Content deleted Content added
WikiUser4020 (talk | contribs) →Wider purge: Added content and reference. |
No edit summary |
||
| (39 intermediate revisions by 22 users not shown) | |||
Line 1:
{{copy edit|date=November 2023}}▼
{{Short description|1936–1938 campaign in the Soviet Union}}
{{about|the 1936–1938 Soviet purge|political purges in general|Purge|the period of the French Revolution|Reign of Terror|other uses|Great Terror (disambiguation)}}
{{use dmy dates|date=October 2015}}
{{Infobox civilian attack
| title
| partof
| image
| caption
| location
| target
| date = '''Main phase:'''<br>19 July 1936 – 17 November 1938<br />({{Age in years, months, weeks and days|month1=7|day1=19|year1=1936|month2=11|day2=17|year2=1938}})
| type
* [[Summary execution]]s
* [[Massacre]]s
* [[Mass murder]]
* [[Mass operations of the NKVD#National operations of the NKVD|Ethnic cleansing]]
* [[Genocide]]
}}
| fatalities
700,000 to 1.2 million (estimated)<ref name="EllmanComment"/><br /> <ref name="Kuhr" /><ref name="Xavier" />
| perps
| motive
}}
{{Repression in the Soviet Union}}
{{History of the Soviet Union}}
The '''Great Purge''', or the '''Great Terror''' ({{lang-ru|Большой террор|translit=
The purges were largely conducted by the [[NKVD]] (People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs), which functioned as the [[Ministry of home affairs|interior ministry]] and secret police of the USSR. Starting in 1936, the NKVD under chief [[Genrikh Yagoda]] began the removal of the central party leadership, [[Old Bolshevik]]s, government officials, and regional party [[Political boss|bosses]].<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://archive.org/details/TokaevComradeX1956|title=Tokaev Comrade X 1956|via=Internet Archive}}</ref> Soviet politicians who opposed or criticized Stalin were removed from office and imprisoned or executed by the NKVD. Eventually, the purges were expanded to the [[Red Army]] and military high command, which had a disastrous effect on the military.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://universitypressblog.dept.ku.edu/uncategorized/rethinking-stalins-purge-of-the-red-army-1937-38/|title=Rethinking Stalin's Purge of the Red Army, 1937–38 |last1=Whitewood|first1=Peter|date=June 13, 2016|website=University Press of Kansas Blog|access-date=2021-12-03}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/ABBEDEFC36C8903615BEEB02D3AB2CBD/S0037677900146224a.pdf/div-class-title-the-impact-of-the-great-purges-on-the-peopleandapos-s-commissariat-of-foreign-affairs-div.pdf|title=The Impact of the Great Purges on the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs|last1=Uldricks|first1=Teddy J.|journal=Slavic Review|volume=36|number=2|year=1977|pages=187–204 |doi=10.2307/2495035 |jstor=2495035|s2cid=163664533 }}</ref> The campaigns also affected many other categories of the society: [[intelligentsia]],
Following the [[Death and state funeral of Vladimir Lenin|death]] of [[Vladimir Lenin]] in 1924, a [[power vacuum]] opened in the Communist Party, the ruling party in the [[Soviet Union]] (USSR). Various established figures in Lenin's government attempted to succeed him. By 1928, Joseph Stalin, the party's General Secretary, had triumphed over his opponents and gained control of the party.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Joseph Stalin|url=https://www.history.com/topics/russia/joseph-stalin|access-date=2021-12-02|website=History.com|language=en}}</ref> Initially, Stalin's leadership was widely accepted; his main political adversary, Trotsky, was forced into exile in 1929, and Stalin's doctrine of "[[socialism in one country]]" became enshrined party policy. However, in the early 1930s, party officials began to lose faith in his leadership, largely due to the human cost of the [[first five-year plan]] and the [[Collective farming|collectivization of agriculture]]. By 1934, several of Stalin's rivals, such as Trotsky, began calling for Stalin's removal and attempted to break his control over the party.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Trotsky's Struggle against Stalin |url=https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/trotskys-struggle-against-stalin |access-date=2022-08-22 |website=The National WWII Museum {{!}} New Orleans |date=12 September 2018 |language=en}}</ref>▼
In 1938, Stalin reversed his stance on the purges, criticized the NKVD for carrying out mass executions, and oversaw the execution of [[Genrikh Yagoda]] and [[Nikolai Yezhov]], who headed the NKVD during the purge years. Scholars estimate the death toll for the Great Purge (1936–1938) to be roughly 700,000-1.2 million.
In this atmosphere of doubt and suspicion, the popular high-ranking official [[Sergei Kirov]] was [[Assassination of Sergei Kirov|assassinated]]. The assassination, in December 1934, led to an investigation that revealed a network of party members supposedly working against Stalin, including several of Stalin's rivals.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Who Killed Kirov? 'The Crime of the Century'|url=https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/who-killed-kirov-the-crime-the-century |access-date=2021-12-03 |website=www.wilsoncenter.org |language=en}}</ref> Many of those arrested after Kirov's murder, high-ranking party officials among them, also confessed plans to kill Stalin himself.<ref>{{Cite book |last=People's Comissariat of Justice of the U.S.S.R. |url=https://www.amazon.com/Anti-Soviet-Trotskyites-Military-Collegium-Verbatim/dp/B0711N78KN |title=Anti-Soviet 'Bloc of Rights and Trotskyites' Heard before the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the U.S.S.R., Verbatim Report |year= 1938 |publisher=People's Comissariat of Justice of the U.S.S.R. |asin=B0711N78KN}}</ref> The validity of these confessions is debated by historians, but there is consensus that Kirov's death was the flashpoint at which Stalin decided to take action and begin the purges.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Knight|first=Amy|title=Who Killed Kirov|publisher=Hill & Wang|year=1999}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last1=Getty |first1=John Arch |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=R5zx54LB-A4C |title=Origins of the Great Purges: The Soviet Communist Party Reconsidered, 1933–1938 |last2=Getty |first2=John Archibald |year=1987|publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-0521335706 |language=en}}</ref>▼
==Background==▼
▲The purges were largely conducted by the [[NKVD]] (People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs), which functioned as the [[Ministry of home affairs|interior ministry]] and secret police of the USSR. Starting in 1936, the NKVD under chief [[Genrikh Yagoda]] began the removal of the central party leadership, [[Old Bolshevik]]s, government officials, and regional party [[Political boss|bosses]].<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://archive.org/details/TokaevComradeX1956|title=Tokaev Comrade X 1956|via=Internet Archive}}</ref> Soviet politicians who opposed or criticized Stalin were removed from office and imprisoned or executed by the NKVD. Eventually, the purges were expanded to the [[Red Army]] and military high command, which had a disastrous effect on the military.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://universitypressblog.dept.ku.edu/uncategorized/rethinking-stalins-purge-of-the-red-army-1937-38/|title=Rethinking Stalin's Purge of the Red Army, 1937–38 |last1=Whitewood|first1=Peter|date=June 13, 2016|website=University Press of Kansas Blog|access-date=2021-12-03}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/ABBEDEFC36C8903615BEEB02D3AB2CBD/S0037677900146224a.pdf/div-class-title-the-impact-of-the-great-purges-on-the-peopleandapos-s-commissariat-of-foreign-affairs-div.pdf|title=The Impact of the Great Purges on the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs|last1=Uldricks|first1=Teddy J.|journal=Slavic Review|volume=36|number=2|year=1977|pages=187–204 |doi=10.2307/2495035 |jstor=2495035|s2cid=163664533 }}</ref> The campaigns also affected many other categories of the society: [[intelligentsia]], peasants—especially those lending out money or wealth ([[kulak|''kulaks'']])—and professionals.{{sfn|Conquest|2008|pp=250, 257–58}} As the scope of the purge widened, the omnipresent suspicion of saboteurs and [[Counter-revolutionary|counter-revolutionaries]] began impacting civilian life. The purge reached its peak between September 1936 and August 1938 under the leadership of [[Nikolai Yezhov]], hence the name ''Yezhovshchina''. The campaigns were carried out according to the [[general line (party)|general line of the party]], often by direct orders of the [[Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union|politburo]] headed by Stalin.<ref>Goldman, W. (2005). "Stalinist Terror and Democracy: The 1937 Union Campaign". ''The American Historical Review'', 110(5), 1427–53</ref> Hundreds of thousands of victims were accused of various political crimes (espionage, [[Wrecking (Soviet crime)|wrecking]], [[sabotage]], [[anti-Soviet agitation]], conspiracies to prepare uprisings and coups). They were executed by shooting or sent to the [[Gulag]] [[labor camp]]s. Many died at the penal labor camps of starvation, disease, exposure, and overwork. The NKVD targeted certain [[Soviet Union#Nationalities and ethnic groups|ethnic minorities]] such as the [[Volga Germans]], and Soviet citizens of Polish origin, who were subjected to forced deportation and extreme repression. Throughout the purge, the NKVD sought to strengthen control over civilians through fear, and frequently used imprisonment, torture, violent interrogation, and executions during its [[Mass operations of the NKVD|mass operations]].{{sfn|Figes|2007|pp=227–315}}
[[File:NKVD Order No. 00447.jpg|thumb|An excerpt of [[NKVD Order No. 00447]]]]▼
▲Following the [[Death and state funeral of Vladimir Lenin|death]] of [[Vladimir Lenin]] in 1924, a [[power vacuum]] opened in the Communist Party, the ruling party in the [[Soviet Union]] (USSR). Various established figures in Lenin's government attempted to succeed him. By 1928, Joseph Stalin, the party's General Secretary, had triumphed over his opponents and gained control of the party.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Joseph Stalin |url=https://www.history.com/topics/russia/joseph-stalin |access-date=2021-12-02 |website=History.com |language=en}}</ref> Initially, Stalin's leadership was widely accepted; his main political adversary, Trotsky, was forced into exile in 1929, and Stalin's doctrine of "[[socialism in one country]]" became enshrined party policy. However, in the early 1930s, party officials began to lose faith in his leadership, largely due to the human cost of the [[first five-year plan]] and the [[Collective farming|collectivization of agriculture]].
