian: душегубка, ''dushegubka'', literally "soul killer"; german: Gaswagen) was a truck reequipped as a mobile gas chamber. During the World War II Holocaust, Nazi Germany developed and used gas vans on a large ...
s to kill the victims during their transportation to the
Butovo firing range The Butovo Firing Range or Butovo Shooting Range (russian: Бутовский полигон) was an execution site of the Soviet secret police located near Drozhzhino in Leninsky District, Moscow Oblast from 1938 to 1953. Its use for mass ex ...
has been documented. The Great Purge began under NKVD chief
Genrikh Yagoda Genrikh Grigoryevich Yagoda ( rus, Ге́нрих Григо́рьевич Яго́да, Genrikh Grigor'yevich Yagoda, born Yenokh Gershevich Iyeguda; 7 November 1891 – 15 March 1938) was a Soviet secret police official who served as directo ...
but reached its peak between September 1936 and August 1938 under the leadership of
Nikolai Yezhov Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov ( rus, Никола́й Ива́нович Ежо́в, p=nʲɪkɐˈɫaj ɪˈvanəvʲɪt͡ɕ (j)ɪˈʐof; 1 May 1895 – 4 February 1940) was a Soviet secret police official under Joseph Stalin who was head of the N ...
, hence the name ''Yezhovshchina''. The campaigns were carried out according to the general line of the party, often by direct orders of the
politburo A politburo () or political bureau is the executive committee for communist parties. It is present in most former and existing communist states. Names The term "politburo" in English comes from the Russian ''Politbyuro'' (), itself a contracti ...
headed by Stalin.


Background

From 1930 onwards, the Party and police officials feared the "social disorder" caused by the upheavals of forced collectivization of peasants and the resulting famine of 1932–1933, as well as the massive and uncontrolled migration of millions of peasants into cities. The threat of war heightened Stalin's and generally Soviet perception of marginal and politically suspect populations as the potential source of an uprising in case of invasion. Forged documents and misinformation spread by
Nazi Germany Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...
in order to incriminate innocent Soviet citizens also contributed to this perception. Stalin began to plan for the preventive elimination of such potential recruits for a mythical "fifth column of wreckers, terrorists and spies." The term "
purge In history, religion and political science, a purge is a position removal or execution of people who are considered undesirable by those in power from a government, another organization, their team leaders, or society as a whole. A group undertak ...
" in Soviet political slang was an abbreviation of the expression ''purge of the Party ranks''. In 1933, for example, the Party expelled some 400,000 people. But from 1936 until 1953, the term changed its meaning, because being expelled from the Party came to mean almost certain arrest, imprisonment, and often execution. According to an October 1993 study published in ''
The American Historical Review ''The American Historical Review'' is a quarterly academic history journal and the official publication of the American Historical Association. It targets readers interested in all periods and facets of history and has often been described as the ...
'', much of the Great Purge was directed against the widespread banditry and criminal activity which was occurring in the Soviet Union at the time. The political purge was primarily an effort by Stalin to eliminate challenge from past and potential opposition groups, including the left and right wings led by
Leon Trotsky Lev Davidovich Bronstein. ( – 21 August 1940), better known as Leon Trotsky; uk, link= no, Лев Давидович Троцький; also transliterated ''Lyev'', ''Trotski'', ''Trotskij'', ''Trockij'' and ''Trotzky''. (), was a Russian ...
and
Nikolai Bukharin Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin (russian: Никола́й Ива́нович Буха́рин) ( – 15 March 1938) was a Bolshevik revolutionary, Soviet politician, Marxist philosopher and economist and prolific author on revolutionary theory. ...
, respectively. Following the
Civil War A civil war or intrastate war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government polici ...
and reconstruction of the Soviet economy in the late 1920s, veteran Bolsheviks no longer thought necessary the "temporary" wartime dictatorship, which had passed from Lenin to Stalin. Stalin's opponents inside the Communist Party chided him as undemocratic and lax on bureaucratic corruption. This opposition to current leadership may have accumulated substantial support among the working class by attacking the privileges and luxuries the state offered to its high-paid elite. The Ryutin affair seemed to vindicate Stalin's suspicions. Ryutin was working with the even larger secret
Opposition Bloc russian: Оппозиционный блок , colorcode = , logo = Opposition Bloc.png , logo_size = 240px , leader1_title = Chairman , leader1_name = Rinat Akhmetov (one wing)Dmytro Firtash & Yuriy Boyko ...
in which
Leon Trotsky Lev Davidovich Bronstein. ( – 21 August 1940), better known as Leon Trotsky; uk, link= no, Лев Давидович Троцький; also transliterated ''Lyev'', ''Trotski'', ''Trotskij'', ''Trockij'' and ''Trotzky''. (), was a Russian ...
and Grigori Zinoviev participated, and which later led to both of their deaths. Stalin enforced a ban on party factions and banned those party members who had opposed him, effectively ending
democratic centralism Democratic centralism is a practice in which political decisions reached by voting processes are binding upon all members of the political party. It is mainly associated with Leninism, wherein the party's political vanguard of professional revo ...
. In the new form of Party organization, the Politburo, and Stalin in particular, were the sole dispensers of ideology. This required the elimination of all Marxists with different views, especially those among the prestigious "old guard" of revolutionaries. As the purges began, the government (through the NKVD) shot Bolshevik heroes, including
Mikhail Tukhachevsky Mikhail Nikolayevich Tukhachevsky ( rus, Михаил Николаевич Тухачевский, Mikhail Nikolayevich Tukhachevskiy, p=tʊxɐˈtɕefskʲɪj;  – 12 June 1937) nicknamed the Red Napoleon by foreign newspapers, was a Sovie ...
and Béla Kun, as well as the majority of Lenin's Politburo, for disagreements in policy. The NKVD attacked the supporters, friends, and family of these "heretical" Marxists, whether they lived in Russia or not. The NKVD nearly annihilated Trotsky's family before
killing Killing, Killings, or The Killing may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Films * ''Killing'' (film), a 2018 Japanese film * ''The Killing'' (film), a 1956 film noir directed by Stanley Kubrick Television * ''The Killing'' (Danish TV serie ...
him in Mexico; the NKVD agent
Ramón Mercader Jaime Ramón Mercader del Río (7 February 1913 – 18 October 1978),Photograph oMercader's Gravestone/ref> more commonly known as Ramón Mercader, was a Spanish communist and NKVD agent, who assassinated Russian Bolshevik revolutionary Leon Tr ...
was part of an assassination task force put together by Special Agent Pavel Sudoplatov, under the personal orders of Stalin. In 1934, Stalin used the murder of
Sergey Kirov Sergei Mironovich Kirov (né Kostrikov; 27 March 1886 – 1 December 1934) was a Soviet politician and Bolshevik revolutionary whose assassination led to the first Great Purge. Kirov was an early revolutionary in the Russian Empire and memb ...
as a pretext to launch the Great Purge, in which about a million people perished (see ). Some later historians came to believe that Stalin arranged the murder, or at least that there was sufficient evidence to reach such a conclusion. Kirov was a staunch Stalin loyalist, but Stalin may have viewed him as a potential rival because of his emerging popularity among the moderates. The 1934 Party Congress elected Kirov to the central committee with only three votes against, the fewest of any candidate, while Stalin received 292 votes against. After Kirov's assassination, the NKVD charged the ever-growing group of former oppositionists with Kirov's murder as well as a growing list of other offenses, including treason, terrorism, sabotage, and espionage. Another justification for the purge was to remove any possible "fifth column" in case of a war.
Vyacheslav Molotov Vyacheslav Mikhaylovich Molotov. ; (;. 9 March Old_Style_and_New_Style_dates">O._S._25_February.html" ;"title="Old_Style_and_New_Style_dates.html" ;"title="nowiki/>Old Style and New Style dates">O. S. 25 February">Old_Style_and_New_Style_dat ...
and
Lazar Kaganovich Lazar Moiseyevich Kaganovich, also Kahanovich (russian: Ла́зарь Моисе́евич Кагано́вич, Lázar' Moiséyevich Kaganóvich; – 25 July 1991), was a Soviet politician and administrator, and one of the main associates of ...
, participants in the repression as members of the Politburo, maintained this justification throughout the purge; they each signed many death lists. Stalin believed war was imminent, threatened both by an explicitly hostile Germany and an expansionist Japan. The Soviet press portrayed the country as threatened from within by fascist spies. From the
October Revolution The October Revolution,. officially known as the Great October Socialist Revolution. in the Soviet Union, also known as the Bolshevik Revolution, was a revolution in Russia led by the Bolshevik Party of Vladimir Lenin that was a key mom ...
onward, Lenin had used repression against perceived and legitimate enemies of the Bolsheviks as a systematic method of instilling fear and facilitating control over the population in a campaign called the
Red Terror The Red Terror (russian: Красный террор, krasnyj terror) in Soviet Russia was a campaign of political repression and executions carried out by the Bolsheviks, chiefly through the Cheka, the Bolshevik secret police. It started in ...
. As the Russian Civil War drew to a close, this campaign was relaxed although the secret police did remain active. From 1924 to 1928 the mass repression including incarceration in the Gulag system dropped significantly. By 1929, Stalin had outmaneuvered his political opponents and gained full control over the party. He organized a committee to begin the process of industrialization of the Soviet Union. Backlash against industrialization and collectivization of agriculture escalated which prompted Stalin to increase police presence in rural areas. Soviet authorities increased repression against the kulaks, who were wealthy peasants that owned farmland in a policy called
dekulakization Dekulakization (russian: раскулачивание, ''raskulachivanie''; uk, розкуркулення, ''rozkurkulennia'') was the Soviet campaign of political repressions, including arrests, deportations, or executions of millions of kul ...
. The kulaks responded by destroying crop yields and other acts of sabotage against the Soviet government. The food shortage created lead to a mass famine across the USSR and slowed the Five Year Plan.
Lev Kopelev Lev Zalmanovich (Zinovyevich) Kopelev (russian: Лев Залма́нович (Зино́вьевич) Ко́пелев, German: Lew Sinowjewitsch Kopelew, 9 April 1912, Kyiv – 18 June 1997, Cologne) was a Soviet author and dissident. Early ...
wrote "In Ukraine 1937 began in 1933", referring to the comparatively early beginning of the Soviet crackdown in Ukraine. A distinctive feature of the Great Purge was that, for the first time, members of the ruling party were included on a massive scale as victims of the repression. In addition to ordinary citizens prominent members of the Communist Party were also targets for the purges. The purge of the Party was accompanied by the purge of the whole society. Soviet historians organize the Great Purge into three corresponding trials. The following events are used for the demarcation of the period: *1936, the
first Moscow trial The Moscow trials were a series of show trials held by the Soviet Union between 1936 and 1938 at the instigation of Joseph Stalin. They were nominally directed against "Trotskyists" and members of "Right Opposition" of the Communist Party of the ...
. *1937, introduction of NKVD troikas for implementation of "revolutionary justice." *1937, passage of Article 58-14 about "counter-revolutionary sabotage." *1937, the second Moscow trial *1937, the military purge. *1938, the third Moscow trial.


