Great Purge
The Great Purge or the Great Terror (Russian: Большой террор),[3] was a purge in the Soviet Union from 1936 to 1938.[4] It was a large-scale repression of kulaks.[5] Ethnic minorities were murdered. Even members of the Communist Party, government officials, and the Red Army leadership were killed.
| Great Purge | |
|---|---|
| Great Purge People of Vinnytsia searching for relatives among the exhumed victims of the Vinnytsia massacre, 1943 | |
| Location | Soviet Union |
| Date | 1936–1938 |
| Attack type | |
| Deaths | 950,000 to 1.2 million[1] (higher estimates overlap with at least 136,520[2] deaths in the Gulag system) |
| Perpetrator(s) | Joseph Stalin, the NKVD (Genrikh Yagoda, Nikolai Yezhov, Lavrentiy Beria, Ivan Serov and others), Vyacheslav Molotov, Andrey Vyshinsky, Lazar Kaganovich, Kliment Voroshilov, Robert Eikhe and others |
Everyone was watched by the police. Everyone was suspected. People were imprisoned without a fair trial. Executions were common.[6] Historians think the total number of deaths due to Stalinist repression in 1937–38 was between 950,000 to 1.2 million.[1]
The "Kulak Operation" and the mass murder of national minorities made up the Great Terror. Together these two actions caused nine-tenths of the death sentences and three-fourths of Gulag prison camp sentences. In the Western world, Robert Conquest's 1968 book The Great Terror popularized the phrase. Conquest's title was a reminder of the French Revolution time known as the Reign of Terror (French: la Terreur, "the Terror"; from June to July 1794: la Grande Terreur, 'the Great Terror').[7]
Great Purge Media
Excerpt from NKVD Order No. 00447
- Bundesarchiv Bild 183-R15068, Leo Dawidowitsch Trotzki.jpg
Leon Trotsky in 1929, shortly before he was driven out of the Soviet Union
- Sergei Kirov and Joseph Stalin, 1934.jpg
Leningrad party leader Sergei Kirov with Stalin and his daughter, Svetlana, in 1934
- Л. Д. Троцкий, Л. Б. Каменев и Г. Е. Зиновьев. Середина 1920-х годов.jpg
Bolshevik revolutionaries Leon Trotsky, Lev Kamenev, and Grigory Zinoviev
- 1934 agranov yagoda unknown redens.jpg
NKVD chiefs responsible for mass repressions; (left to right): Yakov Agranov, Genrikh Yagoda, unidentified, and Stanislav Redens. Agranov, Yagoda and Redens were eventually arrested and executed.
- Bucharin.bra.jpg
Nikolai Bukharin, Russian Bolshevik revolutionary executed in 1938
- Evgeny Miller1.png
Yevgeny-Ludvig Karlovich Miller, one of the remaining leaders of the White movement, was abducted from Paris by the NKVD in 1937 and executed in Moscow 19 months later.
- Yakov Alksnis.jpg
Yakov Alksnis on the 7th Conference of the All-Union Leninist Young Communist League (Komsomol).
- Kosior.jpg
Polish-born Soviet politician Stanislav Kosior, a contributor to the Holodomor, was executed in 1939.
- 5marshals 01.jpg
The first five Marshals of the Soviet Union in November 1935; (l–r) Mikhail Tukhachevsky, Semyon Budyonny, Kliment Voroshilov, Vasily Blyukher, and Alexander Yegorov. Only Budyonny and Voroshilov survived the Great Purge.
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Utilities at line 38: bad argument #1 to 'ipairs' (table expected, got nil).
- ↑ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Utilities at line 38: bad argument #1 to 'ipairs' (table expected, got nil).
- ↑ In Russian history, the period of the most intense purge, 1937–1938, is called Yezhovshchina (lit. 'Yezhov phenomenon'), after Nikolai Yezhov, the head of the NKVD.
- ↑ Gellately, Robert 2007. Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler: the age of social catastrophe. Knopf. ISBN 978-1-4000-4005-6.
- ↑ The word "peasant" means something like "farmer" in English.
- ↑ Figes, Orlando 2007. The Whisperers: private life in Stalin's Russia. London: Allen Lane. ISBN 978-0-7139-9702-6, pp=227–315
- ↑ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Utilities at line 38: bad argument #1 to 'ipairs' (table expected, got nil).