▲In 1938, Stalin reversed his stance on the purges, criticized the NKVD for carrying out mass executions, and oversaw the execution of [[Genrikh Yagoda]] and [[Nikolai Yezhov]], who headed the NKVD during the purge years. Scholars estimate the death toll for the Great Purge (1936–1938) to be roughly 700,000-1.2 million.<ref>{{Citation |title=Introduction: the Great Purges as history |date=1985 |url=http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511572616.002 |work=Origins of the Great Purges |pages=1–9 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |doi=10.1017/cbo9780511572616.002 |isbn=978-0521259217 |access-date=2021-12-02}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|last=Homkes|first=Brett|date=2004|title=Certainty, Probability, and Stalin's Great Purge|url=https://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1032&context=mcnair|journal=McNair Scholars Journal}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Ellman |first1=Michael |title=Soviet Repression Statistics: Some Comments |journal=Europe-Asia Studies |date=2002 |volume=54 |issue=7 |pages=1151–1172 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/826310 |issn=0966-8136}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Shearer |first1=David R. |title=Stalin and War, 1918-1953: Patterns of Repression, Mobilization, and External Threat |date=11 September 2023 |publisher=Taylor & Francis |isbn=978-1-000-95544-6 |page=vii |url=https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Stalin_and_War_1918_1953/CCHMEAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=great+purge+1.2+million&pg=PR7&printsec=frontcover |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Nelson |first1=Todd H. |title=Bringing Stalin Back In: Memory Politics and the Creation of a Useable Past in Putin’s Russia |date=16 October 2019 |publisher=Rowman & Littlefield |isbn=978-1-4985-9153-9 |page=7 |url=https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Bringing_Stalin_Back_In/oJGyDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=stalin+great+purge+1.2+million&pg=PA7&printsec=frontcover |language=en}}</ref> Despite the end of the Great Purge, the widespread surveillance and atmosphere of mistrust continued for decades. Similar purges took place [[Stalinist repressions in Mongolia|in Mongolia]] and [[Sheng Shicai#1937–38 purges|Xinjiang]]. While the Soviet government desired to put Trotsky on trial during the purge, his exile prevented this. Trotsky survived the purge, though he would be assassinated in 1940 by the NKVD on the orders of Stalin.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Leon Trotsky – Exile and assassination {{!}} Britannica |url=https://www.britannica.com/biography/Leon-Trotsky/Exile-and-assassination |access-date=2022-04-27 |website=www.britannica.com |language=en}}</ref><ref name=":6">{{Cite book |last=Schatman |first=Max |title=Behind the Moscow Trials |year=1938}}</ref>
From 1930 onwards, the Party and police officials feared the "social disorder" caused by the upheavals of [[Collectivization in the Soviet Union|forced collectivization of peasants]] and the resulting [[Soviet famine of 1932–1933|famine of 1932–1933]], as well as the massive and uncontrolled migration of millions of peasants into cities. The threat of war heightened Stalin's and generally Soviet perception of marginal and politically suspect populations as the potential source of an uprising in case of invasion. Stalin began to plan for the preventive elimination of such potential recruits for a mythical "fifth column of wreckers, terrorists and spies."<ref>Hagenloh, Paul. 2000. "Socially Harmful Elements and the Great Terror." pp. 286–307 in ''Stalinism: New Directions'', edited by [[Sheila Fitzpatrick|S. Fitzpatrick]]. London: Routledge.</ref><ref>Shearer, David. 2003. "Social Disorder, Mass Repression and the NKVD During the 1930s." pp. 85–117 in ''Stalin's Terror: High Politics and Mass Repression in the Soviet Union,'' edited by B. McLaughlin and K. McDermott. Basingstoke: [[Palgrave MacMillan]].</ref><ref name="werth" />▼
▲[[File:NKVD Order No. 00447.jpg|thumb|An excerpt of [[NKVD Order No. 00447]]]]
▲==Background==
▲{{see also|Purges of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union}}
▲From 1930 onwards, the Party and police officials feared the "social disorder" caused by the upheavals of [[Collectivization in the Soviet Union|forced collectivization of peasants]] and the resulting [[Soviet famine of 1932–1933|famine of 1932–1933]], as well as the massive and uncontrolled migration of millions of peasants into cities. The threat of war heightened Stalin's and generally Soviet perception of marginal and politically suspect populations as the potential source of an uprising in case of invasion. Stalin began to plan for the preventive elimination of such potential recruits for a mythical "fifth column of wreckers, terrorists and spies."<ref>Hagenloh, Paul. 2000. "Socially Harmful Elements and the Great Terror." pp. 286–307 in ''Stalinism: New Directions'', edited by [[Sheila Fitzpatrick|S. Fitzpatrick]]. London: Routledge.</ref><ref>Shearer, David. 2003. "Social Disorder, Mass Repression and the NKVD During the 1930s." pp. 85–117 in ''Stalin's Terror: High Politics and Mass Repression in the Soviet Union,'' edited by B. McLaughlin and K. McDermott. Basingstoke: [[Palgrave MacMillan]].</ref><ref name=werth/>
[[Image:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-R15068, Leo Dawidowitsch Trotzki.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Leon Trotsky]], in 1929, shortly before being driven out of the Soviet Union]]
The term "[[purge]]" in Soviet political slang was an abbreviation of the expression ''purge of the Party ranks''. In 1933, for example, the Party expelled some 400,000 people. But from 1936 until 1953, the term changed its meaning, because being expelled from the Party came to mean almost certain arrest, imprisonment, and often execution.
This opposition to current leadership may have accumulated substantial support among the working class by attacking the privileges and luxuries the state offered to its high-paid elite. The [[Ryutin affair]] seemed to vindicate Stalin's suspicions. [[Martemyan Ryutin|Ryutin]] was working with the even larger secret [[Bloc of Soviet Oppositions|Opposition Bloc]] in which [[Leon Trotsky]] and [[Grigory Zinoviev|Grigori Zinoviev]] participated,<ref name=":2">{{cite web|last=Broué|first=Pierre|title=The "Bloc" of the Oppositions against Stalin (January 1980)|url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/broue/1980/01/bloc.html|access-date=2020-12-19|website=www.marxists.org}}</ref><ref>{{citation|last=Kotkin|first=Stephen|title=Stalin: Paradoxes of Power 1878–1928}}.</ref> and which later led to both of their deaths. Stalin enforced a ban on party factions and banned those party members who had opposed him, effectively ending [[democratic centralism]].
