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Compiled by Laura Hill
HI102 The Emergence of Modern Europe
Spring '13

picture via Wikipedia

Introduction

The Great Purge, also known as the Great Terror, marks a period of extreme persecution and oppression in the Soviet Union during the late 1930s. While previous purges under Stalin involved the persecutions of kulaks (wealthy peasants), Nepmen (people who engaged in private enterprise during the New Economic Policy of the 1920s), clergymen, and former oppositionists, the Great Purge is characterized by imprisonments and executions not only of these usual suspects but of Communists leaders and party members, members of the Red Army, and the Intelligentsia in great numbers. The Great Purge instituted a new type of terror in which the boundaries of those oppressed were practically nonexistent - any stain on the record, including mere association with a perceived enemy, brought one under suspicion of the NKVD, the Soviet secret police. So-called enemies of the people were charged with treason, wrecking, espionage and more. There were strong anti-elitist attitudes and persecution against those who practiced favoritism, bullied subordinates, developed their own "cults of personality," and inappropriately used state funds.

The Great Purge began with the assassination of Sergei Kirov, whose 1935 murder by Leonid Nikolayev is suspected to have been ordered by Stalin. Kirov, though a faithful Communist, had a certain popularity in the party that threatened Stalin's consolidation of power. Kirov's death triggered three important, widely publicized show trials of prominent former Bolsheviks in Moscow and ultimately fostered the climate of terror during the Great Purge. The party began purging itself of undesirables as tension and suspicion mounted rapidly. It has since been determined that Denunciation of enemies was encouraged and surveillance was tightened. Hundreds of thousands were executed or died in Gulag during this period of oppression. In the summer of 1938 Nikoli Yezhov was released as head of the NKVD as the excesses of the Purge were being realized and coming to an end, but many in Gulag were not released until the end of Stalin's leadership.

Historical Context
Robert, Conquest. The Great Terror: A Reassessment. New York City: Oxford University Press, 2007.
This book updates the information supplied by Conquest's previous The Great Terror: Stalin's Purge of the Thirties, which first made comprehensive information about the Purge accessible to the public due, to new information being provided Glasnost policy in the 1980s which allowed greater freedom of information and the opening of the Soviet archives. There exists some discrepancy among historians as to the exact death toll (Conquest puts it at 20 million, which some claim is much higher than the actual number), but his work remains the most comprehensive assessment of the Great Purge to date.
Hiroaki, Kuromiya. The Voices of the Dead: Stalin's Great Terror in the 1930s. New Haven: Tale University Press, 2007.
This book reconstructs the lives of some of the hundreds of thousands who were killed during Stalin's Purge through information provided by the declassified Soviet archives. It details the lives of Vera Emel'ianovna Goroshko, who was executed for her romantic involvement with a Polish diplomat; Sigizmund Karlovich Kvasnevskii, who despite his efforts to elude arrest by cooperating as a police informant, was tried for espionage and executed; Marina Vladislvovna Al'bova who was shot without any evidence presented against her; and many more haunting tales. Kuromiya gives faces and names to statistics, humanizing those who were tragically affected by the Purge. She opens her work with "The dead cannot speak. Can one retrieve their voices?"
Fitzpatrick, Sheila. Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s. New York City: Oxford University Press, 2000.
Fitzpatrick's book outlines the impact that Stalinism imposed on everyday life throughout the 1930s. The final chapter deals specifically with the Great Purge and the unique effects this oppression had on Soviet society in everyday dealings. She describes how everyday behaviors came under suspect, fostering a climate of suspicion and fear. The book is filled with excerpts from memoirs and diaries that provide a base for further research on the topic.
Charter of the Cyber-USSR, "Flattering Soviet Cartoon of N.I. Yezhov." Accessed May 2, 2013. http://www.cyberussr.com/rus/ye-ctn.html.
The following picture shows Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov, head of the NKVD during much of the Great Purge, crushing a reptilian creature with three humand heads and a Swastika tail, "enemies" of the Soviet Union. His period as head of the NKVD is sometimes called "Yezhovshchina," or "the Yezhov era."
Lebedev-Kumach, Vas. Music Index for the Cyber-USSR, "Pesnya Bojcov NKVD (Song of the NKVD Fighting-men)." Accessed May 2, 2013. http://www.cyberussr.com/rus/sg-dir.html.
The following lyrics from an issue of Pravda in 1937 is an example of the propaganda the Communist party employed during the Great Purge. It glorifies the "fighting men" of the NKVD in their heroic journey to "defend our Soviet country in the Yezhov manner."

