Stalin criticized the NKVD for carrying out mass executions and subsequently executed Genrikh Yagoda and Nikolay Yezhov who headed the NKVD during the purge years. In 1938 Stalin reversed his stance on the purges and declared that the internal enemies had been removed. During the purge, the NKVD widely utilized imprisonment, torture, violent interrogation, and arbitrary executions to solidify control over civilians. The NKVD began targeting certain ethnic minorities such as the Volga Germans, who were subjected to forced deportation and extreme repression. As the scope of the purge began widening, the omnipresent suspicion of saboteurs and counter-revolutionaries began impacting civilian life. Eventually the purges were expanded to the Red Army and military high command which would have a disastrous effect on the military altogether. The NKVD began the removal of the central party leadership, Old Bolsheviks, government officials, and regional party bosses. The initial stages of the purges were targeted at the Soviet government itself. The purges themselves were largely conducted by the NKVD (People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs), the secret police of the USSR.
The fear of losing his position, the potential return of Trotsky, and the rising threat of fascism from the west, goaded him into authorizing the Great Purge. īy 1936 Stalin's paranoia reached a crescendo.
Historians doubt the validity of these claims nonetheless, they do agree that Kirov's death was the flashpoint where Stalin would take action and begin the purges. Many of those arrested in Kirov's assassination had also confessed plans to kill Stalin himself, including high-ranking party officials. His death spearheaded an investigation that revealed a network of party members working against Stalin including several of Stalin's rivals. In this atmosphere of doubt and suspicion, a popular high-ranking official, Sergei Kirov, was assassinated in 1934. These policy failures led to Stalin's rivals such as Leon Trotsky attempting to sway the party away from Stalin's command. However, by the early 1930s party officials began losing faith in his leadership following the disasters of collectivization and the limited success of the First Five-Year Plan. Initially Stalin's leadership was widely accepted, and the doctrine Socialism in One Country became enshrined party policy. Joseph Stalin, the party's General Secretary, would outmaneuver political opponents and ultimately gain control of the Communist Party by 1928.
Various established figures in Lenin's government attempted to succeed him. įollowing the death of Vladimir Lenin in 1924 a power vacuum opened in the Communist Party. It occurred from August 1936 to March 1938. The Great Purge or the Great Terror ( Russian: Большой террор), also known as the Year of '37 ( 37-ой год, Tridtsat sedmoi god) and the Yezhovshchina ('period of Yezhov'), was Soviet General Secretary Joseph Stalin's campaign to solidify his power over the party and nation the purges were also designed to remove the remaining influence of Leon Trotsky as well as other political rivals within the party. 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 othersĮlimination of political opponents, consolidation of power, fear of counterrevolution, fear of party infiltration (higher estimates overlap with at least 116,000 deaths in the Gulag system)
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