Line 50 ⟶ 51:
[[Image:Sergei Kirov and Joseph Stalin, 1934.jpg|thumb|[[Saint Petersburg|Leningrad]] party leader [[Sergey Kirov|Sergei Kirov]] with [[Joseph Stalin|Stalin]] (and his daughter [[Svetlana Alliluyeva|Svetlana]]) in 1934]]
▲By 1934, several of Stalin's rivals, such as Trotsky, began calling for Stalin's removal and attempted to break his control over the party.<ref>{{Cite web |date=12 September 2018 |title=Trotsky's Struggle against Stalin |url=https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/trotskys-struggle-against-stalin |access-date=2022-08-22 |website=The National WWII Museum {{!}} New Orleans |language=en}}</ref> In this atmosphere of doubt and suspicion, the popular high-ranking official [[Sergei Kirov]] was [[Assassination of Sergei Kirov|assassinated]]. The assassination, in December 1934, led to an investigation that revealed a network of party members supposedly working against Stalin, including several of Stalin's rivals.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Who Killed Kirov? 'The Crime of the Century' |url=https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/who-killed-kirov-the-crime-the-century |access-date=2021-12-03 |website=www.wilsoncenter.org |language=en}}</ref> Many of those arrested after Kirov's murder, high-ranking party officials among them, also confessed plans to kill Stalin himself.<ref>{{Cite book |last=People's Comissariat of Justice of the U.S.S.R. |url=https://www.amazon.com/Anti-Soviet-Trotskyites-Military-Collegium-Verbatim/dp/B0711N78KN |title=Anti-Soviet 'Bloc of Rights and Trotskyites' Heard before the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the U.S.S.R., Verbatim Report
Another justification for the purge was to remove any possible "fifth column" in case of a war. [[Vyacheslav Molotov]] and [[Lazar Kaganovich]], participants in the repression as members of the Politburo, maintained this justification throughout the purge; they each signed many death lists.{{sfn|Figes|2007|p=239}} Stalin believed war was imminent, threatened both by an explicitly hostile Germany and an expansionist Japan. The Soviet press portrayed the country as threatened from within by fascist spies.{{sfn|Conquest|1987|pp=122–38}}
Line 70 ⟶ 72:
===First and second Moscow trials===
[[File:Л. Д. Троцкий, Л. Б. Каменев и Г. Е. Зиновьев. Середина 1920-х годов.jpg|thumb|right|Bolshevik revolutionaries [[Leon Trotsky]], [[Lev Kamenev]], and [[Grigory Zinoviev]]]]
Between 1936 and 1938, three very large Moscow trials of former senior Communist Party leaders were held, in which they were accused of conspiring with fascist and capitalist powers to assassinate Stalin and other Soviet leaders, dismember the Soviet Union and restore capitalism. These trials were highly publicized and extensively covered by the outside world, which was mesmerized by the spectacle of Lenin's closest associates confessing to most outrageous crimes and begging for death sentences:{{Original research inline|date=May 2021}}
Line 103 ⟶ 105:
===Third Moscow trial===
{{See also|Case of the Anti-Soviet "Bloc of Rightists and Trotskyites"}}
[[File:1934 agranov yagoda unknown redens.jpg|thumb|[[NKVD]] chiefs responsible for conducting mass repressions (left to right): [[Yakov Agranov]]; [[Genrikh Yagoda]]; unknown; [[Stanislav Redens]]. All three were themselves eventually arrested and executed.]]
The third and final trial, in March 1938, known as the [[Case of the Anti-Soviet "Bloc of Rightists and Trotskyites"|Trial of the Twenty-One]], is the most famous of the Soviet show trials, because of persons involved and the scope of charges which tied together all loose threads from earlier trials. Meant to be the culmination of previous trials,{{POV statement|date=May 2021}} it included 21 defendants alleged to belong to the "Bloc of Rightists and Trotskyites", supposedly led by Nikolai Bukharin, the former chairman of the [[Communist International]], former premier [[Alexei Rykov]], [[Christian Rakovsky]], [[Nikolai Krestinsky]], and [[Genrikh Yagoda]], recently disgraced head of the NKVD.<ref name=":2"/>
Although [[Bloc of Soviet Oppositions|an Opposition Bloc]] led by Trotsky and with zinovievites really existed, [[Pierre Broué]] asserts that Bukharin was not involved.<ref name=":2"/> Differently from Broué, one of his former allies,<ref>{{Cite book|last=Cohen|first=Stephen|title=Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution}}</ref> [[Jules Humbert-Droz]], said in his memoirs that Bukharin told him that he formed a secret bloc with Zinoviev and Kamenev in order to remove Stalin from leadership.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Humbert-Droz|first=Jules|title=De Lenine à Staline. Dix ans au service de l'Internationale communiste 1921–1931}}</ref>
The fact that Yagoda was one of the accused showed the speed at which the purges were consuming their own. It was now alleged that Bukharin and others sought to assassinate Lenin and Stalin from 1918, murder [[Maxim Gorky]] by poison, partition the
Even previously sympathetic observers who had accepted the earlier trials found it more difficult to accept these new allegations as they became ever more absurd, and the purge expanded to include almost every living Old Bolshevik leader except Stalin and [[Mikhail Kalinin|Kalinin]].{{Citation needed|date=May 2021}} No other crime of the Stalin years so captivated Western intellectuals as the trial and execution of Bukharin, who was a Marxist theorist of international standing.<ref name="Corey Robin, Fear, Page 96">Corey Robin, "Fear", p. 96</ref> For some prominent communists such as [[Bertram Wolfe]], [[Jay Lovestone]], [[Arthur Koestler]], and [[Heinrich Brandler]], the Bukharin trial marked their final break with communism, and even turned the first three into fervent anti-communists eventually.<ref>Bertram David Wolfe, "Breaking with communism", p. 10</ref>{{sfn|Koestler|1940|p=258}} To them, Bukharin's confession symbolized the depredations of communism, which not only destroyed its sons but also conscripted them in self-destruction and individual abnegation.<ref name="Corey Robin, Fear, Page 96"/>
Line 116 ⟶ 118:
====Bukharin's confession====
[[File:Bucharin.bra.jpg|thumb|upright=0.7|[[Nikolai Bukharin]], Russian [[Bolshevik]] [[Russian Revolution|revolutionary]] executed in 1938]]
On the first day of trial, Krestinsky caused a sensation when he repudiated his written confession and pleaded not guilty to all the charges. However, he changed his plea the next day after "special measures", which dislocated his left shoulder among other things.{{sfn|Conquest|2008|p=352}}
Line 134 ⟶ 137:
[[File:Evgeny Miller1.png|upright=0.7|thumb|[[Yevgeny Miller|Yevgeny-Ludvig Karlovich Miller]], one of the remaining leaders of the White movement, was kidnapped by the NKVD in 1937 and executed 19 months later.]]
The [[Russian Orthodox Church|Orthodox clergy]], including active parishioners, was nearly annihilated: 85% of the 35,000 members of the clergy were arrested. Particularly vulnerable to repression were also the so-called "special settlers" (''spetzpereselentsy'') who were under permanent police surveillance and constituted a huge pool of potential "enemies" to draw on. At least 100,000 of them were arrested in the course of the Great Terror.<ref name="sciencespo.fr"/>
Line 146 ⟶ 150:
==Campaigns targeting nationalities==
{{Main|Mass operations of the NKVD|Stalinist repressions in Azerbaijan|Armenian victims of the Great Purge}}
A series of [[mass operations of the NKVD]] was carried out from 1937 through 1938 targeting specific nationalities within the Soviet Union, on the order of [[Nikolai Yezhov]].
