An essay written whilst still at school that's been knocking around for some time. Don't feel obliged to read it, I'm just filling time that should be spent working. Even I can't be fucked reading it before I post it, and I wrote it. Don't copy or re-post this or in 7 days the girl you've always liked will kiss you and you'll get scabies, then get sick on her. Then you'll die.
Throughout the years of 1936-38, the Soviet regime initiated a period of repressive measures, campaigns of violence, and show trials that targeted not only the Bolshevik party itself, but grew to incorporate the military, lower level administration, the affluent and the peasantry, spies and conspirators, and even the halls and corridors of the purgers themselves. In examining the nature and impact of the terror the purpose of these deaths, and the motives behind them must also be examined. To glean a comprehensible picture of the Great Purge it is necessary to discern the degree of control personally exercised by Stalin over the terror, and the extent to which the gains that he stood to make were personal, as a pose to ideologically beneficial for the regime itself. To this effect it is first useful to define a rough estimation of the number of deaths attributable through direct causation to this period of instability.
Russian historians writing after the Kruschev Thaw, place the figure at around 725,000, whilst Western historians, writing during the Cold War, suggest a figure closer to 1,000,000. In these cases, Western historians may be led to overestimation in the political climate of the day, specifically the lack of reliable information available during the Cold War, whilst Russian historians may have been misled or swayed by declassified Soviet archives which may have falsified and underestimated figures in order to cover the tracks of the NKVD. In addition to this, around 2 million people were imprisoned in the Gulags for political crimes, whilst millions of others died from famine due to the regime's ineffectiveness in responding to crises. In contrast to this, only 3,932 people were executed by the Okhrana for political crimes throughout 1825-1910 under Tsarist rule, and in 1905, 3,900 internal exiles were allowed to live and work within Russia, whilst the policies of Perestroika in 1987, and Glasnost, initiated by Gorbachev saw a relax of repressive measures, and a more lucid form of free press and transparent government open to public debate. The overall suggestion of this context is that despite the unreliable nature of these figures, the context of political deaths and freedom from political repression before and after the 'Great Terror', and the high average scale for estimates of deaths during this period suggest that the purge was not limited to just rooting out political enemies, spies and conspirators, as the Okhrana did under Nicholas II, but the policies of Gorbachev, aimed at appeasing the general population as a whole, and the revelations in the press as to workers' poor living conditions and human rights, show an attempt to make reparations, perhaps, for a terror more widely concerned with targeting a broader base of the population who could not possibly have merited in their entirety the titles of spy and saboteur with which they were all so often tarred.
Historians often agree that neither the regime nor Stalin gained much from the purges, and in many instances they proved to be rather counter-productive. The purge of the Party in 1933 saw 1.9 million members removed, compared to just 220,000 in 1921 under Lenin, massively complicating the administrative procedure, leading to planning delays and wasted resources in industry and famine relief, as well as seemingly weakening the intellectual strength of the party, at whom the purge in this instance was aimed. The purge of the Red Army in 1937, on the eve of the Japanese invasion of '38, and the Nazi invasion of '41, led to a complete failure of strategic planning, organisation, and an effective chain of command. The People's Commissar for Defence, Voroshilov, at the time stated that roughly 54,000 soldiers had been removed from the Red Army as a result of the Tukhachevsky executions in 1937. In industry, 'bourgeois' managers and skilled engineers were purged and replaced by unskilled and overly ideological 'Red workers', rushed through engineering school and given important roles in production in order to speed up the process of Stalin's five year plan; with the number of workers in industry rising by 8 million during the 1930s. Whilst the massive influx of industrial workers led to major rise in factory output, the unskilled nature of these workers caused souring costs through mismanagement, and a need for an increased quantity of manual labour, leading to a subsequent drop in wages and living conditions. The motives behind, and the extent of, Stalin's personal involvement and interests in the purge of the military and administration are debatable, but it is this element that would allow a greater insight into the true nature of the terror, as it will suggest as to whether it was driven by Stalin's personal desire for control, or by the wider regime's fear of loosing it. One view for example, supported by Conquest, on the purge of the Red Army, is that it was an attempt by Stalin to gain control over a rapidly failing body of dissent. The executions of nearly all senior commanders could be seen as a means by which Stalin aimed to remove political ideology and personal independence from the army, and replace it with fresher, blanker minds, brought up from pups to see Stalin as inseparable from the patriotic furore of the USSR, as he had done in the Politburo, during his fight to overcome the United Opposition in 1926. In both cases granting himself a much more personal level of control over authority, separate from other members of the party who may well have posed a threat to his personal power.
