Stalin’s Purges

Stalin consolidated his power as dictator of the Soviet Union in much the same way as Hitler did in Germany. He exerted totalitarian control through:

• terror imposed through secret police and labour camps
• state control of education, arts and sciences, propaganda and censorship
• a single-party state

During the 1930s the huge disruption to the population and economic life caused by industrialisation and collectivisation created great political controversy, but Stalin secured his position by making it too dangerous to criticise the government publicly. He extended his terror into the factories (in his campaigns against sabotage) and against party rivals (in the Great Purges).

Sergei Kirov

Kirov had been popular in Leningrad since the 1920s. Petrograd was renamed Leningrad in 1924.

In 1934, when the collectivisation crisis was over, many thought it was time to slow down economic change and improve relations with the peasantry. Kirov championed these views at the 17th Party Congress and emerged as the popular alternative to Stalin. Shortly afterwards he was shot inside the Party offices in Leningrad.

Stalin gave him a state funeral, but there is no doubt who was responsible.

The murder was the excuse for a spate of arrests.

The 1936 purges

In 1936 Stalin began a greater purge of all those he suspected within the Party. Zinoviev and Kamenev were accused with 14 others of the murder of Kirov and of supporting Trotsky.

Despite their ‘confessions’, Zinoviev, Kamenev and the others were executed.

In the show trials, watched by the world, they confessed to laughable charges, such as that they had tried to murder Lenin.

Later purges

Thousands of other Communist Party members were denounced from 1936–1938.

In 1937 there were show trials of senior officials accused of sabotage and spying. In 1938 Bukharin, Rykov and Yagoda were shot.

Results of the purges

• Over one-fifth of the membership of the Communist Party were expelled or shot.
• Of 1,961 delegates to the 17th Party Congress in 1934, 1,108 were arrested.
• Of 139 Central Committee members, over 90 were shot.
• Five out of 11 Politburo members were shot in 1934.
• Marshall Tukhachevsky and seven other generals, heroes of the Civil War, were shot.
• 90 per cent of all Soviet generals and thousands of army and airforce officers were shot or imprisoned: this left Soviet armed forces in a desperate situation at the beginning of the Second World War.
• The purges ended in 1938 but by 1939 it is estimated that over 20 million Russians had been transported to labour camps.
• Stalin’s position was unchallengeable.