dictatorship & Yezhovshchina

• Terror

  Central to Lenin's revolutions - accepted the need for organised violence to establish and defend the dictatorship of the proletariat
• Terror

  A weapon of the civil war
• Lenin's actions

  1. Purging of the party

  2. Denouncing opponents as 'enemies' and counter-revolutionaries

  3. Low-level repression

  4. Mass surveillance
• Great Terror

  A calculated policy of mass murder
• 1937-8 had 1.3 million arrested for 'crimes against the state'; 681,000 of them were shot; Gulag labour camps population grew to 1.8 million from 1.2 million people
• Characteristics of the Great Terror

  • Show Trials
  • Kulak Operation
  • National Operations against minorities
  • Mass City Arrests
• Show Trials

  Fabricated evidence of counter-revolutionary conspiracies and spy rings
• Show Trials

  1. Yezhov replaced Yagoda as head of NKVD

  2. NKVD replaced the OGPU to suppress the population

  3. Labour camps reorganised into a national network - state repression combined with policing

  4. Controlled the ordinary police from 1934
• August 1936 = Trial of 16; Yezhov promoted theory that Zinoviev and Kamenev plot to murder Stalin and Party members' leadership, including Kirov
• Kirov received a standing ovation from the 17th Party Congress for opposing Stalin in a 'slower industrialisation and easing-off grain requisitioning' - 1000+ were executed and purged; both removed of title 'General Secretary' for 'Secretary of Equal Rank' to share the blame for USSR's problems
• December 1934 Kirov murdered by Nikolayev - Stalin believed this to be part of Trotskyite plot to overthrow the Party which intensified state terror
• June 1935 = death penalty extends to anyone aware of subversive activity
• Show Trials' aims

  Expose coordinated rings of spies and terrorists organized by former oppositionist, prove the existence of these conspiracies - the world was unaware of the torture used to extract their confessions therefore they perceive it as a justified form of violence and control; confession was the highest form of proof as no other evidence were used
• January 1937 = Trial of 17; 17 senior Party members confessed to plotting with Trotsky, spying and sabotaging industry, 13 were sentenced to death
• May-June 1937 = Military purge; eight of senior military commanders Tukhachevsky (Commissar of Defence), Uborevich (Belorussia Military District Commander), Yakir (Kiev Military District Commander) secretly tried for treason and espionage that was financed by Germans and the Japanese
• March 1938 = Trial of 21; Bukharin, Yagoda and Rykov shot for conspiring with the Trotskyists to assassinate the Soviet leaders, sabotage economy and spy
• Stage-managed public trials

  The accused spoke scripted words - Stalin directed these and their death sentences were decided by Politburo beforehand
• Victims of the Great Terror

  • Party members
  • Their associates
  • Ordinary citizens
• August 1937 – November 1938 were kulaks and nationalities
• Kulak operation (NKVD Order 00447)

  Accounted for half of all arrests [669,000] and executions [376,000] where former kulaks, criminals and other anti-Soviet elements were targeted - sent to labour camps for 8-10 years; local officials increased the quotas for arrests in each district; Stalin was afraid country would be swamped by disgruntled and embittered 'kulaks' who may pose a threat in time of war
• Soviet minorities were deported as they were seen as potential spies - Poles, Germans, Finns, Latvians, Armenian, Greeks, Koreans and Chinese
• 1937 = Koreans deported from Far Eastern region to Central Asia, Poles & Germans deported from Western frontiers, purges in newly annexed parts of Poland; 1939-40 = 400,000+ Volga Germans deported to Siberia and Central Asia
• National communists purged for disapproving centralising policies
• Anti-religious actions

  • Antisemitism in rural areas during Yezhovshchina as they were seen as saboteurs; rabbis and religious leaders were arrested
  • Anti-religious campaign spread to Belorussia and Ukraine
• Post-1928 direct persecution of Muslims in Central Asian republics
• Impact on human relations

  People lived in fear, end of genuine communication, family dynamics ruined
• State put pressure on wives of 'enemies' to publicly renounce their husbands; failure to do so resulted in eviction, expulsion from Party, kids threatened, job dismissal, arrest
• Renouncement made it easier for wives and kids to survive and gave protection to them
• Reactions to the Great Terror

  • Some people refused to believe the trials
  • Most suppressed their doubts or found ways of rationalising to preserve the basic structures of their Communist belief and avoid denouncement
  • People were trapped in the system, therefore had to go along with the Terror
• Post-1936 cost of questioning Stalin's policies led to arrest and death as opposed to pre-1936 where new building of socialist society, end to harsh living, believing in Stalin brought benefits and career advancement and material rewards (Stakhanovites, bonuses, honorary awards, acknowledgement in Pravda, better wages and working conditions)
• Suspending the Great Terror

  1. 1.5 million reviews of the arrests under Yezhov's control

  2. 1940 - 450,000 convictions quashed, 128,000 cases closed, 30,000 released inmates, 327,000 let out of Gulags

  3. Yezhov undermined by government as 'enemy of the people' for arresting so many innocent people and spreading discontent

  4. February 1940 conviction of terrorist conspiracy and shot
• Yezhov as head of NKVD felt the intense pressure of achieving target of arrests which led to him arresting innocent/random individuals
• Legacy & Impact

  • Millions of families were damaged or destroyed, relationships lost, fatherless kids, mentally and physically broken mothers by the gulags
  • New societal culture: passivity - remain silent, never question authorities, only trust immediate family, frightened to step out of line
  • Politics - too scared to speak their minds or say anything political, followed the Party line, mouthed its slogans and gave respect to Stalin
  • 1936 Constitution - ignored the promised rights, Soviets used the constitution to complain
  • Reduction in the Party
  • Military - loss of initiative, armed forces unprepared to defend USSR when Germans invaded in 1941
• 1936 Constitution did not allow the republic to leave the Union despite the constitution allowing it
• Citizens protested anti-religious discrimination referred to their constitutional rights to religious freedom
• 85,000 expelled from the Party from 1936-8
• Inexperienced juniors had to replace the 23,000 arrested senior commanders; Red Army increased to 5 million by 1941