The [[Polish
[[File:Kosior.jpg|thumb|182x182px|Polish-born Soviet politician [[Stanislav Kosior]], a contributor to the [[Holodomor|1932–33 famine in Ukraine]], executed in 1939]]
Poles comprised 12.5% of those who were killed during the Great Terror, while comprising only 0.4% of the population. Overall, national minorities targeted in these campaigns composed 36%<ref name="snyvic">{{cite book|last=Snyder|first=Timothy|title=Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin|date=2010|publisher=Basic Books|page=104}}</ref> of the victims of the Great Purge, despite being only 1.6%<ref name="snyvic"/> of the Soviet Union's population. 74%<ref name="snyvic"/> of ethnic minorities arrested during the Great Purge were executed while those sentenced during the Kulak Operation had only a 50% chance of being executed,<ref name="snyvic"/> (though this may have been due to the Gulag camp's lack of space in the late stages of the Purge rather than deliberate discrimination in sentencing).<ref name="snyvic"/>
Line 155 ⟶ 162:
[[National operations of the NKVD]] were conducted on a quota system using [[album procedure]]. The officials were mandated to arrest and execute a specific number of so-called "counter-revolutionaries", compiled by administration using various statistics but also telephone books with names sounding non-Russian.{{sfn|Courtois|1999}}
The Polish Operation of the NKVD served as a model for a series of similar NKVD secret decrees targeting a number of the Soviet Union's diaspora nationalities: the [[Finns|Finnish]], [[
[[Image:Khadija Gaibova.jpg|thumb|155px|Pianist [[Khadija Gayibova]], executed in 1938]]
Timothy Snyder attributes 300,000 deaths during the Great Purge to "national terror" including ethnic minorities and Ukrainian "kulaks" who had survived [[dekulakization]] and the [[Holodomor]] famine that had been used to kill millions in the early 1930s.<ref>Timothy Snyder, ''Bloodlands'', Basic Books, 2010, pp. 411–12 {{ISBN?}}</ref> [[Lev Kopelev]] wrote "In Ukraine 1937 began in 1933", referring to the earlier Soviet political repressions in Ukraine.<ref>{{cite book |last=Subtelny |first=Orest |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=l5uiWHgRphQC |title=Ukraine: A History |publisher=University of Toronto Press |year=2009 |isbn=978-1442609914 |edition=4th revised |location=Toronto |author-link=Orest Subtelny |orig-year=1988}}</ref>{{rp|418}} There was also deadly persecution of Ukrainian cultural elites, who are referred to as the [[Executed Renaissance]]. Statistics of Ukraine's Ministry of Foreign Affairs indicate that about 200,000 victims of the Great Purge were Ukrainians.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Dyck |first=Kirsten |title=Denial: the final stage of genocide |date=2022 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-003-01070-8 |editor-last=Cox |editor-first=John M. |series=Routledge studies in modern history |location=London New York |pages=31 |chapter=Holodomor and Holocaust memory in competition and cooperation |editor-last2=Khoury |editor-first2=Amal |editor-last3=Minslow |editor-first3=Sarah}}</ref>
Concerning diaspora minorities, the vast majority of whom were Soviet citizens and whose ancestors had resided for decades and sometimes centuries in the Soviet Union and Russian Empire, "this designation absolutized their cross-border ethnicities as the only salient aspect of their identity, sufficient proof of their disloyalty and sufficient justification for their arrest and execution" (Martin, 2001: 338).<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://nkvd-mass-secret-national-operations-august-1937-november-1938.html/|title=The NKVD Mass Secret National Operations (August 1937 – November 1938) | Sciences Po Mass Violence and Resistance – Research Network|date=15 April 2019|website=nkvd-mass-secret-national-operations-august-1937-november-1938.html}}{{Dead link|date=March 2022 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref> Some scholars have called the
Some scholars, however, focus on the security dilemma in the border areas suggesting the need to secure the ethnic integrity of Soviet space ''vis-à-vis'' neighboring capitalistic enemy states.<ref name=":4" /> They stress the role of [[international relations]] and believe that representatives of these minorities were killed not because of their ethnicity, but because of their possible relations to countries hostile to the USSR and fear of disloyalty in the case of an invasion.<ref name=":4" /> Nevertheless, little proof exists to suggest that Russia's and Stalin's alleged prejudices played a central causal role in the Great Purge.<ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Kuromiya|first1=Hiroaki|last2=Pepłoński|first2=Andrzej|date=2009|title=The Great Terror|url=https://journals.openedition.org/monderusse/9736|journal=Cahiers du monde russe. Russie – Empire russe – Union soviétique et États indépendants|language=en|volume=50|issue=50/2–3|pages=647–70|doi=10.4000/monderusse.9736|issn=1252-6576|doi-access=free}}</ref>
Line 166 ⟶ 175:
{{Further|Case of the Trotskyist Anti-Soviet Military Organization}}
[[File:5marshals 01.jpg|thumb|The first five [[Marshal of the Soviet Union|Marshals of the Soviet Union]] in November 1935. (l–r): [[Mikhail Tukhachevsky]], [[Semyon Budyonny]], [[Kliment Voroshilov]], [[Vasily Blyukher]], [[Alexander Yegorov (soldier)|Alexander Yegorov]]. Only Budyonny and Voroshilov survived the Great Purge.]]
The purge of the [[Red Army]] and [[Soviet Navy|Military Maritime Fleet]] removed three of five [[Marshal of the Soviet Union|marshals]] (then equivalent to four-star generals), 13 of 15 army commanders (then equivalent to three-star generals),<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.goarmy.com/about/ranks-and-insignia/ranks.html|title=Ranks|website=goarmy.com|access-date=2018-12-18}}</ref> eight of nine admirals (the purge fell heavily on the Navy, who were suspected of exploiting their opportunities for foreign contacts),{{sfn|Conquest|2008|p=211}} 50 of 57 army [[corps]] commanders, 154 out of 186 division commanders, 16 of 16 army [[commissar]]s, and 25 of 28 army corps commissars.{{sfn|Courtois|1999|p=198}}
Line 175 ⟶ 185:
==Wider purge==
{{
Russian [[Trotskyism|Trotskyist]] historian [[Vadim Rogovin]] argued that Stalin had destroyed thousands of foreign communists capable of leading socialist change in their respective countries. He referenced 600 active [[Bulgarian Communist Party|Bulgarian]] communists that perished in his prison camps along with the thousands of German communists that were handed over from Stalin to the Gestapo after the signing of the [[Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact|German-Soviet Pact]]. Rogovin also noted that sixteen members of the [[Central committee]] of the [[Communist Party of Germany]] became victims of Stalinist terror. Repressive measures were also enforced upon the [[Hungarian Communist Party|Hungarian]], [[League of Communists of Yugoslavia|Yugoslav]] and other [[Communist Party of Poland|Polish Communist]] parties.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Rogovin |first1=Vadim Zakharovich |title=Was There an Alternative? Trotskyism: a Look Back Through the Years |date=2021 |publisher=Mehring Books |isbn=978-1-893638-97-6 |pages=380 |language=en}}</ref>
According to historian [[Eric D. Weitz]], 60% of German exiles in the Soviet Union were liquidated during the Stalinist terror, and a higher proportion of the KPD Politburo membership had died in the Soviet Union than had died in Nazi Germany. Weitz also noted that hundreds of German citizens, the majority of whom were Communists, were handed over to the Gestapo from Stalin's administration.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Weitz |first1=Eric D. |title=Creating German Communism, 1890–1990: From Popular Protests to Socialist State |date=13 April 2021 |publisher=Princeton University Press |isbn=978-0-691-22812-9 |page=280 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=JOgSEAAAQBAJ&dq=stalin+handed+over+german+communists+gestapo&pg=PA280 |language=en}}</ref> Many Jewish figures such as [[Alexander Weissberg-Cybulski]] and [[Fritz Houtermans]] were arrested in 1937 by the NKVD and turned over to the German Gestapo.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Sheehan |first1=Helena |title=Marxism and the Philosophy of Science: A Critical History |date=23 January 2018 |publisher=Verso Books |isbn=978-1-78663-426-9 |pages=416–417 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-udOEAAAQBAJ&q=helena+sheehan |language=en}}</ref> [[Joseph Berger-Barzilai]], co-founder of the [[Communist Party of Palestine]], spent twenty five years in Stalin's prisons and concentrations camps after the purges in 1937.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Deutscher |first1=Isaac |title=The Prophet: The Life of Leon Trotsky |date=5 January 2015 |publisher=Verso Books |isbn=978-1-78168-721-5 |page=1443|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YGznDwAAQBAJ&q=isaac+deutscher+trotsky+the+prophet |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Wasserstein |first1=Bernard |title=On the Eve: The Jews of Europe Before the Second World War |date=May 2012 |publisher=Simon and Schuster |isbn=978-1-4165-9427-7 |page=395 |url=https:// External purges were also conducted in [[Spain]], in which the NKVD oversaw purges of anti-Stalinist elements in the Spanish Eventually almost all of the [[Bolsheviks]] who had played prominent roles during the [[Russian Revolution]], or in Lenin's Soviet government, were executed.{{Original research inline|date=May 2021}} Out of six members of the original [[Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union|Politburo]] during the [[October Revolution]] who lived until the Great Purge, Stalin himself was the only one who remained in the Soviet Union, alive.{{sfn|Gellately|2007}} Four of the other five were executed; the fifth, [[Leon Trotsky]], had been forced into exile outside the Soviet Union in 1929, but was assassinated in Mexico by Soviet agent [[Ramón Mercader]] in 1940. Of the seven members elected to the Politburo between the October Revolution and Lenin's death in 1924, four were executed, one ([[Mikhail Tomsky|Tomsky]]) committed suicide, and two (Molotov and [[Mikhail Kalinin|Kalinin]]) lived.{{Citation needed|date=May 2021}}
Line 199 ⟶ 213:
===Intelligentsia===
{{See also|Executed Renaissance|UPTI Affair|Sharashka|Korets–Landau leaflet}}
[[Image:NKVD Mandelstam.jpg|thumb|right|1938 NKVD arrest photo of the poet [[Osip Mandelstam]], who died in a labor camp]]
[[Image:Babel NKWD.png|right|thumb|The NKVD photo of writer [[Isaac Babel]] made after his arrest]]
Line 206 ⟶ 219:
[[Image:Aino Forsten.jpg|alt=|thumb|upright=0.8|[[Aino Forsten]]; (1885–1937) Finnish educator and [[Social Democratic Party of Finland|Social Democratic]] politician,<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.eduskunta.fi/FI/kansanedustajat/Sivut/910364.aspx|title=Aino Forsten|publisher=Parliament of Finland|language=fi|accessdate=21 June 2016}}</ref> later arrested and executed]]
[[File:1930-MushketovD.jpg|thumb|180px|Paleontologist and geologist [[Dmitrii Mushketov]], executed in 1938.]]