Moscow Trials


First and Second Moscow trials

Between 1936 and 1938, three very large Moscow trials of former senior Communist Party leaders were held, in which they were accused of conspiring with fascist and capitalist powers to assassinate Stalin and other Soviet leaders, dismember the Soviet Union and restore capitalism. These trials were highly publicized and extensively covered by the outside world, which was mesmerized by the spectacle of Lenin's closest associates confessing to most outrageous crimes and begging for death sentences. *The first trial was of 16 members of the so-called "Trotskyite-Kamenevite-Zinovievite-Leftist-Counter-Revolutionary Bloc," held in August 1936, at which the chief defendants were
Grigory Zinoviev Grigory Yevseyevich Zinoviev, . Transliterated ''Grigorii Evseevich Zinov'ev'' according to the Library of Congress system. (born Hirsch Apfelbaum, – 25 August 1936), known also under the name Ovsei-Gershon Aronovich Radomyslsky (russian: Ов ...
and
Lev Kamenev Lev Borisovich Kamenev. (''né'' Rozenfeld; – 25 August 1936) was a Bolshevik revolutionary and a prominent Soviet politician. Born in Moscow to parents who were both involved in revolutionary politics, Kamenev attended Imperial Moscow Uni ...
, two of the most prominent former party leaders, who had indeed been members of a Conspiratorial Bloc that opposed Stalin, although its activities were exaggerated. Among other accusations, they were incriminated with the assassination of Kirov and plotting to kill Stalin. After confessing to the charges, all were sentenced to death and executed.Rogovin (1998), pp. 36–38 *The second trial in January 1937 involved 17 lesser figures known as the "anti-Soviet Trotskyite-centre" which included
Karl Radek Karl Berngardovich Radek (russian: Карл Бернгардович Радек; 31 October 1885 – 19 May 1939) was a Russian revolutionary and a Marxist active in the Polish and German social democratic movements before World War I and a ...
, Yuri Piatakov and
Grigory Sokolnikov Grigori Yakovlevich Sokolnikov (born Hirsch Brilliant or Girsh Yankelevich Brilliant; 1888–1939) was a Russian Old Bolshevik revolutionary, economist, and Soviet politician. Early career Grigori Sokolnikov was born Girsh Yankelevich Brillia ...
, and were accused of plotting with Trotsky, who was said to be conspiring with Germany. Thirteen of the defendants were eventually executed by shooting. The rest received sentences in labor camps where they soon died. *There was also a secret trial before a military tribunal of a group of Red Army commanders, including
Mikhail Tukhachevsky Mikhail Nikolayevich Tukhachevsky ( rus, Михаил Николаевич Тухачевский, Mikhail Nikolayevich Tukhachevskiy, p=tʊxɐˈtɕefskʲɪj;  – 12 June 1937) nicknamed the Red Napoleon by foreign newspapers, was a Sovie ...
, in June 1937. It is now known that the confessions were given only after great psychological pressure and torture had been applied to the defendants. From the accounts of former
OGPU The Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU; russian: Объединённое государственное политическое управление) was the intelligence and state security service and secret police of the Soviet Union f ...
officer Alexander Orlov and others, the methods used to extract the confessions are known: such tortures as repeated beatings, simulated drownings, making prisoners stand or go without sleep for days on end, and threats to arrest and execute the prisoners' families. For example, Kamenev's teenage son was arrested and charged with terrorism. After months of such interrogation, the defendants were driven to despair and exhaustion. Zinoviev and Kamenev demanded, as a condition for "confessing", a direct guarantee from the Politburo that their lives and that of their families and followers would be spared. This offer was accepted, but when they were taken to the alleged Politburo meeting, only Stalin,
Kliment Voroshilov Kliment Yefremovich Voroshilov (, uk, Климент Охрімович Ворошилов, ''Klyment Okhrimovyč Vorošylov''), popularly known as Klim Voroshilov (russian: link=no, Клим Вороши́лов, ''Klim Vorošilov''; 4 Februa ...
, and Yezhov were present. Stalin claimed that they were the "commission" authorized by the Politburo and gave assurances that death sentences would not be carried out. After the trial, Stalin not only broke his promise to spare the defendants, he had most of their relatives arrested and shot.


Dewey Commission

In May 1937, the Commission of Inquiry into the Charges Made against Leon Trotsky in the Moscow Trials, commonly known as the Dewey Commission, was set up in the United States by supporters of Trotsky, to establish the truth about the trials. The commission was headed by the noted American philosopher and educator
John Dewey John Dewey (; October 20, 1859 – June 1, 1952) was an American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer whose ideas have been influential in education and social reform. He was one of the most prominent American scholars in the fi ...
. Although the hearings were obviously conducted with a view to proving Trotsky's innocence, they brought to light evidence which established that some of the specific charges made at the trials could not be true. For example,
Georgy Pyatakov Georgy (Yury) Leonidovich Pyatakov (russian: Гео́ргий Леони́дович Пятако́в; 6 August 1890 – 30 January 1937) was a leader of the Bolsheviks and a key Soviet politician during and after the 1917 Russian Revolution ...
testified that he had flown to
Oslo Oslo ( , , or ; sma, Oslove) is the capital and most populous city of Norway. It constitutes both a county and a municipality. The municipality of Oslo had a population of in 2022, while the city's greater urban area had a population of ...
in December 1935 to "receive terrorist instructions" from Trotsky. The Dewey Commission established that no such flight had taken place. Another defendant, Ivan Smirnov, confessed to taking part in the assassination of Sergei Kirov in December 1934, at a time when he had already been in prison for a year. The Dewey Commission later published its findings in a 422-page book titled ''Not Guilty''. Its conclusions asserted the innocence of all those condemned in the Moscow Trials. In its summary, the commission wrote The commission concluded: "We therefore find the Moscow Trials to be frame-ups."


Implication of the Rightists

In the second trial,
Karl Radek Karl Berngardovich Radek (russian: Карл Бернгардович Радек; 31 October 1885 – 19 May 1939) was a Russian revolutionary and a Marxist active in the Polish and German social democratic movements before World War I and a ...
testified that there was a "third organization separate from the cadres which had passed through rotsky'sschool,"British Embassy Report: Viscount Chilston to Mr. Eden, 6 February 1937 as well as "semi-Trotskyites, quarter-Trotskyites, one-eighth-Trotskyites, people who helped us, not knowing of the terrorist organization but sympathizing with us, people who from liberalism, from a Fronde against the Party, gave us this help." By the "third organization," he meant the last remaining former opposition group called the
Rightists Right-wing politics describes the range of political ideologies that view certain social orders and hierarchies as inevitable, natural, normal, or desirable, typically supporting this position on the basis of natural law, economics, authori ...
, led by Bukharin, whom he implicated by saying:


