The cult of Stalin and the purges Essay Example

The cult of Stalin and the purges Paper How far do you agree with this opinion? There is little doubt that Joseph Stalin made drastic and continual efforts to retain his supreme power during the 1930s. The two main methods and perhaps the most memorable are the great purges (otherwise known as the great terror) and the cult of Stalin. Although Stalin had been triumphant in the power struggle against Leon Trotsky in 1929, rather than alleviating his insecurities, Stalin became increasingly paranoid. It seems that the more power and control he gained over Russia and its people, the more irrational and mistrustful he became. This was more than likely because he had more to lose and this encouraged him to instigate a more brutal and controlling regime. Other examples of his vindictive rule were the purging of kulaks during collectivisation and the excessive demands he made during industrialisation and the five-year plans. He also conducted purges targeted at Bolshevik opposition. He insisted on members reapplying for their membership to the party using excuses like corruption, drunkenness and being politically inactive to dismiss them, thus frightening members into submission. This was because if they lost their party cards they could lose their jobs, which ultimately meant they lost their homes, their privileged rations and public status. At the time, Stalin was the General Secretary and consequently controlled whose memberships were renewed and as a result any member suspected of betrayal or opposing his policies had their membership revoked. We will write a custom essay sample on The cult of Stalin and the purges specifically for you for only $16.38 $13.9/page Order now We will write a custom essay sample on The cult of Stalin and the purges specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer We will write a custom essay sample on The cult of Stalin and the purges specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer Although Stalin gained a great deal of success via industrialisation, collectivisation and the five-year plans, he ultimately acquired many enemies due to the suffering and numerous deaths caused during these policies. Owing to Stalins extreme tactics, party members began to oppose his policies and ultimately repudiated him, this included Sergei Kirov who until now had been devoted to Stalin. Stalin was all too aware of this mounting threat! Stalin viewed Kirov as his proti gi and in 1926 he rewarded Kirovs loyalty by appointing him as Head of the Leningrad Party. In 1930, Kirov was elected to join the Politburo and eventually he became one of the leading figures of the party. [1] During the Seventeenth Party Congress, held in February 1934, Kirov gained the fewest negative votes, giving him an advantage over Stalin in the contest for the party leadership and for this reason Stalins aides fixed the vote to ensure a draw between the two candidates. Due to this result, the position of General Secretary was abolished and Kirov and Stalin shared the position of Secretary of Equal Rank. Knowing that his proti. was favoured above him caused an increase in Stalins mistrust of his clique because even those he trusted and depended on were beginning to show signs of desertion. Over the next five years 1,108 of the 1,966 delegates who had attended the Seventeenth Party Congress were arrested, seventy of whom were tried in public while the rest were tried in secret before being executed or sent to the Gulags (labour camps). [2] On 1st December 1934, a young party member named Leonid Nikolayev murdered Kirov, in the Smolny Institute, in Leningrad and was consequently arrested and executed. To this day there is still a mystery surrounding Kirovs assassination as there were few actual witnesses to the event. This means that historians can only speculate with regard to what actually took place during this significant event. Although Nikolayev was arrested, there are varied theories about who led the conspiracy behind the assassination, one conjecture being Stalin himself was involved, although no solid evidence has ever been found to prove this. To destabilize this belief Stalin portrayed Trotsky as the culprit, giving him the pretext to introduce a series of anti-terrorist measures and to purge the party of so-called Trotskyites and Zinovievites, including Gregory Zinoviev himself, Lev Kamenev and 14 other party members, who were arrested by Genrikh Yagoda the Head of the NKVD (secret police), tried and executed. [3][4] As a result of Kirovs death and the betrayal Stalin had encountered during the period surrounding the assassination, Stalin began enforcing the great purges. The first phase began in 1935 and was devised to rid the Party of any political opponents or threats. The first show trial was held in August 1936 and heralded the beginning of the great purges. The show trials were held in public to generate public humiliation for the defendants, to illustrate consequences to other potential rivals and to convey the threat of conspiracies against the government, thus resulting in fear amongst the nation. They were also open to western journalists and were intended to show the world communist justice. The great purges gave Stalin tremendous control over people, mostly