PESNYA BOJCOV NKVD

SONG OF THE NKVD FIGHTING-MEN

Nam respublika velela

The republic told us

Ne smykat' orlinyx glaz.

Not to close our eagle eyes.

My - bojcy Narkomvnudela

We are the fighting men of the NKVD

Pomnim rodiny prikaz.

We remember the Motherland's command.

My ot chernoj sily vrazh'ej

We defend our country

Berezhem stranu svoyu.

from the dark power of the enemy.

Dnem i noch'yu - my na strazhe,

Day and night, we are on guard,

Dnem i noch'yu - my v boyu.

Day and night, we are in battle.

Vrag - umen, my umnej,

The enemy is smart, we are smarter,

Vrag - silen, my sil'nej,-

The enemy is strong, we are stronger,-

Ves' sovetskij narod nam pomozhet

The entire Soviet people helps us

Vrazh'i kogti srubit',

To chop the enemy's claws,

Vrazh'i zuby spilit',

To cut down the enemy's teeth,

Vrazh'i gnezda ognem unichtozhit'!

To destroy the nests of the enemy with fire!

Budut slavoyu svetit'sya

The firm letters Ch.K.

Bukvy tverdye CheKa.

will shine with glory.

Znamya gordoe chekistov

A strong hand will hold

Derzhit krepkaya ruka.

The proud banner of the Chekists.

My Dzerzhinskogo zavety

We will hold Dzerzhinsky's precepts

V serdce plamennom xranim,

in our flaming heart,

My svoyu stranu Sovetov

We will defend our Soviet country

Po-ezhovski storozhim.

In the Yezhov manner.

E^j,
vragi! V lichinax novyx

Hey, enemies! You can't hide

Vam ne spryatat' zlobnyx lic,

Your malicious faces in new masks,

Ne ujti vam ot surovyx

You cannot escape from our stern

Ot ezhovyx rukavic!

Ezhov grip of steel!

Ne prolezt' polzuchim gadam

Crawling reptiles cannot slither

K serdcu rodiny tajkom, -

Stealthily to the heart of the Motherland, -

Vsex otkroet zorkim vzglyadom

Our untiring people's commissar

Nash nedremlyushchij narkom.

discovers all with a sharp-eyed glance.

My - zashchita millionov,

We are the defense of millions,

My - zashchita vsej strany

We are the defense of the whole country

Ot predatelej, shpionov,

From traitors, spies,

Podzhigatelej voiny.

Inciters of war.

Diversantam - net poshchady!

To saboteurs, no mercy!

Nash otryad - nepobedim, -

Our unit is unconquerable, -

Krov' po
kaple, esli nado,

If necessary, we will give our blood

My narodu otdadim!

Drop by drop to the people!

Nam respublika velela

The republic told us

Ne smykat' orlinyx glaz.

Not to close our eagle eyes.

My - bojcy Narkomvnudela

We are the fighting men of the NKVD

Pomnim rodiny prikaz.

We remember the Motherland's command.

My ot chernoj sily vrazh'ej

We defend our country

Berezhem stranu svoyu.

from the dark power of the enemy.

Dnem i noch'yu - my na strazhe,

Day and night, we are on guard,

Dnem i noch'yu - my v boyu.

Day and night, we are in battle.

Vrag - umen, my umnej,

The enemy is smart, we are smarter,

Vrag - silen, my sil'nej,-

The enemy is strong, we are stronger,-

Ves' sovetskij narod nam pomozhet

The entire Soviet people helps us

Vrazh'i kogti srubit',

To chop the enemy's claws,

Vrazh'i zuby spilit',

To cut down the enemy's teeth,

Vrazh'i gnezda ognem unichtozhit'!

To destroy the nests of the enemy with fire!

