Yezhovshchina

• Yezhovschina

  • July 1937
  • NKVD order 00447
  • NKVD committees at regional and republic levels to search for former kulaks
  • Quota system of how many anti-soviet elements were to be arrested
  • NKVD Troikas set up to sentence the arrested without them being present
• Impact of 00447:

  • 100,000 people arrested in one month
  • 14,000 sent to gulags
  • By the start of 1939, 575,000 had been sentenced and 258,000 executed
  • People started to be arrested randomly
  • People encouraged to denounce
• Trial of 17, January 1937:

  • 17 senior party members including Karl Radek confessed to plotting with Trotsky - 13 sentenced to death
• Military purge:

  • May - June 1937
  • Marshal Tukachevksy and seven other top military commanders accused of spying with Trotsky
  • All confessed and were executed
• Great purge of the Red Army:

  • 30,000 army leaders sacked between 1937-39
  • ‘Military fascist’ plot with Germany and Japan and plot to overthrow Stalin
  • Anyone objecting to trials were arrested - 74 military officials shot for refusing to approve the execution of their colleagues
• Trial of 21:

  • March 1938
  • Bukharin, Rykov and 19 others charged with plotting to assassinate Stalin on the orders of Germany and Japan
  • All executed
• Gulags:

  • Great purge of 1937 caused a surge in population
  • From 800,000 in 1935 to between 5.5 million and 9.5 million in 1938
  • Prisoners were worked to death or murdered - no longer re-educated
• National minorities:

  • Stalin suspicious
  • Korean minority deported to Central Asia when war with Japan became a threat in 1937
  • 400,000 Volga Germans deported to Siberia and Central Asia in 1941
  • Non-Russian republic party leadership was replaced by leaders more likely to accept rule by Moscow
  • 2 million Jews were incorporated into the USSR in 1939-40 after the invasion of eastern Poland - Rabbis and religious leaders were arrested
• End of purges:

  • end of 1938
  • Yezhovchina had destabilised the economy and state
  • Yezhov was secretly tried and executed in 1940
  • 18th party congress declared that mass cleansing were no longer needed
• Impact of purges:

  • No exact figures
  • nearly 650,000 people were executed in 1936-37 - vast majority ordinary people
  • Families of those purged were also punished - lost jobs, homes
  • 850,000 party members were expelled between 1936-38
  • Military failures in first months of war linked to army purges