Stalin's Purges
The Yezhovshchina – Joseph Stalin’s Great Purge
Joseph Stalin’s Great Purge, or Yezhovshchina, occurred between the years 1936 to 1938. The Yezhovshchina was thus named after the surname of the man who was the NKVD chief at the time, Yezhov. It escalated into a series of campaigns of political repression and persecution within the Soviet Union. Stalin initiated a cleanse of the Soviet Union’s Communist Party from bottom up, utilizing police surveillance, imprisonment, staged trials, and a bloodbath of executions to satisfy his paranoia of enemies—both real and imaginary. (Polikarpov)
Stalin’s paranoia with opposition began with Community Party members calling for Leon Trotsky’s readmission to the party after his exile. Annoyed, Stalin demanded that critics be arrested and executed. Stalin’s own close friend, Sergey Kirov, had the audacity to criticize Stalin’s antics of crushing opposition. He even went as far as to propose reconciliation, where people who opposed the government policy of collective farms and industrialization could be released from prison. Stalin feared that Kirov's boldness to speak out could undermine his authority within the party. Stalin arranged for Kirov’s assassination, blaming Trotsky for creating a conspiracy against the Soviet government. This led to fifteen other Community Party members who were critical of Stalin to be executed, and thus began Stalin’s Great Purge. (BRAMA)
Stalin commissioned the People’s Ministry of Internal Affairs, the NKVD, to serve as political police. The NKVD fabricated plots and terrorist groups to link groups of people to crimes committed against the Community Party. The blackmailed either faced execution or long-term internment in a Siberian concentration camp. The NKVD strived to convict more and more offenders, as their interrogators focused on two questions when interrogating suspects: “Who recruited you?” and “Whom did you recruit?” Suspects would often throw their own acquaintances, friends, and even family under the bus to spare their own lives. (Simkin)
January of 1937 marked the beginning of most of Stalin’s purge of the Communist Party. Karl Radek and sixteen other leading members of the party were put on trial and accused of working with Leon Trotsky to attempt to overthrow Stalin’s Soviet government in order to restore capitalism. Thirteen were found guilty and sentenced to death. March of 1938 showed Stalin’s relentlessness during his purge as twenty-one more members of the party were also accused of being associated with Leon Trotsky in a plot to overthrow Stalin and spying for foreign powers. All were either found guilty or died in labor camps. (Simkin)
Not satisfied with his cleanse of his own party, Stalin also found it necessary to purge the Red Army. Paranoid at the idea that the army was secretly planning a military coup, Stalin is believed to have used a double agent who worked with both Stalin and Hitler to take “advantage of the paranoia raging in the Soviet Union”. This led to the June 1937 purge of eight top Red Army commanders charged with conspiracy against their homeland with Germany. All were convicted and executed for their supposed crimes. Nearly 30,000 members of the Soviet armed forces were purged, about half of all the army’s officers. (Simkin)
Stalin knew very well that his purges must remain secret. His final stage of terror against his own people was the purging of the NKVD, which he created to execute the purges in the first place. Stalin had to make sure that those who knew about the purges would be killed themselves, leaving absolutely no trace for the truth to be found. Stalin had the first three heads of the NKVD executed—Genrikh Yagoda, Nikolai Yezhov, and Lavrenti Beria. (Simkin)
Works Cited
"The Great Purge under Stalin 1937-38." BRAMA - Gateway Ukraine.
University of Toronto Press. Web. 13 Feb. 2012.
"The Yezhovshchina." Красноярское общество МЕМОРИАЛ. Web. 13 Feb.
2012.
Simkin, John. "The Great Purge." Spartacus Educational. Web. 13
Feb. 2012.