The Kirov Murder and the Moscow Show Trials
Lenoe, Matthew E. The Kirov Murder and Soviet History. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010.
This book by historian Matthew Lenoe assembles multiple investigations and official documents of the Kirov murder, which set the Great Purge in motion. This massive assemblage reexamines Stalin's role in the famous assassination.
Conquest, Robert. Stalin and the Kirov Murder. New York City: Oxford University Press, 2010.
This book also by Robert Conquest, author of The Great Terror: A Reassessment, was the first comprehensive examination of the role Stalin played in the Kirov murder. It not nearly as extensive as Lenoe's work on the subject, but it provides clear and concise information about the case and Stalin's part in the matter. It is an excellent source for basic background information on the subject.
Library of Congress, "Revelations from the Russian Archives: Repression and Terror: Kirov Murder and Purges." Last modified July 22, 2010. Accessed May 2, 2013. http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/repk.html.
Nikolai Bukharin, member of the Soviet politburo and Central Commitee and editor-in-chief of Pravda newspaper was the central victim of the Moscow show trials. A former supporter of Stalin's Bukharin came to oppose the excesses of his leadership and was arrested for the murder of Kirov. The following transcript involves Bukharin defending his allegiance to the Soviet cause and his condemnation of terror.
[intervening pages of transcript missing]
KHATUNTSEV-VASIL'EVA, F-va
[stenographer]

[...] two people? This is an obvious lie. How could Kulikov offer
two versions in answer to this absolutely and exceptionally
terrible question? How could Sokol'nikov advance two ideas at the
same time?
(VOICE: Rozit, Slepkov, and others mention this).
BUKHARIN: In what regard about this? If one speaks
"generally" in this way, nothing at all is said: It is the same as
when a student is asked where Moscow is on the map, and he
immediately covers the whole map with the palm of his hand.
[intervening pages of transcript missing]
I'd like to say a few words about terror. Comrades, the
question of membership in the party seems to me simply to be naive:
if a person takes the terrorist point of view against the
leadership of the party, then the question as to whether he may be
a party member is a naive question.

I have absolutely no relationship with terror, not by a single
word or thought. When I hear these things, it seems to me that the
conversation concerns other people; perhaps I am sitting here and
hearing about another person. I do not understand how I can be
charged with such an accusation; to me this is absolutely
incomprehensible [and] I look on this as "a sheep looking at new
gates" [i.e., I feel totally lost in foreign territory].
POZERN: These are not "new gates"-that's the problem.
BUKHARIN: To your way of thinking, perhaps they are not new
gates, but then I'm not a sheep either.[intervening pages of transcript missing]

ALTAEVA-PRIGORNAIA, Petrakova.
[stenographer]

STALIN: You should not and do not have the right to slander
yourself. This is a most criminal thing.

MOLOTOV: That which you have stated concerning the famine is
simply an anti-Soviet thing.
VOICES FROM THE ROOM: A counterrevolutionary thing! MOLOTOV: And anti-Soviet matters should not be engaged in. MOLOTOV: Let us call a recess, comrades. "Footage from Infamous Moscow show trial " Posted June 28 2009. Web, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFB9G1HINXI&feature=player_detailpage.
The following clip shows footage from one of the Moscow trials, including the indictment and public reaction to the convictions. Head prosecutor Andrey Vyshinsky references a "fifth column" of enemies, traitors, and spies that seek to undermine the Soviet Union and that must be crushed. He says,
"let the verdict be heard like thunder, like a fresh, purifying thunder storm of Soviet justice."

