The Great Purge

[The Man]

Why did Stalin want to kill people in the Communist Party, Government Officials, and the Red Army? Or is this BS propaganda?

[bailey_187]

theres a number of theories. the official story is that they were traitors (with maybe some mistakes). Others say it was the result of paranoia, others it was simply chaos within the soviet govt, others say after Stalin faced criticism at the 17thcongress (IIRC) he and his allies orchestrated it to prevent opposition to his power

its not bullshit, 100,000s were executed. IIRC the Soviet files say aprox.700,000 were, but IIRC these figures include all executions, not just political ones. EIther way, lots of blood was spilled.

[The Man]

Well I know the last theory was false, because he put up the Stalin Constitution of 1936.

[PhoenixAsh]

Well I know the last theory was false, because he put up the Stalin Constitution of 1936.


that is true...but, just for thought, law and practice are two entirely different things.

[The Man]

that is true...but, just for thought, law and practice are two entirely different things.

He tried to pass the thing, didn't he? I call that practice.

[Jose Gracchus]

:rolleyes: As if the 1936 toilet paper Constitution had any real effects on the means of governance and state policy in the USSR.

[The Man]

:rolleyes: As if the 1936 toilet paper Constitution had any real effects on the means of governance and state policy in the USSR.

It didn't, but it was an attempt wasn't it? It disproves that Stalin was some totalitarian dictator who only wanted the Bolsheviks to be the single rule. It was supposed to have a real effect, but in the end it wasn't as successful as Stalin hoped it would be, and your right on that point. But shortly before Stalin died he tried to be the Politburo the ONLY authority, therefore his position of General Secretary would be abolished, and a new democracy would take place. Then the Revisionists came..

[pranabjyoti]

Most of the trials of those people held for purge were done in open court. There were eye-witnesses from around the world, mostly from western countries. The whole plot has been unfolded before their eyes step by step and many of them wrote books about the trial. There are also other people, experts who are western but worked in USSR during the 30's and their eyewitness account of internal sabotage by the accused. John D Littlepage was an US engineer working in the USSR during the 30's in the goldmine. He saw how one of the accused force him to buy lower standard and useless machineries from Germany and pay without hesitation. Initially, he thought that it was some kind of corruption, but after the Moscow trial he understood that it's kind of conspiracy. He wrote everything in his book In Search of Soviet Gold.
I have repeatedly posted lists of books regarding the Moscow trials and purges in revleft and don't want to repeat it now.

[RATM-Eubie]

But what was the point of killing off (most of the) old Bolsheviks?

[pranabjyoti]

But what was the point of killing off (most of the) old Bolsheviks?
What % of party leadership has been "Killed" in the purge? Those who are sentenced, had been proved to be guilty in open court before eyewitnesses around the world.
Does being an old party member means you have the right to be "traitor" to your country and class?

[Rooster]

What % of party leadership has been "Killed" in the purge? Those who are sentenced, had been proved to be guilty in open court before eyewitnesses around the world.
Does being an old party member means you have the right to be "traitor" to your country and class?

You must be able to perform some serious mental gymnastics.

[Born in the USSR]

It's funny,how antistalinists are exasperated by repressions against top bureaucrats while in other threads they are exasperated by the existanse of the same bureaucrats.A classic double standard.

[Geiseric]

This is before the beuracracy was enacted, and the purges were to secure it's construction against any opposition. Stalin had no good intentions, everything he did was to remain in power. Any man who does brutal repressions on his scale can't be trusted to have as much power as he did.

To the OP: Saddam Hussein had a constitution written as well, he didn't do jack shit to enact it.

[Born in the USSR]

As if opposition cannot be beuracratic!BTW,there were no opposition in 1930s,there was a fifth column.

[9]

its funny how russian stalinists are basically just nostalgic national chauvinists.

[Per Levy]

Those who are sentenced, had been proved to be guilty in open court before eyewitnesses around the world.

only the ones who they could break they put on the show trials, other wise it woulnt had looked so good.


Does being an old party member means you have the right to be "traitor" to your country and class?

so all the old boshevik party members were traitors, yeah sure :rolleyes:. btw traitor to their country? were karl liebknecht and rosa luxemburg also traitors to their country when they opposed the world war? i mean thats why they spend much time in prison after all.


