PURGES (1 ene 1932 año – 1 dic 1938 año)

Descripción:

CAUSES OF THE PURGES:
- Stalin's personality/paranoia: distrusting,
wanted to rid of spies or enemies, old Bolsheviks treated him in a condescending way calling him dull and mediocre, inferiority complex.
- Threat of war: Stalin wanted to remove people who may oppose his foreign policy as war became a threat, increased pressure on armaments industry meaning unwilling people pushed to greater efforts
- Self image/control: rid of those who wouldn't accept him as 'genius' or heroic, destroy intellectual superiors, used gulags.
- Regional problems: local party didn't want to 'find' kulaks as they were valuable and needed to reach production targets, low levels in the party encouraged to criticise higher up, show trials used to make unsafe atmosphere.
- economic situation: 1936 poor harvest & management of economy = downturn, use of stakhanovites to increase productivity and persuade them to pressure managers by demanding tools to incr production: managers who didn't respond branded as wreckers.



Chistka:
Over 20% of the party expelled non-violently as a part of a cleaning out process after collectivisation.

Show Trials:
Saw prominent old Bolsheviks publicly tried and executed.

Causes:
- resolve stress within the removing threat
- stress within society by providing scapegoats who could be blamed for party failures.
- cleansing the party of undesirables
- joining the party was the route to advancement and basics





The Yezhovschina:
Mass terror where thousands of party members, state officials, members of the armed forces, industrial directors, professionals and other sections of the party were denounced, arrested and imprisoned, many executed, more died in Soviet labour camps.

Yezhov replaced Yagoda as head of the NKVD as he was not quick enough at finding enemies.

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