Life in Gulag
"Prisoners at Work." Gulag: Many Days, Many Lives, Item #33 (accessed May 02 2013)
The following picture shows a normal day of labor in the Soviet Gulag.
Alexei Andreevich Merekov, "Frost." Gulag: Many Days, Many Lives, Item #215 (accessed May 02 2013)
The following was painted at a Gulag camp in Kolyma. It represents the harsh living conditions of the prisoners during brutal Russian winters.
"A group of soldiers of Primorskaia army in the fights at Lake Chasan, Mongolia. 1938." Gulag: Many Days, Many Lives, (accessed May 02 2013)
The following 1938 picture shows a group of soldiers stanced for execution.
Solzhenitsyn, Alexander. The Gulag Archipelago. New York City: Basic Books, 1997.
This book written by a Gulag survivor is a three volume assemblage of the terrors of like in Gulag based on the personal testimonies of survivors. The reference to an archipelago in the title compares the camps with a chain of islands, distant and unknown to those who have never been. Solzhenitsyn attempts to bridge the gap of understanding through his portrayal of Gulag camp life. The Gulag Archipelago shocked the Western world with its vivid portrayal of the injustices of Gulag. Upon the publication of the first volume, Solzhenitsyn was arrested for treason and exiled from the Soviet Union.
Applebaum, Anne. Gulag: A History. New York City: First Anchor Books, 2004.
In her work, Applebaum outlines the entire history of Russian Gulag from its conception during the Russian Revolution of 1917 under Lenin and expanded under Stalin to its demise after the Glasnost period. Applebaum outlines Gulag camps as an economic and political institution, but also gives more personal accounts of the lives of prisoners and the way the camps influenced their everyday relations and behaviors.
Kerber, L.L. Stalin's Aviation Gulag: A Memoir of Andrei Tupolev and the Purge Era. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1996.
Kerber's memoir of his expiriences with Andrei Tupolev tells one of the more bizarre stories of Soviet Gulag. Tupolev, head developer of Soviet aviation and aircraft desing, was arrested and imprisoned in 1937. However, Tupolev was not held in a normal Gulag; he was held with many other aviation engineers in a special prison known as a sharaga and ordered to continue his work under the watchful eye of the NKVD. Kerber describes daily life in the strange institution of sharaga.
Trifonov, Iueii. House on the Embankment . Uknown, 1983.
Literature

"House on the embankment" was the name of a Russian compound that housed many of Stalin's elite and was situated across from the Moscow Kremlin. In this novel, Trifonov details through two different narrators the lives of various residents, who come and go as arrests of prominent Communists become a major feature of the Purge. Trifonov actually lived in the house on the embankment as a child. His father was executed and his mother spent eight years in Gulag.

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Compiled by Laura Hill HI102 The Emergence of Modern Europe Spring '13 picture via Wikipedia The Great Purge, also known as the Great Terror, marks a period of extreme persecution and oppression in the Soviet Union during the late 1930s.

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"We are 50 or 100 years behind the advanced countries.We must make good this lag in ten years or be crushed." -Stalin, 1931 When Stalin took control of the Soviet Union, he began his plan of massive industrialization.Stalin claimed that in order for Russia to live among the major capitalist powers of the world, economic growth was necessary.

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The Stalin era (1928-53)

Stalin, a Georgian, surprisingly turned to "Great Russian" nationalism to strengthen the Soviet regime. During the 1930s and '40s he promoted certain aspects of Russian history, some Russian national and cultural heroes, and the Russian language, and he held the Russians up as the elder brother for the non-Slavs to emulate. Industrialization developed first and foremost in Russia. Collectivization, though, met with considerable resistance in rural areas. Ukraine in particular suffered harshly at Stalin's hands because of forced collectivization. He encountered strenuous resistance there, for which he never forgave the Ukrainians. His policies thereafter brought widespread starvation to that republic, especially in 1932-33, when possibly millions may have died. Nevertheless, many party officials from Ukraine came to Moscow to make their careers, among them Nikita S. Khrushchev, who would succeed Stalin. The armed forces were dominated by Russians and Ukrainians, but the upper echelons of the Communist Party did not contain as many Ukrainians as might have been expected, given the size of that republic. The political police, on the other hand, had many non-Russians at the top, especially Georgians and Armenians.