Why did Stalin want to kill people in the Communist Party, Government Officials, and the Red Army? Or is this BS propaganda?

first of all stalin didnt do it all alone, he had the ever strong bureaucracy behind him, now why did they do it? well as far as i know they did it in order to strenghten their rule, killing the old guard of the party and fill their places with loyal younger party members who could be easier trusted by the bureaucracy and stalin.


there were no opposition in 1930s,there was a fifth column.

the fifth column of who? the nazis? imperialism? the west? capitalism?

[Red_Struggle]

I'm just going to post some citations that might be useful for gaining some insight into this event.

"Not all the details are yet known of the strange struggle which Stalin carried on for years against his own secret police.... The leading members of the secret police, which had become a separate caste, were bound neither to any ideology nor to any party policy. What they wanted--in the name, of course, and for the benefit of, the party--was far-reaching powers and also certain material advantages. They wanted to remain what they had been in the civil war, a privileged class in the matter of power and of material conditions. They therefore kept up a continual struggle against any limitation of their authority. When Stalin sought to impose certain restrictions on their right to pronounce death sentences, they simply secured that the new courts which were to hear certain cases with the public excluded, should be formed from their own members, that is to say members of the police caste. Stalin's continual pressure for more rigid supervision by organs of the party was just what drove Yagoda and his colleagues into opposition and later into conspiracy."
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 236

"In the capitals of almost all the federal republics there were further trials, but in the inverse direction. Everywhere now there were prosecutions of people who during the purge had denounced other people, traducing them out of excess of zeal or in order to advance themselves."
Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 312

"The animosity of the world press has created a picture of a ruthless and bloodthirsty Stalin murdering his erstwhile colleagues, presumably for no better reason than to strengthen his own personal power.... In reality, Stalin hesitated for many months before embarking on the famous "Purges." He was too deeply conscious of the seriousness of Lenin's deathbed warning as to the dangers which would arise if one section of the Party condemned its opponents to death. Even when Zinoviev had whispered his plan to assassinate Trotsky, Stalin had refused to embark on that fatal policy of self-murder which had destroyed the French revolutionary Jacobins...."
Cole, David M. Josef Stalin; Man of Steel. London, New York: Rich & Cowan, 1942, p. 98

"CHUEV: So Stalin treated people altogether mercilessly?
MOLOTOV: What do you mean, mercilessly? He got reports; they had to be checked out.
CHUEV: People would slander one another....
MOLOTOV: We would have been complete idiots if we had taken the reports at their face value. We were not idiots. We could not entrust accused individuals with jobs of responsibility, because they could have reverted to type any time."
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 276

"CHUEV: If Stalin knew everything and did not rely on bad advice, he bears direct responsibility for the executions of the innocent.
MOLOTOV: That conclusion is not entirely correct. Understanding the idea is one thing, applying it is something else. The rightists had to be beaten, the Trotskyists had to be beaten, so the order came down: punish the vigorously. Yezhov was executed for that. If tough measures are rejected, the great risk is always that at the critical moment the nation may be torn apart and the devil knows how it may end--leading only to greater losses. Millions may die, and that may mean total collapse or at least a very deep crisis.
CHUEV: That's true. Yezhov was executed, but the innocent were not released.
MOLOTOV: But, when all is said, many of the verdicts were justified. The cases were reviewed and some people were released....
MOLOTOV: A commission on Tevosian was set up after he was arrested. Mikoyan, Beria, myself, and someone else worked on that commission. Tevosian was a Central Committee member, a most upright man, an excellent specialist in metallurgy. An extremely competent man. A report came in that he was a saboteur and that he was working to damage our steel industry. He had intensive training in Germany with the Krupp works, and upon returning home he most perseveringly and effectively worked in our steel industry. But soon a lot of evidence given by specialists and managers was received. At Stalin's initiative, a special commission was set up to review his case thoroughly. We went to the NKVD building to examine the evidence. We heard out one engineer, two, three. Each one insisted Tevosian was a wrecker because he had issued such and such instructions. Tevosian was in the same room and listened to all those accusations. He easily exposed and rejected all the charges. We compared the evidence with the facts and concluded that the charges were absurd. Sheer slander. Tevosian was acquitted. He remained a member of the Central Committee, and then he continued to do his job. We reported to Stalin, and he agreed with our conclusion."
Chuev, Feliks. Molotov Remembers. Chicago: I. R. Dee, 1993, p. 294

and one more:

Original Source: RTsKhIDNI, f. 17, op. 120, d. 298, ll. 90-91. Certified, typewritten copy.