[[File:VSOshchepkov1912.jpg|thumb|180px|[[Vasili Oshchepkov]], who popularized [[judo]] in the USSR and co-invented [[Sambo (martial art)|sambo]]. He was accused of being a Japanese spy, and [[
Those who perished during the Great Purge include:
{{unordered list
| Theoretical [[physicist]] [[Matvei Bronstein]] and pioneer of [[quantum gravity]]<ref>{{cite journal |doi=10.1007/s10714-011-1285-4 |title=Republication of: Quantum theory of weak gravitational fields |journal=General Relativity and Gravitation |volume=44 |pages=267–283 |year=2011 |last1=Bronstein |first1=Matvei|issue=1 |bibcode=2012GReGr..44..267B |s2cid=122107821 }}</ref> was arrested, accused of fictional "terroristic" activity and shot in 1938.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Bergmann |first1=Peter G. |last2=Sabbata |first2=V. de |title=Advances in the Interplay Between Quantum and Gravity Physics |date=6 December 2012 |publisher=Springer Science & Business Media |isbn=978-94-010-0347-6 |page=440 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=62NsCQAAQBAJ&dq=Matvei+Bronstein&pg=PA440 |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Rovelli |first1=Carlo |last2=Vidotto |first2=Francesca |title=Covariant Loop Quantum Gravity: An Elementary Introduction to Quantum Gravity and Spinfoam Theory |date=2015 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-1-107-06962-6 |pages=6–7 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4VjeBAAAQBAJ&dq=Matvei+Bronstein&pg=PA7 |language=en}}</ref>
|[[Nikolai Vavilov]] was a prominent Russian [[geneticist]] and [[Botany|botanist]] that made several contributions to [[agricultural science]] such as the law of homologous series in variation and [[Vavilov center|centres of origins of cultivated plants]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Magill |first1=Frank N. |title=The 20th Century O-Z: Dictionary of World Biography |date=13 May 2013 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-136-59369-7 |pages=3801–3805 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xqvpudh8dasC&dq=Nikolai+Vavilov+botanist+contributions&pg=PA3801 |language=en}}</ref> He was removed from his formal positions in 1935 and perished in prison in 1943 following his conflicts with [[Trofim Lysenko]]. The controversy would also contribute to a wider decline in [[Genetics|genetic]] research in the Soviet Union.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Magill |first1=Frank N. |title=The 20th Century O-Z: Dictionary of World Biography |date=13 May 2013 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-136-59369-7 |pages=3801–3805 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xqvpudh8dasC&dq=Nikolai+Vavilov+botanist+contributions&pg=PA3801 |language=en}}</ref>
| Experimental physicist [[Lev Shubnikov]] considered the "Soviet founding father of Soviet low-temperature physics"<ref name="j24093868">{{Cite journal |last1=Sharma |first1=Hari Prasad |last2=Sen |first2=Subir K. |date=2006 |title=Shubnikov: A case of non-recognition in superconductivity research |jstor=24093868 |journal=Current Science |volume=91 |issue=11 |pages=1576–1578 |issn=0011-3891}}</ref> He was known for the discovery of the [[Shubnikov–de Haas effect]] and [[Type-II superconductor|type-II superconductivity]].<ref name="j24093868" /> He also one of the first to discover [[antiferromagnetism]].<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Kharchenko |first=N. F. |date=2005-08-01 |title=On seven decades of antiferromagnetism |url=https://pubs.aip.org/ltp/article/31/8/633/458580/On-seven-decades-of-antiferromagnetism |journal=Low Temperature Physics |language=en |volume=31 |issue=8 |pages=633–634 |doi=10.1063/1.2008126 |bibcode=2005LTP....31..633K |issn=1063-777X}}</ref> Shubnikov was executed in 1937.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Shifman |first1=Misha |title=Physics In A Mad World |date=28 August 2015 |publisher=World Scientific |isbn=978-981-4619-31-8 |page=19 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=uFsGCwAAQBAJ&dq=lev+shubnikov+1937&pg=PA19 |language=en}}</ref>
| Soviet economist [[Nikolai Kondratiev]] was a proponent for the [[New Economic Policy]] and developed the business cycle theory known as [[Kondratiev waves]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Betz |first1=Frederick |title=Managing Technological Innovation: Competitive Advantage from Change |date=22 February 2011 |publisher=John Wiley & Sons |isbn=978-0-470-54782-3 |page=31 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9WfrBgAAQBAJ&dq=nikolai+kondratiev+1938&pg=PA31 |language=en}}</ref> Kondratiev was executed in 1938.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Guo |first1=Rongxing |title=An Economic Inquiry into the Nonlinear Behaviors of Nations: Dynamic Developments and the Origins of Civilizations |date=6 February 2017 |publisher=Springer |isbn=978-3-319-48772-4 |page=164 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Nz8UDgAAQBAJ&dq=nikolai+kondratiev+executed+1938&pg=PA164 |language=en}}</ref>
| [[Valerian Obolensky]], was a Soviet economist, chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the National Economy<ref>{{cite book |last1=Krausz |first1=Tamás |title=Reconstructing Lenin: An Intellectual Biography |date=27 February 2015 |publisher=NYU Press |isbn=978-1-58367-449-9 |page=417 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=z23IBgAAQBAJ&dq=valerin+obolensky+executed&pg=PA417 |language=en}}</ref> and Professor of the Agricultural Academy<ref>{{cite book |last1=Rosmer |first1=Alfred |title=Lenin's Moscow |date=1971 |publisher=(Cottons Gardens, E2 8DN), Pluto Press Limited |isbn=978-0-902818-11-8 |page=239 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=B9poAAAAMAAJ&q=valerin+obolensky+professor |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Agriculture |first1=United States Department of |title=The Official Record of the United States Department of Agriculture |date=1925 |publisher=U.S. Government Printing Office |page=3 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=iv5MAAAAYAAJ&dq=valerin+obolensky+professor&pg=RA25-PA3 |language=en}}</ref> in Moscow but was eventually executed on fabricated charges in 1938.
