THE GREAT TERROR

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THE GREAT TERROR
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AIMS

• To understand how the purges occurred.
• To investigate the causes of the terror.

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Our whole country is awaiting and demanding one
thing. The traitors and spies who were selling
our country must be shot like dirty dogs. Our
people are demanding one thing. Curse the
accursed reptile. Time will pass. The graves of
the hateful traitors will grow over with weeds
and thistles. But over us, over our happy country
our happy sun will shine bright and luminous as
before. Over the road cleared of the last scum
and filth of the past, we, with our beloved
leader and teacher, the great Stalin at our head,
will march as before onwards and onwards towards
communism. Vyshinsky, the prosecutor at the
third show trial, March 1938.
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THE PRETEXT

• Kirovs murder was seen as evidence of a
  widespread conspiracy.
• Conspiracies to oppose the Soviet state were
  uncovered.
• Trotsky was implicated in many of them.

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the inalienable quality of every Bolshevik under
present conditions should be the ability to
recognise an ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE no matter how
well he may be masked. Central Committee
circular, June 1936.
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WHY HAVE SHOW TRIALS?

• Created an atmosphere of intimidation.
• Created a sense of danger.
• Reinforced the feeling that there were enemies,
  spies, and wreckers everywhere. The revolution
  was being sabotaged.
• Many believed the trials were genuine.

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CHARGES

• Assassination plots (eg against Stalin, Lenin,
  Kirov)
• Spying for foreign powers.
• Conspiring with opposition groups (eg
  Trotskyites, rightists, Mensheviks)
• Planning to overthrow socialism and restore
  capitalism.

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WHY DID THEY CONFESS?

• Torture interrogation wore them down.
• To spare their families.
• To protect the society they had worked so hard to
  create many still believed Stalin was the last
  hope for that society.

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THE YEZHOVSCHINA

• Widening of the terror 1937-1938.
• Denunciations.
• Party purged.
• Normal citizens purged.
• Army purged.
• Confessions proved guilt.

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GULAGS
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HOW MANY DIED?

• Robert Conquest 3.5 million died, 8 million
  were arrested.
• Wheatcroft Davies 10 million died (most from
  famine)
• Dmitri Volkogonov 7 million executed, 16.5
  million imprisoned.

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WAS STALINS PERSONALITY RESPONSIBLE?

• Suspicious paranoid.
• Vindictive vengeful.
• Crude brutal happy to use violence.
• Inferiority complex.
• Idealised view of himself as heroic genius of the
  Revolution.

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OTHER REASONS

• Problems within the party.
• Economic difficulties.
• Social instability.
• The position of the NKVD.
• Slave labour in the Gulags.
• External threats.

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EXAM QUESTIONS

• (a) Explain briefly what is meant by traitors and
  spies in relation to the show trials in the USSR
  in the years 1936-1938 (3)(b) Explain why there
  was so little effective opposition to Stalin in
  the USSR in the years 1934-1939 (7)(c) The
  purges were solely intended to eliminate Stalins
  rivals. Explain why you agree or disagree with
  this statement with reference to the years
  1934-1939. (15)June, 2006

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• (a) What was meant by sabotage in the context
  of the USSR in the 1930s? (3)(b) Explain why the
  Show Trials were held in the USSR in the 1930s
  (7)(c) Stalin was successful in removing all
  political threats to his dictatorship in the
  1930s. Explain why you agree or disagree with
  this statement.June 2001