15Great Terror and Purges

Overview

A. Introduction

B. Themes

C. Four Phases

D. The Number Question

E. Great Terror of 1937-8

F. Why?

G. Why this form and this scale?

A. Themes

1. Much historiographical and political mythmaking

2. Archival revolution of 1990s

3. Stalin’s role as instigator, not director

4. Complex social process: multiple terrors at different levels

5. Multiple reasons for the scale and irrationality

B. Four Phases

1. Social terror, 1928-32

2. Retreating and retargeting, 1932-36

3. “Ezhovshchina” 1936-38

4. Purging the purgers 1938-39

C. Number Question

1. Historiography

2. Newest dataCategory W.

Hist.New

Archival Data

Arrests 7 m. 1.5 m.

Camps 7 m. 1.9 m.

Execu-tions

1-2 m 680,000

D. Great Terror of 1937-38

1. Bychinskii Case

2. Victimologya. Party, state, military elites

b. “Class enemies”

c. Suspect ethnic minorities

d. Expendables

e. Random victims from general population

E. Why the Purges and Terror?

1. Dogma: intensification of class struggle

2. Mounting foreign threats

3. Party opposition

4. Economic: mobilizing and scapegoating

5. Social tensions: Stalinists and malcontents

F. Why This Form and This Scale?

1. State and police

2. Party’s internal chaos

3. Social conflict (delatology)

4. Stalin: role of the vozhd’

G. Conclusions

Belomor Canal: Celebratory Volume

Ex-Basmachi at Belomor Canal

Lavrentii Beria

Ezhov

NKVD: Ezhov’s Top Staff

1937 Poster: Root out the Spies and Saboteurs

Leningrad Pravda: Enemies of Kolkhoz Before Soviet Courts

Stalin’s “Album”

Stalin Album

Stalin Archive List: Reports on the Purges

Stalin Archive: List of Gifts

Iarsoslavl Victims (1)

Iaroslavl Victims (2)

Moscow Victims