"Esteemed Comrades!
As an ordinary citizen of the USSR I cannot help but comment on the removal of Yezhov from the NKVD leadership--an event of no small importance.
Appointed to the job to uncover betrayers and traitors and to purge the country of enemy elements, he himself caused as much harm as maybe all of the betrayers and traitors combined.
Along with elements hostile to Soviet rule, hundreds of thousands of absolutely innocent, honest people, some of them even devoted to Soviet rule, have been arrested and exiled. After all, there is now virtually not a single home in the country from which somebody is not in prison. The final result is a picture in which the whole country is against Soviet rule. Unheard-of brutalities have been committed in the process. People have been forced under severe torture to "confess" to crimes they never did. A wife is arrested only because her husband is in prison. Children have been left to the mercies of fate. None of the exiles' relatives knows anything about them.
The result is a sharp contrast between what has been declared in our Constitution and the brutal, high-handed behavior that prevails in the country.
Not only do we have extremely low wages, not only are basic necessities unavailable, but to top it off nobody can be sure of not being in prison tomorrow. Is it hard after this to figure out what kind of attitudes exist among the masses. And this attitude was created by Yezhov. Two or three years ago the attitude was different.
According to tens and hundreds of thousands of people, Yezhov overlooked real spies and saboteurs. The fires and explosions at enterprises have not stopped, and they are undoubtedly plotted by saboteurs. It is naïve to think that the country has been completely purged of them. But Yezhov had his agents specialize in taking innocent citizens from their beds, while they forgot how to catch real saboteurs. On the contrary, they are even openly allowed into the country. The case of the pilot Lindbergh is a very striking one. When Runciman sent a report from Prague to London, Hitler knew what was in it, that is how the Gestapo works, but when an out-and-out spy and our enemy plans to slip into our country we just twiddle our thumbs, and we don't know what he is bringing.
We will hope and want to hope that with Yezhov's removal the nature of the NKVD's work will change as well. We want to hope that Yezhov's mistakes will be eliminated and corrected, that the NKVD will begin to really fight elements hostile to Soviet rule and that honest workers will be assured normal and tranquil working conditions."
V. Chernousov
Odessa
10 December 1938
Source: Lewis Siegelbaum and Andrei Sokolov, eds., Stalinism as a Way of Life: a narrative in documents. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000.



In all, I would say the purges were pretty sloppy. There was chaos, although it originally started as an anti-corruption campaign, the way it was carried out the NKVD resulted in "popular terror" and less than satisfactory results, not to mention a total dick (Yezhov) was at the head of the whole thing.

[Kléber]

The best Marxist analysis of the Stalinist terror is the book 1937 by Vadim Z. Rogovin (http://books.google.com/books?id=dDiFNXLNPDEC). It's mostly summarized here: "Stalin's Great Terror: Origins and Consequences."
(http://www.wsws.org/exhibits/1937/lecture1.htm)

not to mention a total dick (Yezhov) was at the head of the whole thing. That's why he got the job. His predecessor, Yagoda, was fired and shot after he complained to Stalin about the negative effects of the purges on public opinion, noting that workers had protested the trial and executions of Zinoviev and Kamenev with the slogan "Down with the Murderer of the Leaders of October!" Yezhov was promoted in his place because he had written an essay in 1935 calling for the execution of Left and Right oppositionists. After those oppositionists had been mostly eradicated in 1937-38, Yezhov became more trouble than he was worth and he was sacrificed as a scapegoat for the worst phase of the repressions.

Stalin can not be absolved of responsibility for the terror which he oversaw and directed, as indicated by his endorsement of Yezhov in 1936: "We consider the appointment of Comrade Yezhov to the post of People's Commissar of Internal Affairs to be an absolutely necessary and urgent matter. Yagoda has clearly proven not to be up to the task of exposing the Trotsky-Zinoviev bloc. The OGPU has been four years late in this matter. That is what all the party workers and the majority in general of the regional representatives of the NKVD are saying."
(the "four years" referred to the Ryutin Affair of 1932 and the secret bloc of persecuted oppositionists formed that year)

[Jose Gracchus]

It didn't, but it was an attempt wasn't it? It disproves that Stalin was some totalitarian dictator who only wanted the Bolsheviks to be the single rule. It was supposed to have a real effect, but in the end it wasn't as successful as Stalin hoped it would be, and your right on that point. But shortly before Stalin died he tried to be the Politburo the ONLY authority, therefore his position of General Secretary would be abolished, and a new democracy would take place. Then the Revisionists came..