The Kronstadt Mutiny of 1921 had shown the armed forces to be in need of pruning in terms of political thought, and the ability of the navy to make contact with the outside world, docking in neighbouring countries, being away from the influence of propaganda and the NKVD, fuelled suspicions within party ranks as to the political purity of many sailors. One notable example is of a flag-officer named Ozarovsky, who was tortured and executed after being shipwrecked and coming into contact with a Norwegian Steamer, despite the fact that he had refused any assistance from them for fear of this exact same retribution. By 1938, over one third of all party members had received no political education whatsoever, and the number of party members serving in the army had been depleted by over half, roughly equivalent to 125,000 men. These figures imply that the Purge was directed at weeding out ideology and free thought from bodies that could threaten the regime, which, whilst possibly a move by Stalin to further his position, could also be seen as a move by the party out of fear to protect their own.
The removal of all but 45 out of 263 of Army commanding personnel, and all but one of the navy's admirals, seems to suggest a desire to remove any authoritative element of the military that had come to view itself as being able to undertake responsibility independently of the party, as, in terms of efficiency for example, it proved to be entirely counterproductive. The impact of such removals of key figures within the military was to the effect that when war with Germany arrived, the failure of administration in both government and military bodies led to avoidable losses, and poor strategic planning. As was already evidenced in Nicholas II's failed attempt to be control both the state and the army during the First World War, if the nature of the purges was in Stalin's furthering of personal power, then this would inevitably lead to blame and discontent from the populous being placed directly upon himself.
In contrast to this, the impact of the terror can also be seen in its use as a system for the enforcement of rule, and suppression of such dissent, emphasising the role of ideology over personal interest, and stressing the notion of strong, centralised leadership, in control of the majority of aspects associated with the purges. Conquest once described totalitarianism as, "a political system where the state, usually under the control of a single political organisation, faction, or class domination, recognises no limits to its authority and strives to regulate every aspect of public and private life wherever feasible". If we, first of all, accept this as our definition of the term, and secondly, assume this term to be an accurate representation of Stalinist Russia, then it is fair to deduce that there are elements of suppression and forced control suggested within this definition that implicate totalitarianism as being, 'against the will of the people'. It is evidenced throughout Russia's history that suppression of the population has long been a contentious issue. The secret police grew under Nicholas II out of a need to quell Populist dissent and suppress Socialist Democrats and Revolutionaries, leading in part to the discontent that sparked the revolution, whilst both Andropov and Putin once were heads of the KGB, which as late as the 1980s trained recruits with manuals written by the Okhrana. From this definition it could then be deduced that the more the regime imposed restrictions upon its people, the more discontent its people would grow. From this it could be said that the nature of terror and fear could be seen in their use as political tools to cull the dissenting sentiments they themselves caused, with the nature and purpose of the purges being then as a weapon wielded against those who threatened the stability of the totalitarian regime. This theory as to the nature of the terror portrays the regime in a strong and malicious light; authoritarian and rigidly centralised, and draws much of its reasoning from Western perceptions, around the time of the late 1940s, towards the comparisons between Stalin and Hitler, as World War II ended, and Russia emerged as the new threat to western Capitalism, as well as suggestions made by Khrushev during the 20th Party Congress in 1956, placing emphasis upon Stalin's cult of personality in the motives of the terror.