Third Moscow trial

The third and final trial, in March 1938, known as
The Trial of the Twenty-One ''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the ...
, is the most famous of the Soviet show trials, because of persons involved and the scope of charges which tied together all loose threads from earlier trials. Meant to be the culmination of previous trials, it included 21 defendants alleged to belong to the "Bloc of Rightists and Trotskyites", supposedly led by Nikolai Bukharin, the former chairman of the
Communist International The Communist International (Comintern), also known as the Third International, was a Soviet-controlled international organization founded in 1919 that advocated world communism. The Comintern resolved at its Second Congress to "struggle by ...
, former premier
Alexei Rykov Alexei Ivanovich Rykov (25 February 188115 March 1938) was a Russian Bolshevik revolutionary and a Soviet politician and statesman, most prominent as premier of Russia and the Soviet Union from 1924 to 1929 and 1924 to 1930 respectively. He was ...
,
Christian Rakovsky Christian Georgievich Rakovsky (russian: Христиа́н Гео́ргиевич Рако́вский; bg, Кръстьо Георги́ев Рако́вски; – September 11, 1941) was a Bulgarian-born socialist revolutionary, a Bolshevi ...
, Nikolai Krestinsky and
Genrikh Yagoda Genrikh Grigoryevich Yagoda ( rus, Ге́нрих Григо́рьевич Яго́да, Genrikh Grigor'yevich Yagoda, born Yenokh Gershevich Iyeguda; 7 November 1891 – 15 March 1938) was a Soviet secret police official who served as directo ...
, recently disgraced head of the NKVD. Although an Opposition Bloc led by Trotsky and with zinovievites really existed,
Pierre Broué Pierre Broué (8 May 1926 – 27 July 2005) was a French historian and Trotskyist revolutionary militant whose work covers the history of the Bolshevik Party, the Spanish Revolution and biographies of Leon Trotsky. Background Broué was born in ...
asserts that Bukharin was not involved. Differently from Broué, one of his former allies, Jules Humbert-Droz, said in his memoirs that Bukharin told him that he formed a secret bloc with Zinoviev and Kamenev in order to remove Stalin from leadership. The fact that Yagoda was one of the accused showed the speed at which the purges were consuming their own. It was now alleged that Bukharin and others sought to assassinate Lenin and Stalin from 1918, murder
Maxim Gorky Alexei Maximovich Peshkov (russian: link=no, Алексе́й Макси́мович Пешко́в;  – 18 June 1936), popularly known as Maxim Gorky (russian: Макси́м Го́рький, link=no), was a Russian writer and social ...
by poison, partition the U.S.S.R and hand its territories to Germany, Japan, and Great Britain, and other preposterous charges. Even previously sympathetic observers who had accepted the earlier trials found it more difficult to accept these new allegations as they became ever more absurd, and the purge expanded to include almost every living Old Bolshevik leader except Stalin and Kalinin. No other crime of the Stalin years so captivated Western intellectuals as the trial and execution of Bukharin, who was a Marxist theorist of international standing.Corey Robin, "Fear", Page 96 For some prominent communists such as Bertram Wolfe,
Jay Lovestone Jay Lovestone (15 December 1897 – 7 March 1990) was an American activist. He was at various times a member of the Socialist Party of America, a leader of the Communist Party USA, leader of a small oppositionist party, an anti-Communist and Centr ...
,
Arthur Koestler Arthur Koestler, (, ; ; hu, Kösztler Artúr; 5 September 1905 – 1 March 1983) was a Hungarian-born author and journalist. Koestler was born in Budapest and, apart from his early school years, was educated in Austria. In 1931, Koestler join ...
, and Heinrich Brandler, the Bukharin trial marked their final break with communism, and even turned the first three into fervent anti-communists eventually. To them, Bukharin's confession symbolized the depredations of communism, which not only destroyed its sons but also conscripted them in self-destruction and individual abnegation.


Bukharin's confession

On the first day of trial, Krestinsky caused a sensation when he repudiated his written confession and pleaded not guilty to all the charges. However, he changed his plea the next day after "special measures", which dislocated his left shoulder among other things.
Anastas Mikoyan Anastas Ivanovich Mikoyan (; russian: Анаста́с Ива́нович Микоя́н; hy, Անաստաս Հովհաննեսի Միկոյան; 25 November 1895 – 21 October 1978) was an Armenian Communist revolutionary, Old Bolshevik an ...
and Vyacheslav Molotov later claimed that Bukharin was never tortured, but it is now known that his interrogators were given the order "beating permitted", and were under great pressure to extract confession out of the "star" defendant. Bukharin initially held out for three months, but threats to his young wife and infant son, combined with "methods of physical influence" wore him down. But when he read his confession amended and corrected personally by Stalin, he withdrew his whole confession. The examination started all over again, with a double team of interrogators. Bukharin's confession in particular became subject of much debate among Western observers, inspiring Koestler's acclaimed novel ''
Darkness at Noon ''Darkness at Noon'' (german: link=no, Sonnenfinsternis) is a novel by Hungarian-born novelist Arthur Koestler, first published in 1940. His best known work, it is the tale of Rubashov, an Old Bolshevik who is arrested, imprisoned, and tried ...
'' and philosophical essay by
Maurice Merleau-Ponty Maurice Jean Jacques Merleau-Ponty. (; 14 March 1908 – 3 May 1961) was a French phenomenological philosopher, strongly influenced by Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. The constitution of meaning in human experience was his main interest an ...
in ''Humanism and Terror''. His confessions were somewhat different from others in that while he pleaded guilty to "sum total of crimes", he denied knowledge when it came to specific crimes. Some astute observers noted that he would allow only what was in written confession and refuse to go any further. The result was a curious mix of fulsome confessions (of being a "degenerate fascist" working for "restoration of capitalism") and subtle criticisms of the trial. After disproving several charges against him, one observer noted that Bukharin "proceeded to demolish or rather showed he could very easily demolish the whole case." He continued by saying that "the confession of the accused is not essential. The confession of the accused is a medieval principle of jurisprudence" in a trial that was solely based on confessions. He finished his last plea with the words:
e monstrousness of my crime is immeasurable especially in the new stage of struggle of the U.S.S.R. May this trial be the last severe lesson, and may the great might of the U.S.S.R. become clear to all.
Romain Rolland Romain Rolland (; 29 January 1866 – 30 December 1944) was a French dramatist, novelist, essayist, art historian and mystic who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1915 "as a tribute to the lofty idealism of his literary production a ...
and others wrote to Stalin seeking clemency for Bukharin, but all the leading defendants were executed except Rakovsky and two others (who were killed in NKVD prisoner massacres in 1941). Despite the promise to spare his family, Bukharin's wife,
Anna Larina Anna Mikhailovna Larina (russian: А́нна Миха́йловна Ла́рина; 27 January 1914 – 24 February 1996) was the third wife of the Bolshevik leader Nikolai Bukharin and spent many years trying to rehabilitate her husband after ...
, was sent to a labor camp, but she survived to see her husband posthumously rehabilitated a half-century later by the Soviet state under
Mikhail Gorbachev Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev (2 March 1931 – 30 August 2022) was a Soviet politician who served as the 8th and final leader of the Soviet Union from 1985 to the country's dissolution in 1991. He served as General Secretary of the Com ...
in 1988.


"Ex-kulaks" and other "anti-Soviet elements"

On 2 July 1937, in a top secret order to regional Party and NKVD chiefs Stalin instructed them to produce the estimated number of "kulaks" and "criminals" in their districts. These individuals were to be arrested and executed, or sent to the gulag camps. The party chiefs complied and produced these lists within days, with figures which roughly corresponded to the individuals who were already under secret police surveillance. On 30 July 1937 the NKVD Order no. 00447 was issued, directed against "ex-kulaks" and other "anti-Soviet elements" (such as former officials of the
Tsarist regime The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War. The ...
, former members of political parties other than the communist party, etc.). They were to be executed or sent to Gulag prison camps extrajudicially, under the decisions of NKVD troikas. The following categories appear to have been on index-cards, catalogues of suspects assembled over the years by the NKVD and were systematically tracked down: "ex-kulaks" previously deported to " special settlements" in inhospitable parts of the country (
Siberia Siberia ( ; rus, Сибирь, r=Sibir', p=sʲɪˈbʲirʲ, a=Ru-Сибирь.ogg) is an extensive geographical region, constituting all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has been a part ...
,
Urals The Ural Mountains ( ; rus, Ура́льские го́ры, r=Uralskiye gory, p=ʊˈralʲskʲɪjə ˈɡorɨ; ba, Урал тауҙары) or simply the Urals, are a mountain range that runs approximately from north to south through western ...
, Kazakhstan, Far North), former tsarist civil servants, former officers of the
White Army The White Army (russian: Белая армия, Belaya armiya) or White Guard (russian: Бѣлая гвардія/Белая гвардия, Belaya gvardiya, label=none), also referred to as the Whites or White Guardsmen (russian: Бѣлогв� ...
, participants in peasant rebellions, members of the clergy, persons deprived of voting rights, former members of non-Bolshevik parties, ordinary criminals, like thieves, known to the police and various other "socially harmful elements". However, a large number of people were arrested at random in sweeps, on the basis of denunciations or because they were related to, friends with or knew people already arrested. Engineers, peasants, railwaymen, and other types of workers were arrested during the "Kulak Operation" based on the fact that they worked for or near important strategic sites and factories where work accidents had occurred due to "frantic rhythms and plans". During this period the NKVD reopened these cases and relabeled them as "sabotage" or "wrecking." The Orthodox clergy, including active parishioners, was nearly annihilated: 85% of the 35,000 members of the clergy were arrested. Particularly vulnerable to repression were also the so-called "special settlers" (''spetzpereselentsy'') who were under permanent police surveillance and constituted a huge pool of potential "enemies" to draw on. At least 100,000 of them were arrested in the course of the Great Terror. Common criminals such as thieves, "violators of the passport regime", etc. were also dealt with in a summary way. In Moscow, for example, nearly one third of the 20,765 persons executed on the
Butovo firing range The Butovo Firing Range or Butovo Shooting Range (russian: Бутовский полигон) was an execution site of the Soviet secret police located near Drozhzhino in Leninsky District, Moscow Oblast from 1938 to 1953. Its use for mass ex ...
were charged with a non-political criminal offence. To carry out the mass arrests, the 25,000 officers of the State Security personnel of NKVD were complemented with units of ordinary police, and
Komsomol The All-Union Leninist Young Communist League (russian: link=no, Всесоюзный ленинский коммунистический союз молодёжи (ВЛКСМ), ), usually known as Komsomol (; russian: Комсомол, links=n ...
(
Young Communist League The Young Communist League (YCL) is the name used by the youth wing of various Communist parties around the world. The name YCL of XXX (name of country) originates from the precedent established by the Communist Youth International. Examples of Y ...
) and civilian Communist Party members. Seeking to fulfill the quotas, the police rounded up people in markets and train stations, with the purpose of arresting "social outcasts". Local units of the NKVD, in order to meet their "casework minimums" and force confessions out of arrestees worked long uninterrupted shifts during which they interrogated, tortured and beat the prisoners. In many cases those arrested were forced to sign blank pages which were later filled in with a fabricated confession by the interrogators. After the interrogations the files were submitted to NKVD troikas, which pronounced the verdicts in the absence of the accused. During a half-day-long session a troika went through several hundred cases, delivering either a death sentence or a sentence to the Gulag labor camps. Death sentences were immediately enforceable. The executions were carried out at night, either in prisons or in secluded areas run by the NKVD and located as a rule on the outskirts of major cities. The "Kulak Operation" was the largest single campaign of repression in 1937–38, with 669,929 people arrested and 376,202 executed, more than half the total of known executions.


