the purges

• known as the great purges form 1936 - 1938
• what happened


  political opponents, the military and NKVD were charged with various crimes and either imprisoned or executed
• motives:

  • elimination of political opponents
  • paranoia
  • removal of experienced or skilled people
• • kamenev and zinoviev were put Montreal in Moscow in 1936
  • read out confessions and pleaded guilty in court
• 14 others were executed for their 'crimes'
• • Stalin believed russia had to be unified with him as leader to be strong
  • he became increasingly paranoid and power-mad
  • believed russia had 10 years to catch up with the western world before germany invaded
  • can be seen as part of an aggressive programme to create a dictatorship
• party members who failed to implement collectivisation well enough or who disagreed with Stalins attempt to liquidate the kulaks as a class lost their party card, reducing the total membership by about a tenth
• during the mid 1930s the party shed a further third of its members who were seen to be resisting the pace of industrialisation and collectivisation
• form the mid 1930s some prominent politburo members were exiled or executed after being called oppositionists
• the event which tirggered the Great Purges was the murder of Kirov in 1934
• Opposition to Stalin's policies

  1. Started to grow

  2. With the launch of the first 5 year plan

  3. And collectivisation in 1928
• The call for a more peaceful approach was put forward possibly by Kirov
• This posed a threat to Stalin's economic policies
• Kirov managed to gain more support in the election for the 1934 central committee
• This caused Stalin to mistrust him
• The murder of Kirov


  Was carried out on Stalin's order
• The official explanation was that Kirov's assassin was a member of an opposition group led by Zinoviev and Kamenev under the direction of Trotsky
• Stalin ordered the rounding up of those behind the murder of Kirov


  A wave of terror was unleashed upon Russia
• massive show trials were held in moscow between 1926 and 1938 aiming at exposing the people behind crimes against the soviet state