Whilst not unfounded, these comparisons certainly predispose any conclusion to the assumption that Stalin was the strong figurehead at the forefront of all operations, and in full control as to the extent and nature of the purges, just as Hitler was perceived as a figurehead and embodiment of the Jewish purges of the time. This is supported by the 'Doctor's Plot' of 1953, were the accused were predominantly Jewish, and many historians believe it would have led to mass jewish exile had not Stalin died, suggesting his personal control over the purges. However, revisionist historians such as J. Arch Getty, have been forthcoming with alternate theses as to the exact impact of the terror which should also be explored if any balanced interpretation is to be reasoned. More specifically, it is important to consider the wider context surrounding the Great Terror in order to understand the social, political, and physiological atmospheres at the time, and the response of the regime to this period following Stalin's death.
The society of 1930's Russia was evolving at a rapid state, the first Five Year Plans had propelled Russia's agricultural and industrial outputs forwards, in many cases quadrupling fuel productions, and creating an atmosphere of fevered expectancy for the future. The downside of the rapidity of the industrialisation drive was a rush to complete projects on schedule with new and unskilled 'red workers' with ambitions twice the size of material stocks, creating an atmosphere of fevered tension, competition, mistrust, and a tendency to blame others for mishaps out of fear of being blamed themselves. Another factor to consider is the political climate of the day. The Old Bolsheviks, who had made their bones in the 1917 revolution, and served under Lenin, still made up a sizeable proportion of the party, along with newer breeds of Bolsheviks who were less politically indoctrinated, and more loyal to Stalin, amongst other such factions. The Old Bolsheviks, who constituted the majority of the Politburo, held a general consensus that violence and terror were viable tools in policy and its implementation; their political ambitions and views had been forged by the fires of the civil war, and under the repressions of Tsarist rule they had become masters in conspiracy and deceit, with mistrust of each other fuelled by fears of assassination. The murders of Interior ministers Sipyagin and Pleve in 1902 and 1904, and the murders of prominent government dissenters such as Politkovskaya, an objector to the Chechan conflict, hint at Russia's longstanding culture of politically motivated killings, explaining why party members often carried loaded guns when in the Politburo. This wider context further illuminates the nature of the purges as, whilst those who strongly oppose a group, be it authoritarian or subversive, have always met with silent sabotage, the scale of the purges in contrast suggests that the terror was not solely concerned with rooting out threats. The fact that Kirov was the only political assassination during Stalin's rule suggests either, that the need for 'assassination' was negated by the tool of the purges, that the people were generally complicit in or ignorant of the terror, or that Stalin's purge of the intelligentsia had been effective in completely removing the voice of dissent. The first suggestion carries weight, but ignores the problem that it is the people without access to such 'tools' that we must consider, and so we must turn to the other two suggestions.
From this can be seen the political and social climate of the 1930's, one of mistrust and tensions between old and new, between skill and loyalty, experience and vigour, but also of economic reforms and industrialisation, to put it glibly, it was a time of enthusiasm and fear. But what then of the catalyst that turned climate into tempest, and brought about the scourge of purges that swept the land? To discern this, it is necessary to look briefly again at the consequences of rapid industrialisation and poorly trained work forces by the late 1930s. When bridges collapsed, or trains crashed, someone had to be held accountable, and neither the common peasant, nor the highest Bolshevik, could neither accept nor voice the opinion that it might be the policy or the plans that were at fault. The notion that the Party was infallible had been evidenced in the show trials, as Kamenev and Zinoviev, it has been suggested, held an instinctive reasoning deep inside of them that even though it transcended all reason, they must be to some degree accountable for the crimes of which they were accused because in their heart of hearts they still could not believe that the party could be mistaken.
