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Stalin's Great Purges (redirected from Joseph Stalin, Soviet Leader)

Page history last edited by Robert W. Maloy 1 year ago

 

Memorial to the victims of the Great Purge at Moscow's Don Cemetery.

The remains of over 5000 cremated victims are located here

Topics on the Page

 

Biography of Joseph Stalin

 

The Great Purges 

 

Motives for the Great Purges

 

Effects on Ethnic Minorities

 

Effects and Aftermath

 

CROSS-LINKS

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Biography of Joseph Stalin

 

Joseph Stalin was was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet politician who led the Soviet Union from the mid–1920s until 1953 as the general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1922–1952) and premier of the Soviet Union (1941–1953).

 

Joseph Stalin was not one of the decisive players in the Bolshevik seizure of power in 1917, but he soon rose through the ranks of the party. In 1922 he was made general secretary of the Communist Party, a post not considered particularly significant at the time but which gave him control over appointments and thus allowed him to build up a base of support. After Lenin's death in 1924, Stalin promoted himself as his political heir and gradually eliminated his rivals. By the late 1920s, Stalin was effectively the dictator of the Soviet Union.

File:Stalin Image.jpg 

When Stalin became the undisputed leader of Russia in 1929, he realized that Russia was far behind the west and that she would have to modernize her economy very quickly if she was to survive. Also, a strong economy would lead to a strong military if Russia was going to survive threats from external forces. An industrial Russia would also provide the farmers with the machinery they needed if they were going to modernize their farms - such as tractors. His forced collectivization of agriculture cost millions of lives, while his program of rapid industrialization achieved huge increases in Soviet productivity and economic growth but at great cost.

 

Stalin knew that Russia needed a strong army. However, such was his fear of 'enemies within', that he purged the Red Army of most of its senior commanders. Only one marshal out of five was left alive and the Red Army became all but leaderless. Moreover, the population suffered immensely during the Great Terror of the 1930s, during which Stalin purged the party of 'enemies of the people', resulting in the execution of thousands and the exile of millions to the gulag system of slave labor camps.

 

Stalin in 1937

  The Great Purges (1936-38) 

 

  • 750,000 citizens executed 
  • More than 1 million sent to the Gulag labor camps
  • Conducted against individuals and groups Stalin thought might threaten his power 

 

 

 Crash Course Videos

 

 

Motives for the Great Purge

 

The previous Soviet Union leader, Vladimir Lenin, who was also the head of the Bolshevik party, died in 1924. By 1929, Stalin had fought his way to political power and declared himself dictator. At this time, some former members of the Bolshevik party began to question Stalin's authority. By the mid-1930s, Stalin believed anyone with ties to the Bolshevik party or Lenin was a threat to his leadership and needed to be dealt with. Rising powers in Germany and Japan were also perceived as threats by Stalin and he felt unity among the Soviet Communist Party was essential to combat these threats.

 

File:Sergei Kirov 1934.jpg

Sergei Kirov

 

Sergei Kirov was a prominent Bolshevik leader who was assassinated in 1934. This murder is considered to be the first event of the Great Purge. It is speculated that Stalin ordered a man named Leonid Nikolayev to murder Kirov. Using the death of Kirov as proof that he had uncovered a dangerous conspiracy of anti-Stalinist Communists (which was being led from abroad by Leon Trotsky), Stalin launched his full-scale purge. Eventually, Stalin killed or imprisoned all the original Bolsheviks that participated in the 1917 Russian Revolution. 

 

Watch this short video on the Great Purges

Sergei Kirov in 1934

The Purge Itself

 

Those who were sought out during the Great Purge were known as "enemy of the people" to Stalin. The killing and imprisonment of the Great Purge began with members of the Bolshevik party, political officials and military members. From there, the purge expanded to include peasants, ethnic minorities, scientists, intellectuals, writers, artists, foreigners and ordinary citizens. In addition, Stalin had 30,000 members of the Red Army executed, believing that these members were plotting a coup. 