Campaigns targeting nationalities

A series of
mass operations of the NKVD Mass operations of the People's Comissariate of Internal Affairs (NKVD) were carried out during the Great Purge and targeted specific categories of people. As a rule, they were carried out according to the corresponding order of the People's Comm ...
was carried out from 1937 through 1938 targeting specific nationalities within the Soviet Union, on the order of
Nikolai Yezhov Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov ( rus, Никола́й Ива́нович Ежо́в, p=nʲɪkɐˈɫaj ɪˈvanəvʲɪt͡ɕ (j)ɪˈʐof; 1 May 1895 – 4 February 1940) was a Soviet secret police official under Joseph Stalin who was head of the N ...
. The Polish operation of the NKVD was the largest of this kind. The Polish operation claimed the largest number of the NKVD victims: 143,810 arrests and 111,091 executions according to records. Snyder estimates that at least eighty-five thousand of them were ethnic Poles. The remainder were 'suspected' of being Polish, without further inquiry. Poles comprised 12.5% of those who were killed during the Great Terror, while comprising only 0.4% of the population. Overall, national minorities targeted in these campaigns composed 36% of the victims of the Great Purge, despite being only 1.6% of the Soviet Union's population. 74% of ethnic minorities arrested during the Great Purge were executed while those sentenced during the Kulak Operation only had a 50% chance of being executed, (though this may have been due to the Gulag camp's lack of space in the late stages of The Purge rather than deliberate discrimination in sentencing.). The wives and children of those arrested and executed were dealt with by the NKVD Order No. 00486. The women were sentenced to forced labour for 5 or 10 years. Their minor children were put in orphanages. All possessions were confiscated. Extended families were purposely left with nothing to live on, which usually sealed their fate as well, affecting up to 200,000–250,000 people of Polish background depending on the size of their families. The NKVD national operations were conducted on a quota system using album procedure. The officials were mandated to arrest and execute a specific number of so-called "counter-revolutionaries", compiled by administration using various statistics but also telephone books with names sounding non-Russian. The Polish Operation of the NKVD served as a model for a series of similar NKVD secret decrees targeting a number of the Soviet Union's diaspora nationalities: the Finnish, Latvian,
Estonian Estonian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Estonia, a country in the Baltic region in northern Europe * Estonians, people from Estonia, or of Estonian descent * Estonian language * Estonian cuisine * Estonian culture See also * ...
,
Bulgaria Bulgaria (; bg, България, Bǎlgariya), officially the Republic of Bulgaria,, ) is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the eastern flank of the Balkans, and is bordered by Romania to the north, Serbia and North Macedo ...
n,
Afghan Afghan may refer to: *Something of or related to Afghanistan, a country in Southern-Central Asia *Afghans, people or citizens of Afghanistan, typically of any ethnicity **Afghan (ethnonym), the historic term applied strictly to people of the Pash ...
,
Iranian Iranian may refer to: * Iran, a sovereign state * Iranian peoples, the speakers of the Iranian languages. The term Iranic peoples is also used for this term to distinguish the pan ethnic term from Iranian, used for the people of Iran * Iranian lan ...
,
Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
, and Chinese. Of the operations against national minorities, it was the largest one, second only to the "Kulak Operation" in terms of the number of victims. According to
Timothy Snyder Timothy David Snyder (born August 18, 1969) is an American historian specializing in the modern history of Central and Eastern Europe. He is the Richard C. Levin Professor of History at Yale University and a permanent fellow at the Institute ...
, ethnic Poles constituted the largest group of victims in the Great Terror, comprising less than 0.5% of the country's population but comprising 12.5% of those executed. Timothy Snyder attributes 300,000 deaths during the Great Purge to "national terror" including ethnic minorities and Ukrainian Kulaks who survived the early 1930s. Concerning diaspora minorities, the vast majority of whom were Soviet citizens and whose ancestors had resided for decades and sometimes centuries in the Soviet Union and Russian Empire, "this designation absolutized their cross-border ethnicities as the only salient aspect of their identity, sufficient proof of their disloyalty and sufficient justification for their arrest and execution" (Martin, 2001: 338). Some scholars have called the National Operations of the NKVD
genocidal Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people—usually defined as an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group—in whole or in part. Raphael Lemkin coined the term in 1944, combining the Greek word (, "race, people") with the L ...
.Genocide: A World History
Norman M. Naimark
Norman Naimark called Stalin's policy towards Poles in the 1930s "
genocidal Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people—usually defined as an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group—in whole or in part. Raphael Lemkin coined the term in 1944, combining the Greek word (, "race, people") with the L ...
;" however he doesn't consider the Great Purge entirely genocidal because it also targeted political opponents. Most scholars, however, focus on the security dilemma in the border areas suggesting the need to secure the ethnic integrity of Soviet space ''vis-à-vis'' neighboring capitalistic enemy states. They stress the role of
international relations International relations (IR), sometimes referred to as international studies and international affairs, is the scientific study of interactions between sovereign states. In a broader sense, it concerns all activities between states—such ...
and believe that representatives of these minorities were killed not because of their ethnicity, but because of their possible relations to countries hostile to the USSR and fear of disloyalty in the case of an invasion. Nevertheless, little proof exists to suggest that Russia's and Stalin's alleged prejudices played a central causal role in the Great Purge.


Purge of the army

The purge of the
Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (Russian language, Russian: Рабо́че-крестья́нская Кра́сная армия),) often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist R ...
and Military Maritime Fleet removed three of five marshals (then equivalent to four-star generals), 13 of 15 army commanders (then equivalent to three-star generals), eight of nine admirals (the purge fell heavily on the Navy, who were suspected of exploiting their opportunities for foreign contacts), 50 of 57 army
corps Corps (; plural ''corps'' ; from French , from the Latin "body") is a term used for several different kinds of organization. A military innovation by Napoleon I, the formation was first named as such in 1805. The size of a corps varies great ...
commanders, 154 out of 186 division commanders, 16 of 16 army
commissar Commissar (or sometimes ''Kommissar'') is an English transliteration of the Russian (''komissar''), which means ' commissary'. In English, the transliteration ''commissar'' often refers specifically to the political commissars of Soviet and E ...
s, and 25 of 28 army corps commissars. At first, it was thought 25–50% of Red Army officers had been purged; the true figure is now known to be in the area of 3.7–7.7%. This discrepancy was the result of a systematic underestimation of the true size of the Red Army officer corps, and it was overlooked that most of those purged were merely expelled from the Party. Thirty percent of officers purged in 1937–1939 were allowed to return to service. The purge of the army was claimed to be supported by German-forged documents (said to have been correspondence between Marshal Tukhachevsky and members of the German high command). The claim is unsupported by facts, as by the time the documents were supposedly created, two people from the eight in the Tukhachevsky group were already imprisoned, and by the time the document was said to reach Stalin the purging process was already underway. However the actual evidence introduced at trial was obtained from forced confessions. The purge had a significant effect on German decision making in
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...
: many German generals opposed an invasion of Russia, but
Hitler Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his death in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the le ...
disagreed, arguing that the Red Army was less effective after its intellectual leadership had been eliminated in the purge.