through fear alone. There was a constant threat of being purged from the party, show tried and executed or sent to the Gulags. Gulags were labour camps, placed in remote areas of Russia (e. g. Siberia), where conditions were so horrific nobody would ever choose to work there of their own freewill. The prisoners were subjected to severe weather conditions, abuse by guards, long working hours and insufficient food and clothing. Prisoners were exploited as lumber jacks, for construction and mining to achieve targets set for industrialisation and the five-year-plans. Most of the prisoners sent there eventually died from hunger, exhaustion, ill health or maltreatment before the end of their usually long sentences. [5] Stalins second phase of the great purges was aimed at the Russian people, rather than party members alone and was identified as Yezhovshchina, named after Nikolai Yezhov (Head of the NKVD). Yezhov was appointed in September 1936 in place of Yagoda who had failed to obtain enough evidence to convict Bukharin and was consequently discharged. Yezhov quickly arranged the arrest of all the leading political figures in the Soviet Union who were critical of Stalin. [6] During this purge, a tell tale society was formed, encouraging people to denounce fellow citizens, creating mistrust among the nation. Informants mostly denounced citizens such as the intellectuals, for instance artists, writers, and journalists, who were more likely to pose as a threat to Stalin. A quota system was enforced commanding the NKVD to make a designated number of arrests and the full quota had to be achieved. As a result it is likely that a large number of accusations had been invented by the NKVD to fulfil the quota and that many of those arrested had not actually committed any crimes against the State. Among those arrested, 28% were to be shot and the remainder would be forced into Gulags. Official figures suggest that between January 1935 and June 1941, 19. 8 million people were arrested by the NKVD. An estimated seven million of these prisoners were executed. [7] Although Stalin instigated the great purges there are indications that suggest the NKVD intensified the demands and infiltrated their own desires into the modus operandi. Everyone was a potential victim during this phase of the purges. The NKVD massacred kulaks, priests, former members of anti-Bolshevik armies, those who had been abroad or had relatives abroad, immigrants and even citizens. [8] The second show trial was held in January 1937, in which seventeen people stood accused, among them were Karl Radek, Yuri Piatakov and Grigory Sokolnikov. Thirteen of the defendants were executed, while the remainder were sent to the Gulags. The third show trial, held in March 1938, involved 21 defendants allegedly belonging to the Bloc of Rightists and Trotskyites, whose leaders consisted of Nikolai Bukharin, Alexei Rykov, Genrikh Yagoda (former Head of the NKVD), Christian Rakovsky and Nikolai Krestinsky, all of whom were executed. The third phase of the great purges began in the spring of 1937 and was led by the NKVD which targeted the armed forces. Previously, many of the Red Army officers had been officers under the Tsarist regime and during Lenins rule had been forged into the Red Army by Trotsky, causing Stalin to fear that they would turn against him and form a military dictatorship as an alternative government to his style of communism. Officers were by now living in fear of World War II breaking out and because they had earned their ranks on merit and had not bought them, they did not feel they owed Stalin any loyalty, increasing his fear of a military coup. Fearing a rebellion, Stalin began purging officers (1937-1938) and in particular he targeted Marshall Mikhail Tukhachevsky, who was Chief of The General Staff. Tukhachevsky was potentially a major rival as he had previously worked under Lenin and was now in control of all the armed forces (i. e. army, navy and air force) and was very popular with the troops. In all, the NKVD purged the armed forces of eighteen Army War Commissars who were all shot, five Marshals of the Soviet Union, three of whom were shot (including Tukhachevsky), 80 Officers of the Supreme Military Council, 75 of whom were executed, sixteen army commanders, fourteen of whom were shot, 280 divisional colonels, of whom two thirds were killed, 70,000 commissioned officers, half of whom were killed or imprisoned, all the Navy Admirals were executed and only one air force officer survived. Altogether thousands of other officers were executed or imprisoned, spying for Germany or Japan was amongst the most common of accusations against officers and because of the amount of executions in all three forces they were left severely undermanned. The few newly appointed officers left were inexperienced and incompetent as leaders, causing major disarray in the Soviet Unions armed forces. It has been claimed that Tukhachevsky (Marshal of the Soviet Union) was executed as part of a secret fourth trial, held in June 1937, in which he stood accused before a military tribunal of a group of Red Army generals. However, the evidence presented against the accused was almost nonexistent and convictions relied on confessions extracted through torture and threats against family