| [[Isaak Rubin]], Soviet economist and ranked among the most influential contributors to the classical Marxist tradition. He is noted for his seminal work, ''[[Essays on Marx's Theory of Value]]''. Rubin was arrested and executed in 1937.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Faccarello |first1=Gilbert |last2=Izumo |first2=Masashi |title=The Reception of David Ricardo in Continental Europe and Japan |date=3 February 2014 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-317-81995-0 |pages=203–204 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=a6HIAgAAQBAJ&dq=Isaak+Rubin+1937&pg=PA203 |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Steinhoff |first1=James |title=Automation and Autonomy: Labour, Capital and Machines in the Artificial Intelligence Industry |date=21 June 2021 |publisher=Springer Nature |isbn=978-3-030-71689-9 |page=55 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=a1w0EAAAQBAJ&dq=Isaak+Rubin+executed+1937&pg=PA55 |language=en}}</ref>
| Astronomer [[Boris Numerov]], founder of the Computing Institute in 1919 and was noted for his specialism in applied celestial mechanics before the Second World War. He was executed in 1941.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Lankford |first1=John |title=History of Astronomy: An Encyclopedia |date=7 March 2013 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-136-50834-9 |page=365 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9jyExgmZxBoC&dq=Boris+Numerov+astronomer&pg=PA365 |language=en}}</ref>
| Soviet engineer and inventor [[Ivan Kleymyonov]] who among the key founders of Soviet [[Rocket|rocketry]], chief of the [[Gas Dynamics Laboratory]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Chertok |first1=Boris Evseevich |title=Rockets and People |date=2005 |publisher=NASA |isbn=978-0-16-073239-3 |pages=164–165 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2IUgAQAAIAAJ&dq=Ivan+Kleymyonov+founder&pg=PA165 |language=en}}</ref> Kleymyonov was executed in 1938.
Line 222 ⟶ 238:
| Writer [[Isaac Babel]] was arrested in May 1939, and according to his confession paper (which contained a blood stain) he "confessed" to being a member of a Trotskyist organization and being recruited by French writer [[André Malraux]] to spy for France. In the final interrogation, he retracted his confession and wrote letters to the prosecutor's office stating that he had implicated innocent people, but to no avail. Babel was tried before an NKVD troika and convicted of simultaneously spying for the French, Austrians and Trotsky, as well as "membership in a terrorist organization". On 27 January 1940, he was shot in [[Butyrka prison]].<ref name="ReferenceB">The Independent, "The History of Hell", 8 January 1995</ref>
| Writer [[Boris Pilnyak]] was arrested on 28 October 1937 for counter-revolutionary activities, spying and terrorism. One report alleged that "he held secret meetings with [[André Gide|[André] Gide]], and supplied him with information about the situation in the USSR. There is no doubt that Gide used this information in his book attacking the USSR." Pilnyak was tried on 21 April 1938. In the proceeding that lasted 15 minutes, he was condemned to death and executed shortly afterward.<ref name="ReferenceB"/>
| Theatre director [[Vsevolod Meyerhold]] was arrested in 1939 and shot in February 1940 for "spying" for Japanese and British intelligence. His wife, the actress [[Zinaida Reich|Zinaida Raikh]], was murdered in her apartment.<ref>Kern, Gary. ''A Death in Washington: Walter G. Krivitsky and the Stalin Terror
<blockquote>The investigators began to use force on me, a sick 65-year-old man. I was made to lie face down and beaten on the soles of my feet and my spine with a rubber strap ... For the next few days, when those parts of my legs were covered with extensive internal hemorrhaging, they again beat the red-blue-and-yellow bruises with the strap and the pain was so intense that it felt as if boiling water was being poured on these sensitive areas. I howled and wept from the pain. I incriminated myself in the hope that by telling them lies I could end the ordeal. When I lay down on the cot and fell asleep, after 18 hours of interrogation, in order to go back in an hour's time for more, I was woken up by my own groaning and because I was jerking about like a patient in the last stages of typhoid fever.<ref name="ReferenceB"/></blockquote>
Line 249 ⟶ 265:
===Western émigré victims===
Victims of the terror included American immigrants to the Soviet Union who had emigrated at the height of the [[Great Depression]] to find work. At the height of the Terror, American immigrants besieged the US embassy, begging for passports so they could leave the Soviet Union. They were turned away by embassy officials, only to be arrested on the pavement outside by lurking NKVD agents. Many{{quantify|date=April 2018}} were subsequently shot dead at [[Butovo firing range]].<ref>{{Cite news|date=2008-08-02|title=Nightmare in the workers paradise|author=Tim Tzouliadis|language=en-GB|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_7537000/7537585.stm|access-date=2023-02-23}}</ref>{{better citation needed|reason=see [[Talk:Great Purge#Western émigré victims in great purge article provides uncited source.]]|date=January 2024}} In addition, 141 American Communists of Finnish origin were executed and buried at [[Sandarmokh]].<ref> [[John Earl Haynes]] and [[Harvey Klehr]]. "[http://www.johnearlhaynes.org/page99.html American Communists and Radicals Executed by Soviet Political Police and Buried at Sandarmokh]" (appendix to ''In Denial: Historians, Communism and Espionage'').</ref> 127 [[Finnish Canadian]]s were also shot and buried there.{{sfn|Haynes|Klehr|2003|p=117}}
===Executions of Gulag inmates===
Line 263 ⟶ 276:
===Xinjiang Great Purge===
{{
The pro-Soviet leader [[Sheng Shicai]] of [[Xinjiang]] province in China launched his own purge in 1937 to coincide with Stalin's Great Purge. The [[Xinjiang War (1937)]] broke out amid the purge.<ref>Allen S. Whiting and General Sheng Shicai. "Sinkiang: Pawn or Pivot?" Michigan State University Press, 1958</ref> Sheng received assistance from the NKVD. Sheng and the Soviets alleged a massive Trotskyist conspiracy and a "Fascist Trotskyite plot" to destroy the Soviet Union. The Soviet Consul General [[Garegin Apresov|Garegin Apresoff]], General [[Ma Hushan]], [[Ma Shaowu]], Mahmud Sijan, the official leader of the Xinjiang province Huang Han-chang and [[Hoja-Niyaz]] were among the 435 alleged conspirators in the plot. Xinjiang came under virtual Soviet control.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=IAs9AAAAIAAJ&q=fascist+trotskyite+plotters|title=Warlords and Muslims in Chinese Central Asia: a political history of Republican Sinkiang 1911–1949|author=Andrew D. W. Forbes|year=1986|publisher=CUP Archive|location=Cambridge|isbn=978-0521255141|pages=151, 376|access-date=31 December 2010}}</ref>
Line 277 ⟶ 291:
==End==
{{Multiple image|direction=vertical|align=right|image1=Nikolai Yezhov with Stalin and Molotov along the Volga–Don Canal, orignal.jpg |image2=Stalin and Molotov along the Volga–Don Canal, Nikolai Yezhov removed.jpg |width=200|caption2= ''[[Damnatio memoriae]]'' of [[Nikolai Yezhov]]. He was posthumously removed from pictures, such as here where he stood next to Joseph Stalin.}}
In the summer of 1938, Yezhov was relieved from his post as head of the NKVD and was eventually tried and executed. [[Lavrentiy Beria]] succeeded him as head. On 17 November 1938, a joint decree of [[Sovnarkom]] USSR and [[Central Committee]] of VKP(b) ([[Decree about Arrests, Prosecutor Supervision and Course of Investigation]]) and the subsequent order of the NKVD undersigned by Beria cancelled most of the [[Mass operations of the NKVD|NKVD orders of systematic repression]] and suspended implementation of death sentences. The decree signaled the end of massive Soviet purges.{{citation needed|date=August 2015}}
Michael Parrish argues that while the Great Terror ended in 1938, a lesser terror continued in the 1940s.{{sfn|Parrish|1996|p=32}} [[Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn]] (a Soviet Army officer who became a prisoner for a decade in the Gulag system) presents in ''[[The Gulag Archipelago]]'' his view of the timeline of ''all'' the Leninist and Stalinist purges (1918–1956), in which the 1936–1938 purge may have been simply the one that got the most attention from people in a position to record its magnitude for posterity—the intelligentsia—by directly targeting them, whereas several other waves of the ongoing flow of purges, such as the [[first five-year plan]] of 1928–1933's collectivization and [[dekulakization]], were just as huge and just as devoid of justice but were more successfully swallowed into oblivion in the popular memory of the (surviving) Soviet public.{{sfn|Solzhenitsyn|1973}}