Wider purge

Eventually almost all of the
Bolsheviks The Bolsheviks (russian: Большевики́, from большинство́ ''bol'shinstvó'', 'majority'),; derived from ''bol'shinstvó'' (большинство́), "majority", literally meaning "one of the majority". also known in English ...
who had played prominent roles during the
Russian Revolution of 1917 The Russian Revolution was a period of political and social revolution that took place in the former Russian Empire which began during the First World War. This period saw Russia abolish its monarchy and adopt a socialist form of government ...
, or in Lenin's Soviet government, were executed. Out of six members of the original
Politburo A politburo () or political bureau is the executive committee for communist parties. It is present in most former and existing communist states. Names The term "politburo" in English comes from the Russian ''Politbyuro'' (), itself a contracti ...
during the
1917 October Revolution The October Revolution,. officially known as the Great October Socialist Revolution. in the Soviet Union, also known as the Bolshevik Revolution, was a revolution in Russia led by the Bolshevik Party of Vladimir Lenin that was a key moment ...
who lived until the Great Purge, Stalin himself was the only one who remained in the Soviet Union, alive. Four of the other five were executed; the fifth,
Leon Trotsky Lev Davidovich Bronstein. ( – 21 August 1940), better known as Leon Trotsky; uk, link= no, Лев Давидович Троцький; also transliterated ''Lyev'', ''Trotski'', ''Trotskij'', ''Trockij'' and ''Trotzky''. (), was a Russian ...
, had been forced into exile outside the Soviet Union in 1929, but was assassinated in Mexico by Soviet agent
Ramón Mercader Jaime Ramón Mercader del Río (7 February 1913 – 18 October 1978),Photograph oMercader's Gravestone/ref> more commonly known as Ramón Mercader, was a Spanish communist and NKVD agent, who assassinated Russian Bolshevik revolutionary Leon Tr ...
in 1940. Of the seven members elected to the Politburo between the October Revolution and Lenin's death in 1924, four were executed, one ( Tomsky) committed suicide, and two (Molotov and Kalinin) lived. While being the most visible part, the trials and executions of the former Bolshevik leaders were only a minor aspect of the purges. A series of documents discovered in the Central Committee archives in 1992 by
Vladimir Bukovsky Vladimir Konstantinovich Bukovsky (russian: link=no, Влади́мир Константи́нович Буко́вский; 30 December 1942 – 27 October 2019) was a Russian-born British human rights activist and writer. From the late 195 ...
demonstrate that there were limits for arrests and executions as for all other activities in the planned economy. The victims were convicted
in absentia is Latin for absence. , a legal term, is Latin for "in the absence" or "while absent". may also refer to: * Award in absentia * Declared death in absentia, or simply, death in absentia, legally declared death without a body * Election in ab ...
and in camera by extrajudicial organs—the NKVD troikas sentenced indigenous "enemies" under NKVD Order no. 00447 and the two-man dvoiki (NKVD Commissar
Nikolai Yezhov Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov ( rus, Никола́й Ива́нович Ежо́в, p=nʲɪkɐˈɫaj ɪˈvanəvʲɪt͡ɕ (j)ɪˈʐof; 1 May 1895 – 4 February 1940) was a Soviet secret police official under Joseph Stalin who was head of the N ...
and Main State Prosecutor
Andrey Vyshinsky Andrey Yanuaryevich Vyshinsky (russian: Андре́й Януа́рьевич Выши́нский; pl, Andrzej Wyszyński) ( – 22 November 1954) was a Soviet politician, jurist and diplomat. He is known as a state prosecutor of Joseph ...
, or their deputies) those arrested along national lines. A characteristic of all the
mass operations of the NKVD Mass operations of the People's Comissariate of Internal Affairs (NKVD) were carried out during the Great Purge and targeted specific categories of people. As a rule, they were carried out according to the corresponding order of the People's Comm ...
was flexibility: first, the numbers—the so-called limit—could be easily increased; second, it was left entirely to the NKVD officers whether a particular prisoner was to be shot or sent to the prison camps; third, the time-limits set for the completion of single operations were extended time and again. The victims were executed at night, either in prisons, in the cellars of NKVD headquarters, or in a secluded area, usually a forest. The NKVD officers shot prisoners in the head using pistols.


Intelligentsia

In the 1920s and 1930s, 2,000 writers, intellectuals, and artists were imprisoned and 1,500 died in prisons and concentration camps. After
sunspot Sunspots are phenomena on the Sun's photosphere that appear as temporary spots that are darker than the surrounding areas. They are regions of reduced surface temperature caused by concentrations of magnetic flux that inhibit convection. S ...
development research was judged un-Marxist, twenty-seven astronomers disappeared between 1936 and 1938. The Meteorological Office was violently purged as early as 1933 for failing to predict weather harmful to the crops. However, the toll was especially high among writers. Those who perished during the Great Purge include:


Western émigré victims

Victims of the terror included American immigrants to the Soviet Union who had emigrated at the height of the
Great Depression The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...
to find work. At the height of the Terror, American immigrants besieged the US embassy, begging for passports so they could leave the Soviet Union. They were turned away by embassy officials, only to be arrested on the pavement outside by lurking NKVD agents. Many were subsequently shot dead at
Butovo firing range The Butovo Firing Range or Butovo Shooting Range (russian: Бутовский полигон) was an execution site of the Soviet secret police located near Drozhzhino in Leninsky District, Moscow Oblast from 1938 to 1953. Its use for mass ex ...
. In addition, 141 American Communists of Finnish origin were executed and buried at
Sandarmokh Sandarmokh (russian: Сандармох; krl, Sandarmoh) is a forest massif from Medvezhyegorsk in the Republic of Karelia where possibly thousands of victims of Stalin's Great Terror were executed. More than 58 nationalities were shot and bur ...
. 127
Finnish Canadian Finnish Canadians are Canadian citizens of Finnish ancestry or Finns who emigrated to and reside in Canada. In 2016, 143,645 Canadians claimed Finnish ancestry. Finns started coming to Canada in the early 1880s, and in much larger numbers in the ...
s were also shot and buried there.


Executions of Gulag inmates

Political prisoners already serving a sentence in the Gulag camps were also executed in large numbers. NKVD Order no. 00447 also targeted "the most vicious and stubborn anti-Soviet elements in camps", they were all "to be put into the first category" – that is, shot. NKVD Order no. 00447 decreed 10,000 executions for this contingent, but at least three times more were shot in the course of the secret mass operation, the majority in March–April 1938.


Mongolian Great Purge

During the late 1930s, Stalin dispatched NKVD operatives to the
Mongolian People's Republic The Mongolian People's Republic ( mn, Бүгд Найрамдах Монгол Ард Улс, БНМАУ; , ''BNMAU''; ) was a socialist state which existed from 1924 to 1992, located in the historical region of Outer Mongolia in East Asia. It w ...
, established a Mongolian version of the NKVD troika, and proceeded to execute tens of thousands of people accused of having ties to "pro-Japanese spy rings". Buddhist
lama Lama (; "chief") is a title for a teacher of the Dharma in Tibetan Buddhism. The name is similar to the Sanskrit term ''guru'', meaning "heavy one", endowed with qualities the student will eventually embody. The Tibetan word "lama" means "hig ...
s made up the majority of victims, with 18,000 being killed in the terror. Other victims were nobility and political and academic figures, along with some ordinary workers and herders. Mass graves containing hundreds of executed Buddhist monks and civilians have been discovered as recently as 2003.


Xinjiang Great Purge

The pro-Soviet leader
Sheng Shicai Sheng Shicai (; 3 December 189513 July 1970) was a Chinese warlord who ruled Xinjiang from 1933 to 1944. Sheng's rise to power started with a coup d'état in 1933 when he was appointed the ''duban'' or Military Governor of Xinjiang. His rule o ...
of
Xinjiang Xinjiang, SASM/GNC: ''Xinjang''; zh, c=, p=Xīnjiāng; formerly romanized as Sinkiang (, ), officially the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR), is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China (PRC), located in the northwes ...
province in China launched his own purge in 1937 to coincide with Stalin's Great Purge. The
Xinjiang War (1937) In 1937 an Islamic rebellion broke out in southern Xinjiang. The rebels were 1,500 Uighur Muslims led by Kichik Akhund, who was tacitly aided by the new 36th Division, against the pro-Soviet provincial forces of the puppet Sheng Shicai. St ...
broke out amid the purge. Sheng received assistance from the NKVD. Sheng and the Soviets alleged a massive Trotskyist conspiracy and a "Fascist Trotskyite plot" to destroy the Soviet Union. The Soviet Consul General Garegin Apresoff, General
Ma Hushan Ma Hu-shan (Xiao'erjing: , zh, t=馬虎山, s=马虎山, first=t, p=Mǎ Hushān; 1910 – 1954) was a Hui (Chinese Muslim) warlord and the brother-in-law and follower of Ma Chung-ying, a Dungan/Hui Ma Clique warlord. He ruled over an area of ...
,
Ma Shaowu Ma Shaowu (1874–1937; Xiao'erjing: ) was a Hui born in Yunnan, in Qing Dynasty China. He was a member of the Xinjiang clique during the Republic of China. Family history The Jahriyya Sufi leader Ma Yuanzhang was related to the leader of ...
, Mahmud Sijan, the official leader of the Xinjiang province Huang Han-chang and
Hoja-Niyaz Khoja Niyaz, also Khoja Niyaz Haji ( ug, خوجا نىياز ھاجى, Xoja Niyaz Haji; ; 1889 – 21 August 1941), was a Uyghur independence movement leader who led several rebellions in Xinjiang against the Kumul Khanate, the Chinese governo ...
were among the 435 alleged conspirators in the plot. Xinjiang came under virtual Soviet control.


Timeline

The Great Purge of 1936–1938 can be roughly divided into four periods:N.G. Okhotin, A.B. Roginsky ''"Great Terror": Brief Chronology''
Memorial A memorial is an object or place which serves as a focus for the memory or the commemoration of something, usually an influential, deceased person or a historical, tragic event. Popular forms of memorials include landmark objects or works of ...
, 2007
; October 1936 – February 1937:Reforming the security organizations, adopting official plans on purging the elites. ; March 1937 – June 1937:Purging the elites; adopting plans for the mass repressions against the "social base" of the potential aggressors, starting of purging the "elites" from opposition. ; July 1937 – October 1938:Mass repressions against "kulaks", "dangerous" ethnic minorities, family members of oppositionists, military officers, saboteurs in agriculture and industry. ; November 1938 – 1939: Stopping of mass operations, abolishing of many organs of extrajudicial executions, repressions against some organizers of mass repressions.


