The Purges of the 1930s (Edexcel A Level History): Revision Note

Summary

• This note will examine why the purges occurred and its impact on the USSR

• The purges were driven by Stalin’s paranoia, the desire to consolidate power, and control of the Party and society

• Victims included Party members, military leaders, professionals, and ordinary citizens

• The Great Terror (1936–38), led by Yezhov, saw mass arrests, show trials, and executions

• The purges eliminated opposition but weakened the Party, government, and armed forces

• Historians debate whether Stalin’s terror was a continuation of Lenin’s system or a radical intensification

Causes of the purges

Long-term causes

• The survival of Old Bolsheviks (Zinoviev, Kamenev, and Bukharin)

  • They had known Lenin personally, threatening Stalin’s authority and legitimacy

• The centralisation of power since the Civil War had normalised the use of repression as a political tool

• The culture of denunciation encouraged by the Bolsheviks since 1917

  • This created an atmosphere in which purges could flourish

• Stalin’s drive to secure absolute control meant removing all potential rivals in the Party, military, and wider society

Short-term causes

• Stalin’s paranoia about disloyalty made him increasingly suspicious of senior officials

• Failures and setbacks in the economy

  • Senior members of the Party were aware of the issues with Stalin's industrial and economic policies

  • Failures encouraged Stalin to blame 'wreckers' and 'saboteurs'

    • As a result, the GULAG system created a forced labour economy

Sergei Kirov

• Sergei Kirov was a popular Party leader in Leningrad and a rising star in the Communist Party

  • His influence encouraged changes to Stalin's policies, such as:

    • The arrest, rather than the death, of Stalin's critic Martemyan Ryutin

    • More moderate targets in the Second Five Year Plan

• At the 17th Party Congress of 1934 (“Congress of Victors”):

  • Kirov received more votes than Stalin in the Central Committee elections

  • Moderates within the Party tried to convince Kirov to stand against Stalin for General Secretary

    • Kirov refused and the vote was never publicised

• Kirov was murdered in December 1934

  • Historians speculate that Stalin ordered the attack, but there is no evidence of this

  • Stalin used the incident to claim there was a conspiracy against the regime and launched mass purges against supposed opposition

What groups were targeted in the purges?

• From 1929-1939, it is estimated that 24 million people were victims of purges

• Victims included:

  • Communist Party members

    • Thousands of local officials and many central leaders were accused of disloyalty and executed or imprisoned

  • The Red Army

    • Around half of the officer corps was purged, including leading commanders such as Marshal Tukhachevsky

  • Government and bureaucrats

    • Officials accused of “wrecking” or sabotage were dismissed, arrested, or executed

  • Professionals and intellectuals

    • Scientists, engineers, and academics faced charges of conspiracy or sabotage

  • Ordinary citizens

    • Millions were denounced by neighbours or colleagues, arrested without evidence, and sent to labour camps

The Great Terror (Yezhovshina), 1936-1938

• The period 1936–38 is known as the Great Terror or Yezhovshchina, after NKVD chief, Nikolai Yezhov

Key victims of the Great Terror

Political consequences of the purges

• The purges eliminated Stalin’s real and imagined opponents, leaving him unchallenged as leader by the late 1930s

  • The destruction of the Old Bolsheviks erased rivals who had worked with Lenin

  • New members rose up in support of Stalin and his interpretation of communism

• The NKVD become a powerful organisation in the USSR

  • Stalin continued to be anxious of those in charge of the NKVD

• Terror became a permanent feature of Stalin’s dictatorship, reinforcing his personal control

How different was Stalin's use of terror to Lenin's?

Historians disagree over whether Stalin’s use of terror was simply a continuation of Lenin’s methods or whether it marked a radical change.

Continuity with Lenin

Some historians argue Stalin’s purges built directly on the system of repression Lenin created.

Key historians

"The appalling purges of the 1930s are commonly associated with the name of Stalin, but the true father of the Bolshevik concentration camps, the executions, the mass terror, and the organs which stood above the state, was Lenin. Against the background of Lenin's terror, it becomes easier to understand the method of Stalin's Inquisition, which was capable of executing someone solely on the grounds of suspicion. Lenin did not merely inspire revolutionary terror, he was also the first to make it into a state institution." - Dmitri Volkogonov, Lenin: Life and Legacy (1995)

"The purges began long before Stalin's rise to power. They had their origins in the Civil War, when the party's ranks grew rapidly and its leaders were afraid of being swamped by careerists and 'self-seekers'. The targets of the early purges were entire social groups, 'regenerate bourgeois elements', 'kulaks', and so on. Bolsheviks from a working-class background were exempt from scrutiny, unless a specific denunciation had been made against them at a purge meeting. But during the 1920s there was a gradual shift in the practice of the purge, with a growing emphasis on the private conduct and convictions of individual Bolsheviks." - Orlando Figes, The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russia (2007)

"Some argue that a healthy Ilich [Lenin] would have been a benevolent dictator, disregarding the fact that the second decree Ilich signed in early 1918 was for the Red Terror, under which tens of thousands were executed and imprisoned. With his 1937 Decree No. 00447, Stalin too embarked on mass murder and advanced those who did not hesitate to repress friend and family member alike, including wives. By killing his Old Bolshevik friends and ordinary citizens, Stalin was just following a path of historical necessity. Ilich did not live long enough to test his own limits of violence and cruelty." - Paul R. Gregory, Lenin’s Death and Stalin’s Schemes (2024)

Stalin's intensification of terror

Other historians stress that Stalin’s purges represented a much more extreme and personal use of terror.

Key historians

"Former Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries were hunted out even though their party had barely existed since the 1922 show trial of the Socialist-Revolutionaries. But whereas Lenin had trumped up charges against genuinely existing parties, Stalin invented parties out of the air. A show trial of the imaginary 'Industrial Party' was staged in November 1930... A witch-hunt atmosphere was concocted. For Stalin used the party as a weapon to terrify all opposition to his economic policies. He needed to operate through an institution that could be trusted to maintain political fidelity, organisational solidarity, and ideological rectitude while the Soviet state in general was being transformed and reinforced. In the late 1920s only the party could fulfil this function." - Robert Service, A History of Modern Russia from Nicholas II to Vladimir Putin (2005)

"Was Stalin worse than Lenin? Well, it's not very difficult to be better than Stalin. So if Lenin was a bit better than Stalin, perhaps he was a bit. But it doesn't make much difference. I still think Lenin is over-praised, if not over-praised, then given a bit of leeway here and there which he didn't deserve. I think Stalin could be put down as killing more people, if that's your criterion. And Stalin certainly produced a system under which duller and duller and stupider and stupider people came to the top. But that isn't based on Lenin's system." - Robert Conquest, an interview with Radio Free Europe, 2006