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.

The final stage of the purges was the purge of the people. This purge of the people was carried out to force the public into giving their complete support for Stalin, making the country more of a totalitarian state. The people of Russia from then on lived a life of fear as one person in every eight of the population was arrested during these purges. Nearly all of the people who were arrested were taken away without reason and almost every family in the country suffered a loss of at least one of its members as a victim of the terror. The number of victims to be arrested was laid down in a quota, indicating that people were no longer treated as individuals but mere numbers. This part of the purge was thought to have been carried out to frighten the USSR’s national minorities into abandoning any thoughts of challenging Stalin’s power forcing these people into a full acceptance of Stalin’s enforced industrialisation programme.

Stalin’s motive for committing these purges was his desire to impose his absolute authority by bringing the party, state and army under his control. However even after he reached this aim the purges still continued. The purges significantly damaged the Russian economy by the mass killing of workers and the people of Russia. The purges also catastrophically weakened the Soviet army by the killings of the capable generals and troops which were replaced by incompetent people. This hurt the army especially when the Second World War started and the army only really began to recover at around 1942. Stalin destroyed people not for what they had done but for what they might do. His suspicions and fears revealed a deeply distorted mind which was responsible for the devastating purges. Stalin’s exaggerated use of terror to gain control of the state worked but the consequences came at a very high price.