When Lysenko became the leading influence in Soviet agriculture, his unproven and unaccepted views on the nature of grain production most likely contributed to wide spread famines throughout the 1930s, as his ludicrous hypothesises became official Soviet policy, which in turn was implemented on the collectivised farms, leading, in part, to the failure of crops. This is an aphoristic example of the authority over intellect, or simply an absence of the latter, the impact of the purges having been to cripple the intelligentsia, and thus make it much easier for such hypothesises to go unchallenged. However, when famine or drought spread, it was the meteorologists who were executed, rather than contingency plans readdressed, and veterinarians who were blamed for cattle disease, as a pose to the state, for its inability to respond effectively to such crises. The overall suggestion of this psychology is that if the party was infallible, and the 'red workers' were fundamentally loyal, but still accidents and disasters occurred, then the only solution left, was sabotage.
In the political climate of the time, if this hypothesis is accepted, then the motivations for the purge of the Red Army with the imminent threat of war looming large can be reconsidered in a more convincing light, and thus to an extent the impact of these specific purges may be expanded to apply in a broader sense to the terror as a whole.
Foreign policy and a wider world context are extremely important in understanding the motivations of the terror, such as Hitler's rise to power in 1933 and program of remilitarisation with the open intention of destroying 'Godless Jewish Communism', sparking fear of German spies and saboteurs. By it's very nature, 'Socialism in One Country' suggested a general mistrust of foreign influences. America and Britain had supplied troops and aid to the White Army in their struggle against the Bolsheviks through 1918-1921 and as a result, the Soviet Union was left very much as an isolated country, as it was by the western formation of NATO in 1949 during the Cold War. It was a country constantly feeling the approaching threat of Western Capitalism coming to destroy the fragile structure they had made. Stalin's five year plans themselves were driven by the perceived knowledge that, 'Either we do it, or they will crush us'. The NKVD also gave frequent reports to the Politburo, and passed information directly to Stalin himself, announcing the discovery and capture of ever increasing amounts of saboteurs, spies, conspirators, and assassins. The NKVD of course had its own vested budgetary interests in the discovery of conspiracies, but if we are to assume that Stalin and his inner circle truthfully accepted that spies had infiltrated the regime, then the impact of the purges, specifically of the army, can be readdressed in a more illuminating light.
Instead of an attempt to remove individuality and replace it with mindless loyalty to secure Stalin's personal position, it can be viewed as an attempt to quell a dangerous conspiracy and replace it with the only safe alternative to secure the success of the regime. The essential distinction between these two cases is in one instance a fundamental one that has already been discussed throughout, the nature of the personality and psychology of Stalin, juxtaposed against the ideological interests of the state; the nature of the individual or of the majority. The second distinction lies in the extent to which Stalin personally dictated the scope of the purges.
Historians such as Conquest draw heavily upon the notion of a 'Stalinist regime' placing emphasis on the heavily centralised role of the leader in the mechanics of the purges. Conquest's Magnus Opus, 'The Great Terror', draws much of its source material from information released by the Soviet Union during the 'Khrushchev thaw', and can thus be suggested to contain a degree of unreliability as Khrushchev had his own political motivations in condemning Stalin for the purges, as he had served within Stalin's administration, and was attempting, at the time, to convey the view to the Politburo, through such instruments as his 'Secret Speech' that he would bring an end to this climate of fear, whilst fundamentally suggesting that guilt lay with Stalin's grave, not in their beating hearts. Because, it is rather hard to argue this point if you are to admit that this climate of fear was brought about by the ingrained mentality and the rivalries of government and its people, as a pose to a single symbolic figure, now deceased.
