Stalin’s Purges

Stalin and the Bolsheviks used terror as a method of securing political control in communist Russia. This was after Lenin had deceased when all the front men in the party had fought it out to become the authoritarian ruler. Stalin had won the battle and he used terror to secure his position as leader. Their use of terror to gain control was clear in a period called the purges, where thousands of people from the public, army and party where murdered to enforce Stalin’s position as leader of Russia. Stalin set the NKVD to carry out these purges, also known as the “great terror”, and the power of the NKVD was led by three people over the course of Stalin’s reign; Yagoda, Yezhov and Beria.

The first part of the purges was the purging of the Bolshevik party. Stalin used the purges of the party to eliminate his former enemies which guaranteed that he had no more opposition. Kirov, one of the favourites to become leader, was assassinated in 1934 by people unknown and Stalin blamed his assassination on Kamenev and Zinoviev, two of Stalin’s rivals. These two rivals were executed after pleading guilty; this made it harder for other Bolsheviks to plead innocent to false charges. Bukharin who was one of the key figures of the Bolshevik party and who was popular for his economic policies was also targeted by Stalin and sentenced to be shot along with all of Stalin’s other rivals. In a picture taken of the Bolshevik party in 1917 only Stalin was still alive by 1938 out of the 24 general staff, the other 23 members had all been destroyed by the purges. Stalin’s motivation for the purges of his party was presumably his fear of the threat that the party members could oppose Stalin and possibly overthrow him. He also seemed to want complete political loyalty which he did not see in the members he killed. This period also enabled Stalin to complete the discrediting of all his rivals.

In 1937 the military came under threat when Stalin threatened to carry out the purges within the armed forces as the Soviet Union would not have been complete if the armed services had continued as an independent force. Stalin shuffled around the troops of higher ranks to lessen the chance of resistance before the actual purge came. One of the heroes of the civil war, Tukhachevsky, was arrested after being thought to be involved with spying for Germans during the Second World War. This is likely to have been a false accusation but nevertheless he was executed by Stalin. To prevent any chance of a military reaction after Tukhachevsky’s death a wholesale destruction of the red army followed in the next few months. All eleven War Commissars were removed from office as lorry loads of officers were taken away for execution. The Navy and Air Force suffered the same sort of consequences as the army. These purges of the army left the army with new inexperienced officers and given the needs of the defence of the USSR from Germany and other countries, the deliberate crippling of the army defies most logic. His lack of trust for his own army that had sacrificed themselves in the civil war with Lenin was now gone.