What were the purges?
To purge means to clean out. In the Communist Party a purge at first meant checking the members and expelling those judged lazy, corrupt or disloyal. In 1933-34 several hundred thousand members lost their party cards in this way. They lost their careers, not their lives.
After December 1934 the word took on a far darker meaning. People were now arrested, sent to labour camps or shot. The purges reached their height in 1937-38, a time known as the Great Terror. According to the secret police's own records, about 1.5 million people were arrested in those two years and about 680,000 of them were shot.
Key terms:
- Purge: the removal of people seen as disloyal, first by expelling them from the party and later by arrest, prison or death.
- Old Bolsheviks: Communists who had joined the party before the revolution of 1917 and had worked with Lenin.
- Enemy of the people: the label given to anyone accused of working against Stalin and the Soviet state.
- Denunciation: reporting another person to the authorities as an enemy.
- Great Terror: the height of the purges in 1937-38, when arrests and shootings were at their greatest.
Why did Stalin launch the purges?
By 1929 Stalin had beaten his rivals, but he never felt safe. He was a deeply suspicious man who saw plots everywhere. Several things fed his fears in the early 1930s.
📜 Opposition to his policies
The famine and the chaos of the first Five-Year Plan led some Communists to blame Stalin. In 1932 Martemyan Ryutin, a former Moscow party official, wrote a document of about 200 pages that was passed round in secret. It called Stalin an 'evil genius' who had brought the revolution to ruin and said he should be removed. Ryutin was arrested and given ten years in prison. Zinoviev and Kamenev were expelled from the party again just for knowing about the document and not reporting it.
👑 Fear of rivals
The Old Bolsheviks remembered Lenin's Testament and knew that Stalin had not been Lenin's chosen heir. Trotsky, in exile abroad, kept attacking Stalin in books and articles. At the Seventeenth Party Congress in early 1934, Kirov was cheered loudly. Later accounts say some delegates privately asked Kirov to replace Stalin and that he refused. To Stalin, any popular Communist was a possible replacement.
🏭 Someone to blame
Missed targets, broken machines and accidents could not be blamed on Stalin's plans. It suited him to blame hidden enemies instead. Accusing managers and engineers of wrecking explained every failure and frightened others into working harder.
🌍 Fear of war
Japan seized Manchuria, on the Soviet border, in 1931 and Hitler took power in Germany in 1933. Stalin feared that if war came, his opponents inside the USSR would side with the invader. He wanted them removed first.
The murder of Kirov, December 1934
Remember, Sergei Kirov had run the Leningrad party since the defeat of Zinoviev. By 1934 he was a member of the Politburo, a fine speaker and well liked. He was a loyal supporter of Stalin, though he is thought to have wanted a slower pace of change.
On 1 December 1934 Kirov was shot dead in a corridor of the Smolny Institute, the party headquarters in Leningrad. The killer was Leonid Nikolaev, a party member who had lost his job and was bitter about it. Nikolaev was tried in secret and shot before the end of the month.
Did Stalin order the murder? It removed a possible rival, and many people at the time and since have suspected him. No proof has ever been found. Many historians now think Nikolaev acted alone. What is certain is that Stalin used the murder.
How Stalin used the murder
- A new law, the same day. A decree of 1 December 1934 said that cases of 'terrorism' must be investigated within ten days and tried with no defence lawyer and no appeal. Death sentences were to be carried out at once.
- Blaming old rivals. Stalin travelled to Leningrad and questioned Nikolaev himself. He claimed the murder was part of a plot by supporters of Zinoviev. Zinoviev and Kamenev were arrested. In January 1935 they were made to accept 'moral responsibility' for the murder. Zinoviev was given ten years in prison and Kamenev five.
- A wave of arrests. Thousands of people in Leningrad were arrested or deported in the months that followed.
So the murder mattered because it gave Stalin both an excuse and a method. He could now say that a real conspiracy of 'enemies of the people' existed, and he had a law that let the secret police, now called the NKVD, deal with them quickly.
Key features of the purges
Who was targeted? The purges began at the top and spread outwards.
👥 The party
Old Bolsheviks and party officials were hit hardest. Of the 1,966 delegates at the 1934 Congress, 1,108 were later arrested. Of the 139 people elected to the Central Committee there, 98 were arrested and shot.
🔧 The experts
Factory managers, engineers, scientists, teachers and writers were accused of wrecking or of spying. Army officers were purged too, as you will see in The Moscow Show Trials and the Purge of the Armed Forces.
🏠 Ordinary people
Former kulaks, priests and members of some national groups, such as Poles and Germans living in the USSR, were rounded up. So were the families of the accused. Wives were sent to camps and children to orphanages.
How did the terror spread?
- Confessions that named others. Prisoners were pressed to confess and to name their 'accomplices'. Each arrest led to more arrests.
- Denunciations. People reported workmates and neighbours. Some truly believed in the hunt for enemies. Some wanted a rival's job or flat. Many did it out of fear, because failing to report an 'enemy' was itself a crime.
- Guilt by association. Anyone linked to an arrested person, as a relative, friend or colleague, fell under suspicion.
- Officials proving their loyalty. Local party bosses showed their loyalty by uncovering ever more 'enemies', until many of them were arrested in turn.
How the NKVD carried out the arrests, and what happened to people in the labour camps, is covered in Yezhov, the NKVD and the Gulags.
Common mistakes
Don't state as a fact that Stalin had Kirov killed. It has never been proved, so write that he was suspected and that he certainly used the murder. Don't say the purges hit only Stalin's old rivals: most victims were ordinary people. And don't treat Kirov's murder as the only reason. It was the trigger, but Stalin's fear of rivals and of opposition to his policies came first.
Exam-style question
Extract A (a practice extract written for this lesson, in the style of a modern history textbook)
Stalin wasted no time in turning Kirov's death to his own advantage. Within hours, before any proper investigation had begun, he had rushed through a law that stripped accused 'terrorists' of any defence. He hurried to Leningrad to take charge in person and was soon pointing the finger at his old rivals, Zinoviev and Kamenev, though there was not a scrap of evidence against them. For Stalin, the murder was less a tragedy than a golden opportunity.
(a) What impression does the author give about Stalin's reaction to the murder of Kirov?
You must use Extract A to explain your answer. [6 marks]
Model answer
The author gives the impression that Stalin reacted to the murder in a cold and calculating way, using it for his own gain. This is shown by the language. Stalin 'wasted no time' and 'rushed through' a law 'within hours', which suggests he cared about speed and power, not about finding the truth. The phrase 'not a scrap of evidence' makes his accusations against Zinoviev and Kamenev seem dishonest. The author ends by calling the murder a 'golden opportunity', which sums up Stalin as someone who saw a death as a chance to profit. The author has chosen to stress Stalin's haste and his attack on 'old rivals'. Nothing is said about any shock or grief, or about any real fear of a plot. This selection makes Stalin seem ruthless.
What lifts this to the top level: it names one clear impression, proves it with short quotations and explains what the words suggest, and it comments on what the author chose to stress and to leave out.
Exam tip
Don't retell what Stalin did after the murder, and don't add your own knowledge about Kirov. The marks are for the author's choices. Pick two or three loaded phrases from the extract, such as 'golden opportunity', say what each one suggests, then add one sentence on what the author left out.