:lol:

Yes, because democracy is some kind of mystical force to be bestowed or not according to the designs of the Great Leader. Jesus Fucking Christ, are you what the sect's churn out as Marxists nowadays?

Of what use are formal bourgeois democratic structures without the institutions and formal freedoms necessary for them to be democratic? How many despots today do you think preside over superficially Western-style systems? Here's a hint: virtually all of them.

As for the Purge Apologism: Isn't it funny that the bourgeoisie and monarchy itself was more easily cowed by a tiny fraction of the terror the "fifth columnists" who had sat in the Central Committee of the October Revolution required? And Marx thought it was the bourgeoisie which would be the opposition, I guess he should've specified that it really be workers and communists you will spend most of your time killing.

[The Man]

To the OP: Saddam Hussein had a constitution written as well, he didn't do jack shit to enact it.

So Stalin didn't do 'jack shit' to enact the constitution?:lol:. During the meetings when the Politburo kept talking about how the Trotskyist Enemies were ruining the country, Stalin and his supporters kept trying to tell them to focus on the constitution.

Have you read 'Stalin and the struggle for Democratic Reforms' by Grover Furr?

[Born in the USSR]

the fifth column of who? the nazis? imperialism? the west? capitalism?

And whose fifth column was POUM when they shot communists together with fascists?


so all the old boshevik party members were traitors, yeah sure

A usual Trot's tactic:to ascribe to an opponent words he didn't say.Kid,stalinists were old bolsheviks themselves unlike your favorite Trotsky who joined the bolshevik party three monthes before the revolution,got it?


stalin didnt do it all alone, he had the ever strong bureaucracy behind him,

Another brilliant method of trots:to call Stalin's opponent old bolsheviks,his supporters - bureaucracy,despite the fact that both were party and state funktionaries.

[Born in the USSR]

its funny how russian stalinists are basically just nostalgic national chauvinists.

Find and show everyone chauvinism in my posts or you are a durty liar.

[Geiseric]

And whose fifth column was POUM when they shot communists together with fascists?



A usual Trot's tactic:to ascribe to an opponent words he didn't say.Kid,stalinists were old bolsheviks themselves unlike your favorite Trotsky who joined the bolshevik party three monthes before the revolution,got it?



Another brilliant method of trots:to call Stalin's opponent old bolsheviks,his supporters - bureaucracy,despite the fact that both were party and state funktionaries.

It wasnn't just Stalin that created Stalinism, it was the entire forces in the soviet beuracracy. It was Zimoniev, it was stalin, it was all of them. Stalin got currupted from the civil war and his thirst for power. Same thing with all of the people who helped him. He was but meerly the Big Brother if you will.

[The Man]

It wasnn't just Stalin that created Stalinism, it was the entire forces in the soviet beuracracy. It was Zimoniev, it was stalin, it was all of them. Stalin got currupted from the civil war and his thirst for power. Same thing with all of the people who helped him. He was but meerly the Big Brother if you will.

http://www.gogaminggiant.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/facepalm.jpg

PLEASE explain to me then, why did Stalin try to ABOLISH the post of General Secretary? Why did he want to become just a simple member of the Politburo?Unfortunately, this never happened. Cause' he died.

[Bright Banana Beard]

I remembered he was angry at cult of personality of himself, but he couldn't do shit about it because he was powerless to do so.

So much for a claim of "dictator."

[Geiseric]

If he wanted to end the cult of personality, he could have done it! He was the fucking dictator! And if he wanted to abolish the post he could have! He was the leader of the fucking Communist Party which was left after he did his purges! But saying he wanted to but couldn't is just horse shit. Hitler WANTED to end the holocaust, but pressures inside of the nazi party made him keep doing it. That's what your guys arguments sound like. Tito WANTED to side with the U.S.S.R. but the people he ruled over as dictator made it so he couldn't do it.

[The Man]

If he wanted to end the cult of personality, he could have done it! He was the fucking dictator! And if he wanted to abolish the post he could have! He was the leader of the fucking Communist Party which was left after he did his purges! But saying he wanted to but couldn't is just horse shit. Hitler WANTED to end the holocaust, but pressures inside of the nazi party made him keep doing it. That's what your guys arguments sound like. Tito WANTED to side with the U.S.S.R. but the people he ruled over as dictator made it so he couldn't do it.