Revisionists, drawing a lot of their information from the archives made available after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, such as Getty are more prone to pointing towards the easy outlet of a scapegoat when discussing Stalin's control over the terror. Stalin's death brought about the release of thousands of people imprisoned in the Gulags, and their return to their rightful place in society. Whilst this should have been a cause for celebration it was in fact a period of disquieting uncomfortableness, as everyone was inwardly very aware of the fact that one half of the country had betrayed the other half to the secret police in order to remain out of jail themselves. As is so often the case with humanity in general, Getty suggests that it was easier for people to blame all of their own problems on one central figure, that could no longer answer back, than for them to stop and examine their own conscience, even for a second.
In determining the causes of the terror therefore, there are several factors and wider contexts that must be taken into account and evaluated in order to define a distinct conclusion. Firstly the role of personal interest and psychological motivations of Stalin must be considered in order to decide as to whether the terror was borne out of a paranoid need to secure his own position at the head of the regime, or whether it was a genuine and ideological attempt to protect the revolution against the perceived threat of Capitalist spies and saboteurs. However, to draw a suitable conclusion from this concern, it is secondly necessary to look at the wider social and political contexts of the time. The social atmosphere of the 1930s was like trying to look forward to the bright future, whilst keeping one eye on the shadows lurking behind ones back. It was a time of great tension between old and young generations, as some classes were abolished, and others came into fruition. Some Bolsheviks had taken up temporary managerial positions to afford a living after the revolution, whilst others became more and more wary towards the permanent nature of these roles. Politically, the situation was not much different. Administration was complicated and the elite consisted of many different strata, all with their own personal prejudices and suspicions of each other, which gave rise to a festering culture of distrust. If then this criterion for the purges, along with the juxtaposition between personal and ideological interests is considered, then a conclusion can be drawn.
Firstly, that the scale of the terror suggests a task too large for one man, and even for one organisation to carry out. It is important not to place too much emphasis upon Stalin's psychological aspects in the nature of the purges. As previously suggested, Khrushchev had his own personal motivations for blaming Stalin, as did the majority of the population, however, even if Stalin was a homicidal delusional maniac, a million deaths cannot be attributable to the personal delusions of one man, indeed, even willing executioners do not cover the sheer scale and extent of this. The Tsar had willing executioners in the form of the Okhrana, as did Yeltsin in the form of the KGB, however the scale of executions during these times pales in significance compared to that under Stalin and the NKVD. However, any mention of organised opposition or even of individual dissent is practically non existent in this era, whereas dissenters such as Litvinenko spoke out against later governments, which suggests a wider complicity spread throughout the population in allowing this terror to continue unabated. To justify this, we must reference the conclusions drawn as to the context of the era, and apply this criterion to the notion of the nature of the terror as a wide spread plague, too large for one man, too organised to be without central control, and too oppressive to be without the general complicity of the wider population. In the atmosphere of distrust and unexplored territories of the 1930s, it is not so far fetched to assume that whilst Stalin may have been the initiator of the purges, it was the rivalries, fear, and mistrust already instilled between the social and political strata that acted like a domino effect to carry through the implementations of this policy, and created a complicit accessory to the crimes committed against themselves. Thirdly, it is necessary, having examined the nature of the purges, to determine the cause. The perceived threats of Capitalism and Nazism to the Socialist ideal certainly provide an adequate explanation as to the reactant that set off the terror, and this is clearly evidenced in the otherwise seemingly counter-productive purges of the navy and the army.
In summary, the terror was initiated but not wholly orchestrated by one man, its motives lay both in a desire to secure Stalin's personal position, but perhaps more in his fear of spies and saboteurs that threatened to undermine the state. The impact of this is seen in the threat of foreign invasion serving, as it so often does throughout the world, to instil jingoist uniting sentiments within the people, first creating the fear, but then turning it inwards, upon neighbours, friends, and fellow Bolsheviks, with the end conclusion that whilst Stalin was the author of the terror, it was not only the secret police, but the politicians, peasants, and factory workers, who ensured the continued purges of the period encompassing 1936-1938, whose impact was the fear and terror and ultimately deaths of people on a hitherto unprecedented scale.
Brendan George