Line 295 ⟶ 310:
{{Main|Rehabilitation (Soviet)}}
[[Image:The Soviet Union 1963 CPA 2824 stamp (Russian Civil War Hero Marshal of the Soviet Union Mikhail Tukhachevsky. Map of Eastern Front of Russian Civil War).jpg|thumb|right|Posthumously rehabilitated, [[Tukhachevsky]] on a 1963 postage stamp of the Soviet Union]]
[[File:
The Great Purge was denounced by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev following Stalin's death. In his secret speech to the [[20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union|20th]] [[Communist Party of the Soviet Union|CPSU]] congress in February 1956 (which was made public a month later), Khrushchev referred to the purges as an "abuse of power" by Stalin which resulted in enormous harm to the country. In the same speech, he recognized that many of the victims were innocent and were convicted on the basis of false confessions extracted by torture. Khrushchev later claimed in his memoirs that he had initiated the process, overcoming objections and protests from the rest of Party leadership, but the transcripts belie this, although they show differences of opinion regarding the contents.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Fitzpatrick |first1=Sheila |title=On Stalin's Team : The years of Living Dangerously in Soviet Politics |date=2017 |publisher=Princeton University Press |location=Princeton |isbn=978-0691175775 |pages=244–45}}</ref> Starting from 1954, some of the convictions were overturned. Mikhail Tukhachevsky and other generals convicted in the Trial of Red Army Generals were declared innocent ("[[Rehabilitation (Soviet)|rehabilitated]]") in 1957. The former Politburo members [[Yan Rudzutak]] and [[Stanislav Kosior]] and many lower-level victims were also declared innocent in the 1950s. Nikolai Bukharin and others convicted in the Moscow Trials were not rehabilitated until as late as 1988. Leon Trotsky, considered a major player in the Russian Revolution and a major contributor to [[Marxist theory]], was never rehabilitated by the USSR. The book ''Rehabilitation: The Political Processes of the 1930s–50s'' (Реабилитация. Политические процессы 30–50-х годов) (1991) contains a large amount of newly presented original archive material: transcripts of interrogations, letters of convicts, and photos. The material demonstrates in detail how numerous show trials were fabricated.{{Citation needed|date=May 2021}}
Line 304 ⟶ 320:
According to [[J. Arch Getty]] and Oleg V. Naumov, "popular estimates of executions in the great purges vary from 500,000 to 7 million." However, according to them, "the archival evidence from the secret police rejects the astronomically high estimates often given for the number of terror victims" and "the data available at this point make it clear that the number shot in the two worst purge years [1937–38] was more likely in the hundreds of thousands than in the millions."<ref>{{cite book|last1=Getty|first1=J. Arch|last2=Naumov|first2=Oleg V.|date=2010|title=The Road to Terror: Stalin and the Self-Destruction of the Bolsheviks, 1932–1939|location=|publisher=[[Yale University Press]]|pages=xiv, 243, 590–91|isbn=978-0300104073}}</ref> According to historian Corrina Kuhr, 700,000 people were executed during the Great Purge out of the 2.5 million who were arrested.<ref name="Kuhr">{{Cite journal|last=Kuhr|first=Corinna|date=1998|title=Children of 'Enemies of The People' as Victims of the Great Purges|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/20171081|journal=Cahiers du Monde russe|volume=39|issue=1/2|pages=209–20|doi=10.3406/cmr.1998.2520|jstor=20171081|issn=1252-6576|quote=According to latest estimates 2,5 million people were arrested and 700,000 of them shot. These figures are based on reliable archival materials [...]|via=[[JSTOR]]}}</ref> Professor Nérard François-Xavier estimates the same number of people who were sentenced to death; however, he states that 1.3 million people were arrested.<ref name="Xavier">{{Cite web|last=François-Xavier|first=Nérard|date=27 February 2009|title=The Levashovo cemetery and the Great Terror in the Leningrad region|url=https://www.sciencespo.fr/mass-violence-war-massacre-resistance/en/document/levashovo-cemetery-and-great-terror-leningrad-region.html|website=[[Paris Institute of Political Studies]]|language=en|quote=The Yezhovshchina or Stalin's Great Terror [...] The precise end result of these operations is difficult to establish, but the total of the condemnations is estimated at roughly 1,300,000 of which 700,000 were sentenced to death, most of the others were sentenced to ten years in the camps (document translated in Werth, 2006: 143).}}</ref>
The Soviets themselves made their own estimates with [[Vyacheslav Molotov]] saying "The report written by that commission member…says that 1,370,000 arrests were made in the 1930s. That's too many. I responded that the figures should be thoroughly reviewed".<ref>Chuev, Feliks. ''Molotov Remembers''. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 285</ref>▼
[[File:RIAN archive 910794 Memorial events in Bykovnya Graves reserve.jpg|thumb|Memorial events in [[Bykivnia graves]] reserve]]
▲The Soviets themselves made their own estimates with [[Vyacheslav Molotov]] saying "The report written by that commission member…says that 1,370,000 arrests were made in the 1930s. That's too many. I responded that the figures should be thoroughly reviewed".<ref>Chuev, Feliks. ''Molotov Remembers''. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 285</ref>
==Stalin's role==
[[File:
Historians with archival access have confirmed that Stalin was intimately involved in the purge. Russian historian [[Oleg Khlevniuk|Oleg V. Khlevniuk]] states "theories about the elemental, spontaneous nature of the terror, about a loss of central control over the course of mass repression, and about the role of regional leaders in initiating the terror are simply not supported by the historical record".<ref>Oleg V. Khlevniuk. ''Master of the House: Stalin and His Inner Circle.'' [[Yale University Press]], 2008. {{ISBN|0300110669}} p. xix</ref> Besides signing Yezhov's lists, Stalin sometimes gave instructions concerning certain individuals. In one instance, he told Yezhov "Isn't it time to squeeze this gentleman and force him to report on his dirty little business? Where is he: in a prison or a hotel?" In another, while reviewing one of Yezhov's lists, he added to M. I. Baranov's name, "beat, beat!"<ref name=":1">Marc Jansen, Nikita Vasilʹevich Petrov. ''Stalin's Loyal Executioner: People's Commissar Nikolai Ezhov, 1895–1940
It is quite possible that Yezhov misled Stalin about the aspects of the purge process.<ref name=":5">{{Cite book|last=Service|first=Robert|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hSWK6Dh4wRgC&pg=PA369|title=Stalin: A Biography|date=2005|publisher=Harvard University Press|isbn=978-0674016972|page=369|language=en|author-link=Robert Service (historian)}}</ref> Many people at the time, and also a few subsequent commentators, surmised that the Great Purge wasn't started by Stalin's initiative, so the idea got about that the process was entirely out of control once it had begun.<ref name=":5" /> Stalin may have failed to anticipate the catastrophic excesses of the NKVD under Yezhov.<ref name=":5" /> Stalin also objected to the large numbers of people that Yezhov was purging. For example, when Yezhov announced that 200,000 party members were expelled, Stalin interrupted him, said that they were "very many" and suggested instead to only expel 30,000 and 600 former [[Trotskyism|Trotskyists]] and [[Zinovievist]]s which "would be a bigger victory".<ref>{{Cite book|last=Getty|first=John Archibald|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NWYvGYcxCjYC|title=Stalinist Terror: New Perspectives|date=1993|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-0521446709|page=51|language=en|author-link=J. Arch Getty}}</ref>
Line 322 ⟶ 339:
[[File:RIAN archive 749019 Opening of monument to victims of political repressions.jpg|thumb|upright|Opening of monument to victims of political repressions, Moscow, 1990]]
