Transcript What was the Great Terror? Part Two – The Yezhovshchina

What was the Great Terror?
Part Two – The Yezhovshchina
L/O – To identify and describe the key
features of the Great Terror
What was the Yezhovshchina?
• After the first show trial in
September 1936, Nicholai Yezhov
replaced Yagoda as head of the
NKVD. Yagoda was criticised for not
finding enemies of the state quick
enough.
• The was a clear sign from Stalin that
he wanted to advance the terror.
Yezhov was about to initiate a period
of terror – called the Yezhovshchina
– which reached its height in mid1937 and lasted until late 1938.
Purging the party
• In spring of 1937, Stalin made it clear
that he thought traitors and spies
had infiltrated the party at all levels
in every locality.
• He encouraged lower-ranking party
members to criticise and denounce
those in higher positions. This
resulted in a flood of accusations.
• Party members were ‘unmasked’ by
colleagues and accused for being an
‘enemy of the people’.
Purging the party
• The accused were usually invited to
confess before mass meetings and
were dragged in. Some denounced
fellow members in order to get their
jobs or settle old scores, others to
deflect criticisms from themselves.
• Denunciations were also directed
downwards by Party secretaries and
higher officials anxious to find the
counter-revolutionaries in their local
party network, if only to show how
loyal they were to the regime. So
they denounced people below them.
Mass Terror Accelerates
• In July 1937, the Politburo passed a
resolution condemning ‘Anti-Soviet
Elements’. Yezhov passed NKVD
Order 00447 – detailing the
categories of people to be dealt with
and quotas of people to be arrested
in each region of Russia.
• Quotas were always over fulfilled by
the NKVD, with over 800,000 from
summer 1937 to November 1938.
Scientists, historians, artists, writers,
musicians, criminals, and kulaks
formed the bulk of those repressed.
Mass Terror Accelerates
• In practice, anybody could be
arrested as an oppositionist. From
July 1937, the proportion to be shot
was fixed at 28 per cent, with the
rest being sentenced up to 10 years
hard labour – before anyone had
actually been arrested!
• A huge media campaign was started,
encouraging people to criticise party
officials, bureaucrats and managers –
to seek out ‘hidden enemies’. This
harnessed popular dissatisfaction
with officialdom.
Mass Terror Accelerates
• People were also encouraged to
denounce workers and saboteurs in
the workplace so the rest of the
population did not escape either.
• Once suspects had been arrested
and subjected to interrogation by the
NKVD, they always came up with
names of accomplices.
• Workmates, friends, family could all
find themselves arrested because
they had connections with someone
who had been accused. This is why
the terror spread so quickly.
Purging the Armed Forces
• In 1937 Stalin became convinced that
he could not trust the army to follow
orders. The leaders of the army like
Marshall Tukhachevsky were heroes of
the Civil War and difficult to intimidate.
• Stalin claimed the army was plotting to
overthrow him. Tukhachevsky and 7
other generals had confessions beaten
out of them and were then executed.
• Stalin was willing to risk wiping out his
best commanders when the prospect of
war with Nazi Germany was looming!
Who were the victims?
• Tukhachevsky, Chief of
the General Staff, and
7 other generals – all
heroes of the Civil
War.
• All 11 war commissars
and 3 out of 5
marshals.
• All navy admirals!
• All but 1 commanders
of the air force
• 35,000 officers were
shot or imprisoned.
Arrests and Interrogation
• Most arrests came at night between
11pm and 3am. NKVD officers drove
around in black vans called ‘ravens’.
• The reasons for arrest were
arbitrary: criticising Stalin, telling a
joke about Stalin, being a friend of
someone arrested.
• Interrogations then followed in
which victims were urged to confess
crimes and opposition to Stalin.
Torture was often used.
Forced Confessions
• Confessions were important. They
legitimised the arrests and proved
that the state was right, even when
there was no real evidence.
• The state prosecutor, Vyshinsky,
thought a confession written by the
accused looked more ‘voluntary’.
• Many died in prison, either shot or
dying from torture. Vans marked
‘meat’ regularly arrived at Moscow
cemeteries to deliver their loads into
mass graves.
Gulag Network
• Those who did not die were sent to
the Gulag, the network of labour
camps that infested the USSR.
• Freezing weather made life
intolerable. Relentless hard work and
inadequate food and clothing killed
many.
• Forced labour was also used on large
building projects like the White Sea
Canal, where over 100,000 died due
to appalling conditions.
End of the Terror
• Stalin halted the terror towards the end
of 1938. By this time, Yezhov had been
replaced by Beria.
• Arrests slowed down, but purges did
continue until 1939. The purges were
destabilising Russian society. Admin
systems were falling apart with key
personnel missing which harmed
industrial production.
• Stalin blamed Yezhov and the NKVD for
the excesses of the terror. In 1940, a
hitman, on Stalin’s orders murdered
Trotsky. Now all the old Bolsheviks had
been wiped out.
How many were killed?
• It is difficult to calculate as the
NKVD burned much of their archive
as the Germans approached
Moscow in 1941.
• Wheatcroft and Davis (1994) = 10
million died 1927-1938, 8.5 million
from famine.
• Dmitri Volkogonov = 7 million
executed 1929-1953, 16.5 million
imprisoned.
Robert Conquest (1990), The
Great Terror 1937-38
Arrests
7-8 million
Executions
1-1.5 million
Population of
camps
7-8 million
Died in camps
2 million
Famine
7 million
Deaths (total,
1929-53)
20 million