End

In the summer of 1938, Yezhov was relieved from his post as head of the NKVD and was eventually tried and executed.
Lavrentiy Beria Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria (; rus, Лавре́нтий Па́влович Бе́рия, Lavréntiy Pávlovich Bériya, p=ˈbʲerʲiə; ka, ლავრენტი ბერია, tr, ;  – 23 December 1953) was a Georgian Bolshevik ...
succeeded him as head. On 17 November 1938 a joint decree of Sovnarkom USSR and
Central Committee Central committee is the common designation of a standing administrative body of communist parties, analogous to a board of directors, of both ruling and nonruling parties of former and existing socialist states. In such party organizations, the ...
of VKP(b) ( Decree about Arrests, Prosecutor Supervision and Course of Investigation) and the subsequent order of the NKVD undersigned by Beria, cancelled most of the NKVD orders of systematic repression and suspended implementation of death sentences. The decree signaled the end of massive Soviet purges. When Yezhov was executed, Stalin claimed in a private conversation with Aleksandr Yakovlev that it was because he had killed many innocent people. Michael Parrish argues that while the Great Terror ended in 1938, a lesser terror continued in the 1940s.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn. (11 December 1918 – 3 August 2008) was a Russian novelist. One of the most famous Soviet dissidents, Solzhenitsyn was an outspoken critic of communism and helped to raise global awareness of political repr ...
(a Soviet Army officer who became a prisoner for a decade in the Gulag system) presents in ''
The Gulag Archipelago ''The Gulag Archipelago: An Experiment in Literary Investigation'' (russian: Архипелаг ГУЛАГ, ''Arkhipelag GULAG'') is a three-volume non-fiction text written between 1958 and 1968 by Russian writer and Soviet dissident Aleksandr So ...
'' the most holistic view of the timeline of ''all'' the Leninist and Stalinist purges (1918–1956), in which the 1936–1938 purge may have been simply the one that got the most attention from people in a position to record its magnitude for posterity—the intelligentsia—by directly targeting them, whereas several other waves of the ongoing flow of purges, such as the
First five-year plan The first five-year plan (russian: I пятилетний план, ) of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was a list of economic goals, created by Communist Party General Secretary Joseph Stalin, based on his policy of socialism in ...
of 1928–1933's collectivization and
dekulakization Dekulakization (russian: раскулачивание, ''raskulachivanie''; uk, розкуркулення, ''rozkurkulennia'') was the Soviet campaign of political repressions, including arrests, deportations, or executions of millions of kul ...
, were just as huge and just as devoid of justice but were more successfully swallowed into oblivion in the popular memory of the (surviving) Soviet public. In some cases, high military command arrested under Yezhov were later executed under Beria. Some examples include Marshal of the Soviet Union Alexander Yegorov, arrested in April 1938 and shot (or died from torture) in February 1939 (his wife, G. A. Yegorova, was shot in August 1938); Army Commander Ivan Fedko, arrested July 1938 and shot February 1939; Flagman , arrested May 1938 and shot February 1940; Komkor G. I. Bondar, arrested August 1938 and shot March 1939. All the aforementioned have been posthumously rehabilitated. When the relatives of those who had been executed in 1937–38 inquired about their fate, they were told by NKVD that their arrested relatives had been sentenced to "ten years
without the right of correspondence "Without the right of correspondence" (WRC) (russian: Без права переписки, abbreviated as БПП in official documents) was a clause in a sentence of many political repressions victims of Stalinist Great Purges in Soviet Union ...
" (десять лет без права переписки). When these ten-year periods elapsed in 1947–48 but the arrested did not appear, the relatives asked MGB about their fate again and this time were told that the arrested died in imprisonment.


Western reactions

Although the trials of former Soviet leaders were widely publicized, the hundreds of thousands of other arrests and executions were not. These became known in the West only as a few former gulag inmates reached the West with their stories. Not only did foreign correspondents from the West fail to report on the purges, but in many Western nations (especially France), attempts were made to silence or discredit these witnesses; according to Robert Conquest,
Jean-Paul Sartre Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre (, ; ; 21 June 1905 – 15 April 1980) was one of the key figures in the philosophy of existentialism (and phenomenology), a French playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and lite ...
took the position that evidence of the camps should be ignored so the French proletariat would not be discouraged. A series of legal actions ensued at which definitive evidence was presented that established the validity of the former labor camp inmates' testimony. According to Robert Conquest in his 1968 book ''The Great Terror: Stalin's Purge of the Thirties'', with respect to the trials of former leaders, some Western observers were unintentionally or intentionally ignorant of the fraudulent nature of the charges and evidence, notably
Walter Duranty Walter Duranty (25 May 1884 – 3 October 1957) was an Anglo-American journalist who served as Moscow bureau chief of '' The New York Times'' for fourteen years (1922–1936) following the Bolshevik victory in the Russian Civil War (1918� ...
of ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'', a Russian speaker; the American Ambassador,
Joseph E. Davies Joseph Edward Davies (November 29, 1876 – May 9, 1958) was an American lawyer and diplomat. He was appointed by President Wilson to be Commissioner of Corporations in 1912, and First Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission in 1915. He was t ...
, who reported, "proof ... beyond reasonable doubt to justify the verdict of treason"; and Beatrice and
Sidney Webb Sidney James Webb, 1st Baron Passfield, (13 July 1859 – 13 October 1947) was a British socialist, economist and reformer, who co-founded the London School of Economics. He was an early member of the Fabian Society in 1884, joining, like Ge ...
, authors of ''Soviet Communism: A New Civilization''. While "Communist Parties everywhere simply transmitted the Soviet line", some of the most critical reporting also came from the left, notably ''
The Manchester Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and '' The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the G ...
''. The American journalist H. R. Knickerbocker also reported on the executions. He called them in 1941 "the great purges", and described how over four years they affected "the top fourth or fifth, to estimate it conservatively, of the Party itself, of the Army, Navy, and Air Force leaders and then of the new Bolshevik intelligentsia, the foremost technicians, managers, supervisors, scientists". Knickerbocker also wrote about dekulakization: "It is a conservative estimate to say that some 5,000,000 ulaks... died at once, or within a few years." Evidence and the results of research began to appear after Stalin's death. This revealed the full enormity of the Purges. The first of these sources were the revelations of Nikita Khrushchev, which particularly affected the American editors of the
Communist Party USA The Communist Party USA, officially the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA), is a communist party in the United States which was established in 1919 after a split in the Socialist Party of America following the Russian Rev ...
newspaper, the ''
Daily Worker The ''Daily Worker'' was a newspaper published in New York City by the Communist Party USA, a formerly Comintern-affiliated organization. Publication began in 1924. While it generally reflected the prevailing views of the party, attempts were m ...
'', who, following the lead of ''The New York Times'', published the Secret Speech in full.


Rehabilitation

The Great Purge was denounced by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev following Stalin's death. In his secret speech to the
20th 20 (twenty; Roman numeral XX) is the natural number following 19 and preceding 21. A group of twenty units may also be referred to as a score. In mathematics *20 is a pronic number. *20 is a tetrahedral number as 1, 4, 10, 20. *20 is the ba ...
CPSU "Hymn of the Bolshevik Party" , headquarters = 4 Staraya Square, Moscow , general_secretary = Vladimir Lenin (first)Mikhail Gorbachev (last) , founded = , banned = , founder = Vladimir Lenin , newspaper ...
congress in February 1956 (which was made public a month later), Khrushchev referred to the purges as an "abuse of power" by Stalin which resulted in enormous harm to the country. In the same speech, he recognized that many of the victims were innocent and were convicted on the basis of false confessions extracted by torture. To take that position was politically useful to Khrushchev, as he was at that time engaged in a power struggle with rivals who had been associated with the Purge, the so-called
Anti-Party Group The Anti-Party Group ( rus, Антипартийная группа, r=Antipartiynaya gruppa) was a Stalinist group within the leadership of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union that unsuccessfully attempted to depose Nikita Khrushchev as Fir ...
. The new line on the Great Purges undermined their power, and helped propel him to the Chairmanship of the Council of Ministers. Starting from 1954, some of the convictions were overturned. Mikhail Tukhachevsky and other generals convicted in the Trial of Red Army Generals were declared innocent (" rehabilitated") in 1957. The former Politburo members
Yan Rudzutak Yan may refer to: Chinese states * Yan (state) (11th century – 222 BC), a major state in northern China during the Zhou dynasty * Yan (Han dynasty kingdom), first appearing in 206 BC * Yan (Three Kingdoms kingdom), officially claimed inde ...
and
Stanislav Kosior Stanislav and variants may refer to: People *Stanislav (given name), a Slavic given name with many spelling variations (Stanislaus, Stanislas, Stanisław, etc.) Places * Stanislav, a coastal village in Kherson, Ukraine * Stanislaus County, Cali ...
and many lower-level victims were also declared innocent in the 1950s. Nikolai Bukharin and others convicted in the Moscow Trials were not rehabilitated until as late as 1988. Leon Trotsky, considered a major player in the Russian Revolution and a major contributor to
Marxist theory Marxist philosophy or Marxist theory are works in philosophy that are strongly influenced by Karl Marx's materialist approach to theory, or works written by Marxists. Marxist philosophy may be broadly divided into Western Marxism, which drew fro ...
, was never rehabilitated by the USSR. The book ''Rehabilitation: The Political Processes of the 1930s–50s'' (Реабилитация. Политические процессы 30-50-х годов) (1991) contains a large amount of newly presented original archive material: transcripts of interrogations, letters of convicts, and photos. The material demonstrates in detail how numerous show trials were fabricated.