members. [9] One of Stalins cunning tactics to achieve this purge without mutiny was to switch officers among regiments. This might have appeared impractical but he knew the troops trusted their officers and when confronted with a new officer, who they did not know or trust, the troops didnt dispute any accusations made against them or their colleagues because they feared condemnation. By late 1938, the great purges had achieved its purpose and the mass arrests were stopped. Stalin had carried out a complete renovation of the Communist Party and had brought in people owing their loyalty to him. His rule was now unchallenged, but in liquidating key elements of the society he had devastated the country and left it badly prepared for the apparent onset of World War II. [10] As a result of the previous purges there was insufficient demand for the NKVD, as most threats to Stalin had already been eradicated. This alarmed Yezhov, who feared he and his squadron would lose their jobs and as a consequence he began inciting Stalins paranoia. Nevertheless, he became a target of his own doing when an informant accused him of being a British agent and of killing innocent people resulting in his arrest, a trial (held in 1939) and ultimately execution. Whilst the purges were about ridding the party of opposition, the Cult of Stalin was more about brainwashing the nation into worshipping Stalin as an Idol. His campaign included ordering all propaganda (e. g.photos, leaflets) to be altered, to enhance Stalin so that he would stand out as a hero and to make him appear to be a significant role in the Revolution. Towns, streets and prizes were renamed in his honour, statues of him were erected and pet names such as Brilliant Genius of Humanity were applied to him. [11] Anyone he suspected as a potential rival was erased from literature, documents and photos. This was especially true of Trotsky. Trotskys role was censored from history books to conceal the fact that he had ever existed or taken part in the Revolution. This provided Stalin with a role to step into and gave credence to his assertion that he had never encountered any major contenders for his supremacy. These tactics gave the appearance that Stalin was in complete control and that nobody disagreed with him, only worshipped him. Stalin achieved celebrity status among the nation and to an extent around the world. There is no question that Stalin used the Great Purges and the Cult of Stalin to retain his supreme power. However, the reasons for Stalin becoming more controlling are debatable. Some historians claim he was seeking notoriety (the great man theory), some believe he suffered from mental illness and others regard him as a dictator. The fact that he used such brutal, calculating and extreme tactics suggests to me that he would go to any lengths to meet his aspirations and would on no account allow anyone, regardless of the cost to the nation, to compromise his aim for control of the State. With each purge he exceeded the limits of the previous purge, becoming even more powerful, yet more and more paranoid. Whether Stalin needed to go to such extreme lengths to conceal his enemies and cultivate such an iconic persona of himself, is still questionable. In order to have been able to accomplish such campaigns, Stalin must have already possessed a great deal of control and support. To this day some people regard him as an icon and believe his brutality was justified to turn the Soviet Union into a modern and industrialised State. In 1953 indication of a Doctors plot emerged alleging that nine Kremlin doctors were engaged in a plot to assassinate Stalin and other political leaders. As a result Stalin commanded Lavrenti Beria, the new Head of the NKVD, to purge the Communist Party of candidates for his leadership. However, on 2nd March Stalin suffered a brain haemorrhage resulting in the plan being terminated. [12] To this day, events surrounding his death have been shrouded with enigma as it has been claimed that the night before the haemorrhage, his guards were given orders, from Stalin himself, to retire for the night and not to disturb him. When he did not rise the next day at his usual time, the guards became concerned but did not interrupt him as they feared the repercussions of disobeying the dictator. That evening one of the guards was ordered to enter Stalins room to investigate and on entry he found Stalin lying on the floor, paralysed, soon after he slipped into a coma. The guard summoned the senior party men of the Politburo and family members to the Dacha, Stalins favourite holiday home. His daughter, Svetlana Alliluyevas testimony claims that after 3 days (5th March 1953) Stalin briefly regained consciousness, looked around the room, raised his hand and pointed upwards as if bringing down a curse upon us all and then he died. [13] Conversely, due to the tardiness of the Politburo in calling for medical assistance, the Russian historian Edvard Radzinski asserts that Stalin was injected with poison by the guard Khrustalev, under the orders of his master (KGB chief, Lavrenty Beria to prevent Russia participating in the initiation of World War III. [14] In the end it was Stalins own paranoia and tyranny that led to his demise. 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