At least two Soviet commissions investigated the show-trials after Stalin's death. The first was headed by Molotov and included Voroshilov, Kaganovich, [[Mikhail Suslov|Suslov]], [[Yekaterina Furtseva|Furtseva]], [[Nikolay Shvernik|Shvernik]], [[Averky Aristov|Aristov]], [[Pyotr Pospelov|Pospelov]], and [[Roman Rudenko|Rudenko]]. They were given the task to investigate the materials concerning Bukharin, Rykov, Zinoviev, Tukhachevsky, and others. The commission worked in 1956–1957. While stating that the accusations against Tukhachevsky ''et al.'' should be abandoned, it failed to fully rehabilitate the victims of the three Moscow trials, although the final report does contain an admission that the accusations have not been proven during the trials and "evidence" had been produced by lies, blackmail, and "use of physical influence". Bukharin, Rykov, Zinoviev, and others were still seen as political opponents, and though the charges against them were obviously false, they could not have been rehabilitated because "for many years they headed the anti-Soviet struggle against the building of socialism in USSR".{{Citation needed|date=May 2021}}
The second commission largely worked from 1961 to 1963 and was headed by Shvernik ("[[Shvernik Commission]]"). It included [[Alexander Shelepin|Shelepin]], Serdyuk, Mironov, Rudenko, and Semichastny. The hard work resulted in two massive reports, which detailed the mechanism of falsification of the show-trials against Bukharin, Zinoviev, Tukhachevsky, and many others. The commission based its findings in large part on eyewitness testimonies of former NKVD workers and victims of repressions, and on many documents. The commission recommended rehabilitating every accused with the exceptions of Radek and Yagoda, because Radek's materials required some further checking, and Yagoda was a criminal and one of the falsifiers of the trials (though most of the charges against him had to be dropped too, he was not a "spy", etc.). The commission stated:
Line 341 ⟶ 358:
In 2007, one such site, the Butovo firing range near Moscow, was turned into a shrine to the victims of Stalinism. Between August 1937 and October 1938, more than 20,000 people were shot and buried there.<ref>{{Cite news|last=Kishkovsky|first=Sophia|date=2007-06-08|title=Former Killing Ground Becomes Shrine to Stalin's Victims|language=en-US|work=The New York Times|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/08/world/europe/08butovo.html|access-date=2023-02-23|issn=0362-4331}}</ref>
On 30 October 2017, President Vladimir Putin opened the [[Wall of Sorrow]], an official but controversial recognition of the crimes of the Soviet regime.<ref name="nyt">{{cite news|last=MacFarquhar|first=Neil|title=Critics Scoff as Kremlin Erects Monument to the Repressed|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/30/world/europe/russia-soviet-repression-monument.html|work=[[The New York Times]]|date=30 October 2017|access-date=6 November 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240203224221/https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/30/world/europe/russia-soviet-repression-monument.html|archive-date=2024-02-03}}</ref>
In August 2021, a mass grave containing between 5,000 and 8,000 skeletons was discovered in [[Odesa]], Ukraine, during exploration works for a planned expansion of [[Odesa International Airport]]. The graves are believed to date back to the late 1930s during the purge.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-58340805|title=Stalin-era mass grave found in Ukraine|publisher=BBC|date=26 August 2021}}</ref>
<gallery class="center">
File:Wall of sorrow at the first exhibition of the victims of Stalinism in Moscow.jpg|"Wall of sorrow" at the first exhibition of the victims of Stalinism in Moscow, 19 November 1988
File:Kurapaty 1989 meeting.jpg|The [[Kuropaty]] mass grave site near [[Minsk]], Belarus
File:КрасныйБор.jpg|The ''Krasny Bor'' memorial cemetery near [[Petrozavodsk]], Russia
Line 355 ⟶ 373:
==Historical interpretations==
The Great Purge has provoked numerous debates about its purpose, scale, and mechanisms. According to one interpretation, Stalin's regime had to maintain its citizens in a state of fear and uncertainty to stay in power (Brzezinski, 1958). Robert Conquest emphasized Stalin's paranoia, focused on the Moscow show trial of "Old Bolsheviks", and analyzed the carefully planned and systematic destruction of the Communist Party. Some others view the Great Purge as a crucial moment, or rather the culmination, of a vast [[Social engineering (political science)|social engineering]] campaign started at the beginning of the 1930s (Hagenloh, 2000; Shearer, 2003; Werth, 2003).<ref name=werth>{{cite web|first=Nicolas|last=Werth|author-link=Nicolas Werth|url=http://www.sciencespo.fr/mass-violence-war-massacre-resistance/en/document/nkvd-mass-secret-national-operations-august-1937-november-1938|title=Case Study: The NKVD Mass Secret Operation n° 00447 (August 1937 – November 1938)|publisher=Mass Violence and Resistance – Research Network|date=15 April 2019}}</ref> According to an October 1993 study published in ''[[The American Historical Review]]'', much of the Great Purge was directed against the widespread banditry and criminal activity which was occurring in the Soviet Union at the time.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Getty |first1=J. Arch |last2=Rittersporn |first2=Gabor T. |last3=Zemskov |first3=Viktor N. |date=October 1993 |title=Victims of the Soviet Penal System in the Pre-War Years: A First Approach on the Basis of Archival Evidence |journal=The American Historical Review |volume=98 |issue=4 |pages=1030–35 |doi=10.2307/2166597 |jstor=2166597}}</ref>
Historian [[Isaac Deutscher]] regarded the Moscow trials "as the prelude to the destruction of an entire generation of revolutionaries".<ref>{{cite book |last1=Deutscher |first1=Isaac |title=The Prophet: The Life of Leon Trotsky |date=5 January 2015 |publisher=Verso Books |isbn=978-1-78168-721-5 |page=1370|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YGznDwAAQBAJ&q=isaac+deutscher+trotsky+the+prophet |language=en}}</ref>
[[Leon Trotsky]] viewed the excessive violence characteristic of the mass purges as an ideological differentiation between Stalinism and Bolshevism.<ref>{{cite web |title=Leon Trotsky: Stalinism and Bolshevism (August 1937) |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1937/08/stalinism.htm |website=www.marxists.org}}</ref> He summarised his view:
<blockquote>"The present purge draws between Bolshevism and Stalinism not simply a bloody line but a whole river of blood. The annihilation of all the older generation of Bolsheviks, an important part of the middle generation which participated in the civil war, and that part of the youth that took up most seriously the Bolshevik traditions, shows not only a political but a thoroughly physical incompatibility between Bolshevism and Stalinism. How can this not be seen?".<ref>{{cite web |title=Leon Trotsky: Stalinism and Bolshevism (August 1937) |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1937/08/stalinism.htm |website=www.marxists.org}}</ref></blockquote>
According to [[Nikita Khrushchev]]'s 1956 speech, "[[On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences]]", and to historian [[Robert Conquest]], a great number of accusations, notably those presented at the [[Moscow Trials|Moscow show trial]]s, were based on [[forced confession]]s, often obtained through [[torture]],{{sfn|Conquest|2008|p=121 which cites his secret speech}} and on loose interpretations of [[Article 58 (RSFSR Penal Code)|Article 58 of the RSFSR Penal Code]], which dealt with counter-revolutionary crimes. Due legal process, as defined by Soviet law in force at the time, was often largely replaced with summary proceedings by [[NKVD troika]]s.{{sfn|Conquest|2008|p=286}}
Line 382 ⟶ 404:
* [[Lustration]]
* [[Stalinist repressions in Azerbaijan]]
* [[Holodomor]]
===Similar events===
* [[Cultural Revolution]] and the [[Great Leap Forward]] (China)
* [[Hungarian Revolution of 1956|Hungarian Revolution]]
* [[Cambodian genocide|Khmer Rouge genocide]] (Cambodia)
* [[30 September Movement|30 September killings]] (Indonesia)
* [[Prague Spring]] (Czechoslovakia)
==References==
Line 428 ⟶ 458:
* {{cite book|last=Tzouliadis|first=Tim|year=2008|title=The Forsaken: An American Tragedy in Stalin's Russia|location=London|publisher=Penguin|isbn=978-1-59420-168-4|url=https://archive.org/details/forsakenamerican00tzou}}
* Watt, Donald Cameron. "Who plotted against whom? Stalin's purge of the soviet high command revisited." ''Journal of Soviet Military Studies'' 3.1 (1990): 46–65.
* {{
* Whitewood, Peter. ''The Red Army and the Great Terror: Stalin's Purge of the Soviet Military'' (2015)
* Whitewood, Peter. "The Purge of the Red Army and the Soviet Mass Operations, 1937–38." ''Slavonic & East European Review'' 93.2 (2015): 286–314. [http://ray.yorksj.ac.uk/id/eprint/958/1/slaveasteurorev2.93.2.0286.pdf online]
| |||