Great Purge
The Great Purge or the Great Terror (Russian: Большой террор),[6] was a purge in the Soviet Union from 1936 to 1938.[7] It was a large-scale repression of kulaks.[8] Ethnic minorities were murdered. Even members of the Communist Party, government officials, and the Red Army leadership were killed.
| Great Purge | |
|---|---|
 People of Vinnytsia searching for relatives among the exhumed victims of the Vinnytsia massacre, 1943 | |
| Location | Soviet Union |
| Date | 1936–1938 |
| Target | Opponents, dissidents, Trotskyists, Red Army's generals, "wealthy" peasants – known as kulaks in Soviet propaganda – ethnic minorities, religious activists and leaders |
Attack type | |
| Deaths | 950,000 to 1.2 million[1] (higher estimates overlap with at least 136,520[2] deaths in the Gulag system) |
| Perpetrators | 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 |
| Motive | Elimination of political opponents,[3][4] consolidation of power.[5] |
Everyone was watched by the police. Everyone was suspected. People were imprisoned without a fair trial. Executions were common.[9] 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').[10]
References
change- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Ellman, Michael (2002). "Soviet Repression Statistics: some comments" (PDF). Europe-Asia Studies. 54 (7): 1151–1172. doi:10.1080/0966813022000017177. S2CID 43510161.
The best estimate that can currently be made of the number of repression deaths in 1937–38 is the range 950,000–1.2 million, i.e. about a million. This is the estimate which should be used by historians, teachers and journalists concerned with twentieth century Russian—and world—history
- ↑ Wheatcroft, Stephen G. (1999). "Victims of Stalinism and the Soviet Secret Police: the comparability and reliability of the archival data: not the last word" (PDF). Europe-Asia Studies. 51 (2): 339. doi:10.1080/09668139999056.
- ↑ Conquest, Robert 1987. Stalin and the Kirov Murder. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-505579-5.
- ↑ Conquest, Robert 2008. [1990]. The Great Terror: a reassessment. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-531700-8
- ↑ Brett Homkes (2004). "Certainty, probability, and Stalin's Great Party Purge". McNair Scholars Journal. 8 (1): 13.
- ↑ 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
- ↑ Helen Rappaport (1999). Joseph Stalin: a biographical companion. ABC-CLIO. p. 110. ISBN 978-1576070840. Retrieved 29 September 2015.