 

Purge's Effects on Ethnic Minorities

 

Stalin's purges were not expressly limited to political opponents. Stalin used the NKVD to target certain minority groups within the Soviet Union. These groups included Germans and Ukrainians, as well as Polish when the Soviets invaded in 1939. These groups were seen as potentially disloyal because of their ties to foreign countries as well as their relation to countries that were a part of "hostile capitalist encirclement".

 

File:Nikolai Yezhov with Stalin and Molotov along the Volga–Don Canal, orignal.jpg

Nikolay Yezhov

 

Nikolay Yezhov was the head of the NKVD (the Soviet secret police) during the time of the Great Purge. Yezhov oversaw a brutal campaign of repression that targeted perceived enemies of the Soviet state, resulting in the arrest, imprisonment, and execution of hundreds of thousands of people. His role in these campaigns earned him the nickname of "the Bloody Dwarf". But even Yezhov was not immune from Stalin's paranoia. In 1938, Yezhov fell from grace and was dismissed from his position as the head of the NKVD. He was arrested later that year and accused of being a traitor and a spy. He was tortured and forced to confess to a variety of crimes, including plotting to overthrow Stalin. In 1940, Yezhov was executed by the Soviet authorities, and his name was erased from official records and photographs.

 

Stalin & Yezhov in 1937 in Stalingrad posing by the Volga River.

Yezhov was later erased from this photo.

 For more on Yezhov, watch this video.

 

 

Gulag Labor

 

Many who were sent to the labor camps claimed they would have rather been killed. Those who were sent to the labor camps endured torturous conditions and many were ultimately executed. In addition, some prisoners in the labor camps died of exhaustion, disease or starvation. 

 

Life in the gulag is chronicled in the famous book "The Gulag Archipelago" by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. For more, watch this video

 

Effects and Aftermath of the Purges

 

These purges severely depleted the Red Army, and despite repeated warnings, Stalin was ill prepared for Hitler's attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941. Despite the Germans reaching the outskirts of Moscow, Stalin did not leave his capital and played his part in defending his country against the Wehrmacht. As Commissar of Defence, Stalin ordered those who fought in the battle at Stalingrad not to give an inch to the Germans and he was very much the leader of his nation throughout the war. Recent released records from Russia does show Stalin's other side, however. The heroics of the people of Leningrad - besieged by the Germans between September 1941 and January 1944 - was recognized by many people as a feat of huge heroism. For the duration of the siege, the city's leaders had to make their own decisions as they were frequently cut off from Moscow and could not follow orders from the capital city. Such an independent spirit was not tolerated by Stalin and after the war, those city leaders of Leningrad during the war were dealt with by Stalin, in what was effectively a second purge of those he did not trust.

 

To get an idea of just how affected the USSR's military leadership was by Stalin's Purges, here is how many military leaders were killed by Stalin in the years before the German invasion in June 1941.

 

3 out of 5 Marshals

13 out of 15 army commanders, 

8 out of 9 admirals, 

50 out of 57 corps commanders, 

 154 out of 186 division commanders,

All of the 16 army commissars, 

 25 out of 28 corps commissars.

 

 

Primary Sources: LGBTQ History

 

Joseph Stalin did not support the LGBTQ community. In fact, in 1933, he put into place "Article 121 to the entire Soviet Union criminal code, which made male homosexuality a crime punishable by up to five years in prison with hard labor. The precise reason for Article 121 is in some dispute among historians. The few official government statements made about the law tended to confuse homosexuality with pedophilia and was tied up with a belief that homosexuality was practiced only among fascists or the aristocracy". (Source) 

 

 Multimedia Sources

 

 

Click here and here for short videos describing the Great Purges. 

 

Click here for a video of Archive footage of the victims of the Great Purges. 

 

Browse a Museum of the Gulag

 

Multicultural Histories

 

Women Under Stalin's Rule

 

Learning Activities

 

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