Photos.com/Thinkstock

Russian industry expanded rapidly under Stalin, with Ukrainian in second place. The industrialization of the Caucasus and Central Asia began during the 1930s, and it was the Russians, aided by the Ukrainians, who ran the factories. The labour force was also predominantly Russian, as was the emerging technical intelligentsia. Stalin's nationality policy promoted native cadres and cultures, but this changed in the late 1920s. Stalin appears to have perceived that the non-Russians were becoming dangerously self-confident and self-assertive, and he reversed his nationality policy. He came to the conclusion that a Sovietized Russian elite would be more effective as an instrument of modernization. In the non-Russian republics, Russians and Ukrainians were normally second secretaries of the Communist Party and occupied key posts in the government and political police. Diplomats were predominantly Russian. The Soviet constitution of 1936 was democratic-but only on paper. It rearranged the political and nationality map. The boundaries of many autonomous republics and oblasts were fashioned in such a way as to prevent non-Russians from forming a critical mass. Moscow's fear was that they would circumvent central authority. For example, Tatars found themselves in the Tatar ( Tatarstan) and Bashkir (Bashkiriya) autonomous republics, although Tatars and Bashkirs spoke essentially the same language. Tatars also inhabited the region south of Bashkiriya and northern Kazakhstan, but this was not acknowledged, and no autonomous republic was established. Moscow played off the various nationalities to its own advantage. This policy was to have disastrous long-term consequences for Russians, because they were seen as imperialists bent on Russifying the locals. New industry usually attracted Russian and Ukrainian labour rather than the locals, and this changed the demographic pattern of the U.S.S.R. Russians spread throughout the union, and by 1991 there were 25 million living outside the Russian republic, including 11 million in Ukraine. Russians and Ukrainians made up more than half the population of Kazakhstan in 1991. Almost half the population of the capital of Kyrgyzstan and more than a third of the population of Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan, were Russian at the time the union ended in 1991.

The German invasion in June 1941 resulted in much of Ukraine being overrun. Many Ukrainians welcomed the Wehrmacht (German armed forces). Stalin was already displeased with the Ukrainians, and this reinforced his feelings. (In his victory toast after the war, he drank to the Russian triumph over the Germans.) This was in line with Stalin's wartime policies, through which he rehabilitated the Russian Orthodox Church while identifying himself personally with previous Russian leaders such as the medieval prince Dmitri Donskoy and the tsars Ivan IV (the Terrible) and Peter I (the Great).

The Russians, however, suffered as much as anyone else during the purges and repression that characterized Stalin's reign. Stalin vandalized Russian cultural monuments and destroyed many fine examples of Russian architecture. He was personally responsible for the destruction of some of Moscow's finest cathedrals. It was as if Stalin were trying to expunge Russia's past and build a new Russia in his own image. This was ironic given that Stalin spoke Russian with a Georgian accent.

Victory over Germany precipitated an upsurge of Russian national pride. Russia, in the guise of the U.S.S.R., had become a great power and by the 1970s was one of two world superpowers. The advent of the Cold War in the 1940s led to Stalin tightening his grip on his sphere of influence in eastern and southeastern Europe. Russian was imposed as the main foreign language, and Russian economic experience was copied. This was effected by having Russian and other communist officials in ministries. A dense network of treaties enmeshed the region in the Russian web. War reparations went first and foremost to Russian factories. Paradoxically, when the United Nations was first set up, in 1945, Stalin did not insist that Russia have a separate seat like the Ukrainian and Belorussian republics had, a move that suggests he regarded the U.S.S.R.'s seat as Russia's.

The Bolsheviks had always been mindful of minorities on their frontiers, and the first deportation of non-Russian minorities to Siberia and Central Asia began in the 1920s. Russian Cossacks also were removed forcibly from their home areas in the north Caucasus and elsewhere because of their opposition to collectivization and communist rule. On security grounds, Stalin deported some entire small nationality groups, many with their own territorial base, such as the Chechen and Ingush, from 1944 onward. They were accused of collaborating with the Germans. The Volga Germans were deported in the autumn of 1941 lest they side with the advancing Wehrmacht. Altogether, more than 50 nationalities, embracing about 3.5 million people, were deported to various parts of the U.S.S.R. The vast majority of these were removed from European Russia to Asiatic Russia. Nearly 50 years later, Pres. Boris Yeltsin apologized for these deportations, identifying them as a major source of interethnic conflict in Russia.

The late Stalin period witnessed campaigns against Jews and non-Russians. Writers and artists who dared to claim that Russian writers and cultural figures of the past had learned from the West were pilloried. Russian chauvinism took over, and anything that was worth inventing was claimed to have been invented by a Russian.

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Russia | Geography, History, Map, & Facts - The Stalin era (1928-53)

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Russia - The Stalin era (1928-53): Stalin, a Georgian, surprisingly turned to "Great Russian" nationalism to strengthen the Soviet regime. During the 1930s and '40s he promoted certain aspects of Russian history, some Russian national and cultural heroes, and the Russian language, and he held the Russians up as the elder brother for the non-Slavs to emulate.