Great Purge

The Great Purge is the name given to campaigns of political repression and persecution in the Soviet Union during the late 1930s which included purges of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

Background

The term "purge" in Soviet political slang was an abbreviation of the expression purge of the Party ranks. In 1933, for example, some 400,000 people were expelled from the Party. But from 1936 until 1953 the term changed its meaning, because being expelled from the Party came to mean almost certain arrest, imprisonment or even execution.

Related Topics:
Purge - Soviet - Slang - Purge of the Party ranks - 1933 - 1936 - 1953

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The background of the Great Purge was the Stalin and Politburo's desire to eliminate all possible sources of opposition to the totalitarian methods of government. They sought to ensure that members of the Party would follow the orders of the center, identified with Stalin and his circle, in strict accordance with the principle of so called "democratic centralism," rather than reverting to being a pluralist revolutionary party, as it used to be before World War 1 and significantly less in the 1920s. Another official justification was to remove any possible "fifth column" in case of a war, but this is less substatiated by independent sources. This is the theory proposed by Vyacheslav Molotov, a member of the Stalinist ruling circle, who participated in the Stalinist repression as a member of the Politbureau and who signed many death warrants . The Communist Party also wanted to eliminate "socially dangerous elements", such as so-called ex-kulaks, former members of opposing political parties such as the Social Revolutionaries and former Czarist officials.

Related Topics:
Democratic centralism - Fifth column - Vyacheslav Molotov - Ex-kulaks - Social Revolutionaries

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Repression against perceived enemies of the Bolsheviks had been a systemic method of instilling fear and facilitating social control, being continuously applied since the October Revolution, although there had been periods of heightened repression such as the Red Terror or the deportation of kulaks who opposed collectivization. A distinctive feature of the Great Purge was that, for the first time, the ruling party itself underwent repressions on a massive scale. Nevertheless, only a minority of those affected by the purges were Communist Party members and office-holders. The purge of the Party was accompanied by the purge of the whole society. The following events are used for the demarcation of the period.

Related Topics:
October Revolution - Red Terror - Kulak - Collectivization

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• The First Moscow Trial, 1936.
• Introduction of NKVD troikas for express implementation of "revolutionary justice" in 1937.
• Introduction of Article 58-14 about "counter-revolutionary sabotage" in 1937.