1921-1991 🇷🇺 Communist Russia

The Great Terror

The Great Terror

• August 1936-November 1938
• also known as ‘The Great Purges’ or ‘Chistka’
• for renewal, control, stability
• chistkas became violent after Sergei Kirov’s murder in 1934
• purged political (party) and military (armed forces)

Purges in Communist Russia

• started in 1918
• happened periodically throughout the 1920s

Etymology of Chistka

• in Lenin’s time → nonviolent admin political cleansing
  • party members exchanged cards and verified documents
  • at worst you get refused documents and expelled from the party
• in Stalin’s time → violent cleansing
  • at worst you die.

N.K.V.D. – Soviet Russia’s secret police

• main instrument of terror used by Stalin
  • Stalin’s ‘iron fist’
• secret police; Russia’s answer to the Gestapo
• led by 👤 Yagoda, 👤 Yezhov, 👤 Beria
  • Yezhov expanded the scope of terror, from the party to armed forces to larger society
    • period of time known as Yezhovshchina

Show Trials

• ==perversion of the judicial system==
  • the verdict has already been predetermined
  • equality and innocent until proven guilty were all illusions
  • judiciary was supposed to be an ‘impartial’ body unrelated to Stalin → in reality it was a big sham
    • together with the NKVD, they wreaked terror upon Soviet Russia
• even though Stalin was in control, he still feared the Old Bolsheviks – Zinoviev, Kamenev, Trotsky (in absentia)
  • he finally got rid of them during this period

NKVD Order 004477 (Soviet Russia’s Order 66)

• core of the Great Terror
• empowered the NKVD
• instruction from Stalin → drawn up by Yezhov → sent out to First Secretary of every republic & region
• set out categories of people to deal with
  • people with suspect political/social backgrounds
  • quotas of people to be arrested per area
• always overfulfilled by NKVD
• totalled 800,000 from summer 1937 to November 1938
• part of a sweep of former kulaks and criminals
  • recidivist criminals
  • hooligans
  • individuals not fitting into the emerging Stalinist system
  • kulaks
  • workers
• social cleansing on a massive scale

Ethnic cleansing

• August 1937 onwards
• mass campaign to uproot & deport minorities
  • Poles, Germans, Estonians, etc.
• due to fears of collusion with invaders
• continued during & after WWII