I so hope you're trolling.

[pranabjyoti]

If he wanted to end the cult of personality, he could have done it! He was the fucking dictator! And if he wanted to abolish the post he could have! He was the leader of the fucking Communist Party which was left after he did his purges! But saying he wanted to but couldn't is just horse shit. Hitler WANTED to end the holocaust, but pressures inside of the nazi party made him keep doing it. That's what your guys arguments sound like. Tito WANTED to side with the U.S.S.R. but the people he ruled over as dictator made it so he couldn't do it.
He had much more hard task before him than fighting his own personality cult. To a head of the state, the progress of the state and it's protection must be top priority, other than fighting his own personality cult.

[Kléber]

Don't trust Grover Furr for an honest explanation of anything. One of his essays claims the USSR never invaded Poland in 1939 - the guy's a liar. His screed about the "democratic" side of Stalin is also unbelievably dishonest. Sometimes he uses legitimate sources (so can bible-thumpers and holocaust deniers, when the truth suits them) but Furr also subscribes to the belief that every single document in the Soviet archives which reflects negatively on Stalin, is a forgery that was placed there by cronies of Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Gorbachev and/or Yeltsin because they wanted to make Stalin look bad. And this is, of course, an excuse to leave out 95% of the truth and replace it with meandering filler.

In fact the evidence against Stalin, which Furr never talks about, is damning. He put Yezhov in charge of the NKVD for the express purpose of wiping out oppositionists, he personally signed off on the death warrants, and his correspondence shows he helped direct the repressions and show trials. Those "revisionists" like Khrushchev who came along after his death and supposedly pissed away his inheritance, were none other than Stalin's protégés, his careerist political offspring who had been promoted to replace the generation of old Bolshevik cadre shot in 1937-38.

But let's pretend that the Maoist narrative is true, Stalin was a prisoner in his own office, he had no power over what was happening in the USSR. If that was the case, what kind of politician was he to sit back and let "the revisionists" around him completely betray socialism and murder 700,000 people, without saying a word or actually doing anything to stop it (except supposedly planning to do something, the day after he died)? If he was powerless and therefore doesn't deserve blame for the purges, how does he deserve credit for industrialization and winning WWII? Can't have it both ways.

Was it OK for the Latin American oligarchies to murder millions of leftists in the 70's, because they were comfortable enough to later "democratize" in the 80's once they had totally wiped out popular opposition and could safely hold an election?

[black magick hustla]

dummies stalin didnt exist it was all a lie, the great purge was just trotsky having a bad day, and beria was just a pseudodym for myasnikov

[Gorilla]

Don't trust Grover Furr for an honest explanation of anything.

This. He is an apologist, not a historian.


But let's pretend that the Maoist narrative is true, Stalin was a prisoner in his own office, he had no power over what was happening in the USSR. If that was the case, what kind of politician was he to sit back and let "the revisionists" around him completely betray socialism and murder 700,000 people, without saying a word or actually doing anything to stop it (except supposedly planning to do something, the day after he died)? If he was powerless and therefore doesn't deserve blame for the purges, how does he deserve credit for industrialization and winning WWII? Can't have it both ways.

Furr isn't a Maoist (PLP was pro-China for a bit but never really adopted Mao Zedong Thought). Mao conceded (http://www.marxists.org/subject/china/documents/polemic/qstalin.htm) that:


In struggles inside as well as outside the Party, on certain occasions and on certain questions he confused two types of contradictions which are different in nature, contradictions between ourselves and the enemy and contradictions among the people, and also confused the different methods needed in handling them. In the work led by Stalin of suppressing the counter-revolution, many counter-revolutionaries deserving punishment were duly punished, but at the same time there were innocent people who were wrongly convicted; and in 1937 and 1938 there occurred the error of enlarging the scope of the suppression of counter-revolutionaries.

The statement might be open to criticism for not being indignant or condemnatory enough or whatever, but the Maoist position on Stalin is not to be a fucking sap and pretend as Furr does that everyone executed 1937-38 was personally murdering babies for Hitler and Trotsky who were of course gay with each other.

[Born in the USSR]

PLEASE explain to me then, why did Stalin try to ABOLISH the post of General Secretary? Why did he want to become just a simple member of the Politburo?Unfortunately, this never happened. Cause' he died.

He didn't try,he really did it in 1934,since that time he was one of eight secretaries of Central Commetee.