Number of people executed

Official figures put the total number of documentable executions during the years 1937 and 1938 at 681,692, in addition to 116,000 deaths in the
Gulag The Gulag, an acronym for , , "chief administration of the camps". The original name given to the system of camps controlled by the State Political Directorate, GPU was the Main Administration of Corrective Labor Camps (, )., name=, group= ...
, and 2,000 unofficially killed in non-article 58 shootings; whereas the total estimate of deaths brought about by Soviet repression during the Great Purge ranges from 950,000 to 1.2 million, which includes executions, deaths in detention and those who died shortly after being released from the Gulag, as a result of their treatment therein. According to Robert Conquest, a practice of falsification for lowering the execution numbers was disguising executions with the sentence "ten years
without the right of correspondence "Without the right of correspondence" (WRC) (russian: Без права переписки, abbreviated as БПП in official documents) was a clause in a sentence of many political repressions victims of Stalinist Great Purges in Soviet Union ...
" which almost always meant execution. All of the bodies identified from the mass graves at
Vinnitsa Vinnytsia ( ; uk, Вінниця, ; yi, װיניצע) is a city in west-central Ukraine, located on the banks of the Southern Bug. It is the administrative center of Vinnytsia Oblast and the largest city in the historic region of Podillia. A ...
and Kuropaty were of individuals who had received this sentence. Despite this, the lower figure did roughly confirm Conquest's original 1968 estimate of 700,000 "legal" executions and in the preface to the 40th anniversary edition of ''The Great Terror'', Conquest claimed that he had been "correct on the vital matter—the numbers put to death: about one million". According to J. Arch Getty and Oleg V. Naumov, "popular estimates of executions in the great purges vary from 500,000 to 7 million." However, according to them, "the archival evidence from the secret police rejects the astronomically high estimates often given for the number of terror victims" and "the data available at this point make it clear that the number shot in the two worst purge years 937–38was more likely in the hundreds of thousands than in the millions." According to historian Corrina Kuhr, 700,000 people were executed during the Great Purge out of the 2.5 million who were arrested. Professor Nérard François-Xavier estimates the same number of people who were sentenced to death, however he states that 1.3 million people were arrested. The Soviets themselves made their own estimates with
Vyacheslav Molotov Vyacheslav Mikhaylovich Molotov. ; (;. 9 March Old_Style_and_New_Style_dates">O._S._25_February.html" ;"title="Old_Style_and_New_Style_dates.html" ;"title="nowiki/>Old Style and New Style dates">O. S. 25 February">Old_Style_and_New_Style_dat ...
saying "The report written by that commission member…says that 1,370,000 arrests were made in the 1930s. That's too many. I responded that the figures should be thoroughly reviewed".


Stalin's role

Historians with archival access have confirmed that Stalin was intimately involved in the purge. Russian historian Oleg V. Khlevniuk states "theories about the elemental, spontaneous nature of the terror, about a loss of central control over the course of mass repression, and about the role of regional leaders in initiating the terror are simply not supported by the historical record". Besides signing Yezhov's lists, Stalin sometimes gave instructions concerning certain individuals. In one instance, he told Yezhov "Isn't it time to squeeze this gentleman and force him to report on his dirty little business? Where is he: in a prison or a hotel?" In another, while reviewing one of Yezhov's lists, he added to M. I. Baranov's name, "beat, beat!"Marc Jansen, Nikita Vasilʹevich Petrov. ''Stalin's Loyal Executioner: People's Commissar Nikolai Ezhov, 1895–1940.'' Hoover Institution Press, 2002. p. 111 Stalin also signed 357 lists in 1937 and 1938 authorizing executions of some 40,000 people, and about 90% of these are confirmed to have been shot, this was 7.4% of those executed legally. While reviewing one such list, Stalin reportedly muttered to no one in particular: "Who's going to remember all this riff-raff in ten or twenty years time? No one. Who remembers the names now of the
boyars A boyar or bolyar was a member of the highest rank of the feudal nobility in many Eastern European states, including Kievan Rus', Bulgaria, Russia, Wallachia and Moldavia, and later Romania, Lithuania and among Baltic Germans. Boyars wer ...
Ivan the Terrible Ivan IV Vasilyevich (russian: Ива́н Васи́льевич; 25 August 1530 – ), commonly known in English as Ivan the Terrible, was the grand prince of Moscow from 1533 to 1547 and the first Tsar of all Russia from 1547 to 1584. Iva ...
got rid of? No one." It is quite possible that Yezhov misled Stalin about the aspects of the purge process. Many people at the time, and also a few subsequent commentators, surmised that the Great Purge wasn't started by Stalin's initiative, so the idea got about that the process was entirely out of control once it had begun. Stalin may have failed to anticipate the catastrophic excesses of the NKVD under Yezhov. Stalin also objected to the large numbers of people that Yezhov was purging. For example, when Yezhov announced that 200,000 party members were expelled, Stalin interrupted him, said that they were "very many" and suggested instead to only expel 30,000 and 600 former
Trotskyists Trotskyism is the political ideology and branch of Marxism developed by Ukrainian-Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky and some other members of the Left Opposition and Fourth International. Trotsky self-identified as an orthodox Marxist, a re ...
and
Zinovievist Grigory Yevseyevich Zinoviev, . Transliterated ''Grigorii Evseevich Zinov'ev'' according to the Library of Congress system. (born Hirsch Apfelbaum, – 25 August 1936), known also under the name Ovsei-Gershon Aronovich Radomyslsky (russian: Ов ...
s which "would be a bigger victory". Stephen G. Wheatcroft posits that while the 'purposive deaths' caused by Hitler constitute 'murder', those caused under Stalin fall into the category of 'execution', although in terms of "causing death by criminal neglect and ruthlessness (...) Stalin probably exceeded Hitler". Wheatcroft elaborates:
Stalin undoubtedly caused many innocent people to be executed, but it seems likely that he thought many of them guilty of crimes against the state and felt that the execution of others would act as a deterrent to the guilty. He signed the papers and insisted on documentation. Hitler, by contrast, wanted to be rid of the Jews and communists simply because they were Jews and communists. He was not concerned about making any pretence at legality. He was careful not to sign anything on this matter and was equally insistent on no documentation.


Soviet investigation commissions

At least two Soviet commissions investigated the show-trials after Stalin's death. The first was headed by Molotov and included Voroshilov, Kaganovich, Suslov, Furtseva, Shvernik, Aristov, Pospelov, and Rudenko. They were given the task to investigate the materials concerning Bukharin, Rykov, Zinoviev, Tukhachevsky, and others. The commission worked in 1956–1957. While stating that the accusations against Tukhachevsky ''et al.'' should be abandoned, it failed to fully rehabilitate the victims of the three Moscow trials, although the final report does contain an admission that the accusations have not been proven during the trials and "evidence" had been produced by lies, blackmail, and "use of physical influence". Bukharin, Rykov, Zinoviev, and others were still seen as political opponents, and though the charges against them were obviously false, they could not have been rehabilitated because "for many years they headed the anti-Soviet struggle against the building of socialism in USSR". The second commission largely worked from 1961 to 1963 and was headed by Shvernik (" Shvernik Commission"). It included Shelepin, Serdyuk, Mironov, Rudenko, and Semichastny. The hard work resulted in two massive reports, which detailed the mechanism of falsification of the show-trials against Bukharin, Zinoviev, Tukhachevsky, and many others. The commission based its findings in large part on eyewitness testimonies of former NKVD workers and victims of repressions, and on many documents. The commission recommended rehabilitating every accused with the exceptions of Radek and Yagoda, because Radek's materials required some further checking, and Yagoda was a criminal and one of the falsifiers of the trials (though most of the charges against him had to be dropped too, he was not a "spy", etc.). The commission stated:
Stalin committed a very grave crime against the Communist party, the socialist state, Soviet people and worldwide revolutionary movement...Together with Stalin, the responsibility for the abuse of law, mass unwarranted repressions and death of many thousands of wholly innocent people also lies on Molotov, Kaganovich, Malenkov....
Molotov stated "We would have been complete idiots if we had taken the reports at their face value. We were not idiots." and that "the cases were reviewed and some people were released"


Mass graves and memorials

In the late 1980s, with the formation of the
Memorial Society Memorial ( rus, Мемориал, p=mʲɪmərʲɪˈaɫ) is an international human rights organisation, founded in Russia during the fall of the Soviet Union to study and examine the human rights violations and other crimes committed under Jos ...
and similar organisations across the Soviet Union at a time of Gorbachev's
glasnost ''Glasnost'' (; russian: link=no, гласность, ) has several general and specific meanings – a policy of maximum openness in the activities of state institutions and freedom of information, the inadmissibility of hushing up problems, ...
("openness and transparency") it became possible not only to speak about the Great Terror but to begin locating the killing grounds of 1937–1938 and identifying those who lay buried there. In 1988, for instance, the mass graves at
Kurapaty Kurapaty ( be, Курапаты, ) is a wooded area on the outskirts of Minsk, Belarus, in which a vast number of people were executed between 1937 and 1941 during the Great Purge by the Soviet secret police, the NKVD. The exact count of victi ...
in Belarus were the site of a clash between demonstrators and the police. In 1990, a boulder stone was brought from the former
Solovki prison camp The Solovki special camp (later the Solovki special prison), was set up in 1923 on the Solovetsky Islands in the White Sea as a remote and inaccessible place of detention, primarily intended for socialist opponents of Soviet Russia's new Bolshe ...
in the White Sea, and erected next to KGB headquarters in Moscow as a memorial to all "the victims of political repression" since 1917. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, many more mass graves filled with executed victims of the terror were discovered and turned into memorial sites. Some, such as the
Bykivnia , image = , caption = Bykivnia central monument , image2 = , caption2 = Map of Bykivnia grave site , header1 = , data1 = , label2 = Location , data2 = Kyiv, Ukraine , label3 = Founded , data3 = April 30, 1994 (as a complex). , label4 = Purpo ...
killing fields near
Kyiv Kyiv, also spelled Kiev, is the capital and most populous city of Ukraine. It is in north-central Ukraine along the Dnieper River. As of 1 January 2021, its population was 2,962,180, making Kyiv the seventh-most populous city in Europe. Ky ...
, are said to contain up to 200,000 corpses. In 2007, one such site, the Butovo firing range near Moscow, was turned into a shrine to the victims of Stalinism. Between August 1937 and October 1938, more than 20,000 people were shot and buried there. On 30 October 2017, President Vladimir Putin opened the
Wall of Sorrow The Wall of Grief (russian: Стена́ ско́рби, ''Stena skorbi'', sometimes translated as Wall of Sorrow) is a monument in Moscow to the victims of political persecution by Joseph Stalin during the country's Soviet era. The national memor ...
, an official but controversial recognition of the crimes of the Soviet regime. In August 2021, a mass grave containing between 5,000 and 8,000 skeletons was discovered in
Odessa Odesa (also spelled Odessa) is the third most populous city and municipality in Ukraine and a major seaport and transport hub located in the south-west of the country, on the northwestern shore of the Black Sea. The city is also the administrativ ...
, Ukraine, during exploration works for a planned expansion of Odesa International Airport. The graves are believed to date back to the late 1930s during the purge. File:Kurapaty 1989 meeting.jpg, The Kuropaty mass grave site near
Minsk Minsk ( be, Мінск ; russian: Минск) is the capital and the largest city of Belarus, located on the Svislach (Berezina), Svislach and the now subterranean Nyamiha, Niamiha rivers. As the capital, Minsk has a special administrative stat ...
, Belarus File:КрасныйБор.jpg, The ''Krasny Bor'' memorial cemetery near
Petrozavodsk Petrozavodsk (russian: Петрозаводск, p=pʲɪtrəzɐˈvotsk; Karelian, Vepsian and fi, Petroskoi) is the capital city of the Republic of Karelia, Russia, which stretches along the western shore of Lake Onega for some . The population ...
, Russia File:Stalin-repressions-poles-memorial.jpg, A memorial to Polish victims of Stalinist repression,
Tomsk Tomsk ( rus, Томск, p=tomsk, sty, Түң-тора) is a city and the administrative center of Tomsk Oblast in Russia, located on the Tom River. Population: Founded in 1604, Tomsk is one of the oldest cities in Siberia. The city is a n ...
, Russia File:Кировский район Донецка 302.jpg, A monument to victims of political repressions in Rutchenkove settlement, part of
Donetsk Donetsk ( , ; uk, Донецьк, translit=Donets'k ; russian: Донецк ), formerly known as Aleksandrovka, Yuzivka (or Hughesovka), Stalin and Stalino (see also: cities' alternative names), is an industrial city in eastern Ukraine loc ...
, Ukraine File:Stalin-repressions-Tomsk-stone.jpg, A memorial to victims of Stalinist repression in Tomsk, Russia File:Сандормох25.jpg, The monumental slab at the entrance to the
Sandarmokh Sandarmokh (russian: Сандармох; krl, Sandarmoh) is a forest massif from Medvezhyegorsk in the Republic of Karelia where possibly thousands of victims of Stalin's Great Terror were executed. More than 58 nationalities were shot and bur ...
burial grounds reads: "People! do not kill one another", Russia


Historical interpretations

The Great Purge has provoked numerous debates about its purpose, scale, and mechanisms. According to one interpretation, Stalin's regime had to maintain its citizens in a state of fear and uncertainty to stay in power (Brzezinski, 1958). Robert Conquest emphasized Stalin's paranoia, focused on the Moscow show trial of "Old Bolsheviks", and analyzed the carefully planned and systematic destruction of the Communist Party. Some others view the Great Purge as a crucial moment, or rather the culmination, of a vast social engineering campaign started at the beginning of the 1930s (Hagenloh, 2000; Shearer, 2003; Werth, 2003). According to historian James Harris, contemporary archival research pokes "rather large holes in the traditional story" weaved by Conquest and others. His findings, while not exonerating Stalin or the Soviet state, dispel the notion that the bloodletting was merely the result of Stalin attempting to establish his own personal dictatorship; evidence suggests he was committed to building the socialist state envisioned by Lenin. The real motivation for the terror, according to Harris, was an exaggerated fear of counterrevolution.
So what was the motivation behind the Terror? The answers required a lot more digging, but it gradually became clearer that the violence of the late 1930s was driven by fear. Most Bolsheviks, Stalin among them, believed that the revolutions of 1789, 1848 and 1871 had failed because their leaders hadn't adequately anticipated the ferocity of the counter-revolutionary reaction from the establishment. They were determined not to make the same mistake.
Two major lines of interpretation have emerged among historians. One argues that the purges reflected Stalin's ambitions, his paranoia, and his inner drive to increase his power and eliminate potential rivals. Revisionist historians explain the purges by theorizing that rival factions exploited Stalin's paranoia and used terror to enhance their own position. Peter Whitewood examines the first purge, directed at the Army, and comes up with a third interpretation that Stalin and other top leaders believing that they were always surrounded by capitalist enemies, always worried about the vulnerability and loyalty of the Red Army. It was not a ploy – Stalin truly believed it. "Stalin attacked the Red Army because he seriously misperceived a serious security threat"; thus "Stalin seems to have genuinely believed that foreign‐backed enemies had infiltrated the ranks and managed to organize a conspiracy at the very heart of the Red Army." The purge hit deeply from June 1937 and November 1938, removing 35,000; many were executed. Experience in carrying out the purge facilitated purging other key elements in the wider Soviet polity. Historians often cite the disruption as factors in the Red Army's disastrous military performance during the German invasion.Roger R. Reese, "Stalin Attacks the Red Army." ''Military History Quarterly'' 27.1 (2014): 38–45.
Robert W. Thurston Robert W. Thurston (born 1949) is an American historian and author. He is professor emeritus at Miami University (Ohio) and founder and managing partner of Oxford Coffee Company, a roastery and coffeehouse. His most recent publications have been ...
reports that the purge was not intended to subdue the Soviet masses, many of whom helped enact the purge, but to deal with opposition to Stalin's rule among the Soviet elites.


See also

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Excess mortality in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin Estimates of the number of deaths attributable to the Soviet revolutionary and dictator Joseph Stalin vary widely. The scholarly consensus affirms that archival materials declassified in 1991 contain irrefutable data far superior to sources use ...
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Index of Soviet Union-related articles Index (or its plural form indices) may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Fictional entities * Index (''A Certain Magical Index''), a character in the light novel series ''A Certain Magical Index'' * The Index, an item on a Halo megastru ...
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Timeline of the Great Purge The Great Purge of 1936-1938 in the Soviet Union can be roughly divided into four periods:History of the Soviet Union (1927–1953) The history of the Soviet Union between 1927 and 1953 covers the period in Soviet history from the establishment of Stalinism through victory in the Second World War and down to the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953. Stalin sought to destroy h ...
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Armenian victims of the Great Purge Armenian victims of the Great Purge included Armenian intellectuals, writers, artists, Bolshevik and later Soviet statesmen, military commanders, and religious figures. Orchestrated by Joseph Stalin, the Great Purge was a campaign of political repr ...
* Family members of traitors to the Motherland * Orphans in the Soviet Union#Children of "enemies of the people", 1937–1945 * Mass killings under communist regimes *
Lustration Lustration is the purge of government officials in Central and Eastern Europe. Various forms of lustration were employed in post-communist Europe. Etymology Lustration in general is the process of making something clear or pure, usually by m ...


References


Citations


Sources

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Further reading

* A. Artizov, Yu. Sigachev, I. Shevchuk, V. Khlopov under editorship of acad. A. N. Yakovlev. ''Rehabilitation: As It Happened. Documents of the CPSU CC Presidium and Other Materials. Vol. 2, February 1956–Early 1980s''. Moscow, 2003. * * * * . * * * * * * * * * * * * * Watt, Donald Cameron. "Who plotted against whom? Stalin's purge of the soviet high command revisited." ''Journal of Soviet Military Studies'' 3.1 (1990): 46–65. * * Whitewood, Peter. ''The Red Army and the Great Terror: Stalin's Purge of the Soviet Military'' (2015) * Whitewood, Peter. "The Purge of the Red Army and the Soviet Mass Operations, 1937–38." ''Slavonic & East European Review'' 93.2 (2015): 286–314
online
* —— "Subversion in the Red Army and the Military Purge of 1937–1938." ''Europe-Asia Studies'' 67.1 (2015): 102–122. * —— "In the shadow of the war: Bolshevik perceptions of polish subversive and military threats to the Soviet Union, 1920–32." ''Journal of Strategic Studies'' (2019): 1–24. * *


Film

* Pultz, David, dir. 1997. ''Eternal Memory: Voices from the Great Terror'' 1:00, documentary film Narrated by
Meryl Streep Mary Louise Meryl Streep (born June 22, 1949) is an American actress. Often described as "the best actress of her generation", Streep is particularly known for her versatility and accent adaptability. She has received numerous accolades throu ...
. USA.


External links

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''The Case of Bukharin''
��Transcript of Nikolai Bukharin's testimonies and last plea; from "The Case of the Anti-Soviet Block of Rights and Trotskyites", Red Star Press, 1973, pages 369–439, 767–779 * * Nicolas Werthbr>Case Study: The NKVD Mass Secret Operation n° 00447 (August 1937 – November 1938)

"Documenting the Death Toll: Research into the Mass Murder of Foreigners in Moscow, 1937–38"
by Barry McLoughlin, American Historical Association, 1999 {{Soviet Union topics Great Purge 1930s conflicts 1930s in the Soviet Union 1936 in the Soviet Union 1937 in the Soviet Union 1938 in the Soviet Union Joseph Stalin NKVD Political and cultural purges Political repression in the Soviet Union Politics of the Soviet Union Massacres in Russia Massacres in Ukraine Massacres in Uzbekistan Massacres in Belarus Massacres in Armenia Death in the Soviet Union Politicides Stalinism Mass murder in 1937 Mass murder in 1938 Soviet phraseology Persecution by the Soviet Union Persecution of intellectuals