Editing Great Purge (section)

==Background==
{{See also|Purges of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union}}
[[File:NKVD Order No. 00447.jpg|thumb|An excerpt of [[NKVD Order No. 00447]]]]

Following the [[Death and state funeral of Vladimir Lenin|death]] of [[Vladimir Lenin]] in 1924, a [[power vacuum]] opened in the Communist Party, the ruling party in the [[Soviet Union]] (USSR). Various established figures in Lenin's government attempted to succeed him. By 1928, Joseph Stalin, the party's General Secretary, had triumphed over his opponents and gained control of the party.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Joseph Stalin |url=https://www.history.com/topics/russia/joseph-stalin |access-date=2021-12-02 |website=History.com |language=en}}</ref> Initially, Stalin's leadership was widely accepted; his main political adversary, Trotsky, was forced into exile in 1929, and Stalin's doctrine of "[[socialism in one country]]" became enshrined party policy. However, in the early 1930s, party officials began to lose faith in his leadership, largely due to the human cost of the [[First five-year plan (Soviet Union)|first five-year plan]] and the [[Collective farming|collectivization of agriculture]], notably including the [[Holodomor]] famine in [[Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic|Ukraine]].

From 1930 onwards, the Party and police officials feared the "social disorder" caused by the upheavals of [[Collectivization in the Soviet Union|forced collectivization of peasants]] and the resulting [[Soviet famine of 1930–1933|famine of 1930–1933]], as well as the massive and uncontrolled migration of millions of peasants into cities. The threat of war heightened Stalin's and generally Soviet perception of marginal and politically suspect populations as the potential source of an uprising in case of invasion. Stalin began to plan for the preventive elimination of such potential recruits for a mythical "[[fifth column]] of [[wrecking (Soviet Union)|wreckers]], terrorists, and spies."<ref>Hagenloh, Paul. 2000. "Socially Harmful Elements and the Great Terror." pp. 286–307 in ''Stalinism: New Directions'', edited by [[Sheila Fitzpatrick|S. Fitzpatrick]]. London: Routledge.</ref><ref>Shearer, David. 2003. "Social Disorder, Mass Repression and the NKVD During the 1930s." pp. 85–117 in ''Stalin's Terror: High Politics and Mass Repression in the Soviet Union,'' edited by B. McLaughlin and K. McDermott. Basingstoke: [[Palgrave MacMillan]].</ref><ref name="werth" />

[[Image:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-R15068, Leo Dawidowitsch Trotzki.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Leon Trotsky]], in 1929, shortly before being driven out of the Soviet Union]]

The term "[[purge]]" in Soviet political slang was an abbreviation of the expression "purge of the Party ranks". In 1933, for example, the Party expelled some 400,000 people. But from 1936 until 1953, the term changed its meaning, because being expelled from the Party came to mean almost certain arrest, imprisonment, and often execution.

The political purge was primarily an effort by Stalin to eliminate challenge from past and potential opposition groups, including the left and right wings led by [[Leon Trotsky]] and [[Nikolai Bukharin]], respectively. Following the [[Russian Civil War|Civil War]] and reconstruction of the Soviet economy in the late 1920s, veteran Bolsheviks no longer thought necessary the "temporary" wartime dictatorship, which had passed from Lenin to Stalin. Stalin's opponents inside the Communist Party chided him as undemocratic and lax on bureaucratic corruption.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.marxists.org/history/ussr/events/terror/index.htm|title=Great Terror|website=www.marxists.org}}</ref>

This opposition to then-current leadership may have accumulated substantial support among the working class by attacking the privileges and luxuries the state offered to its high-paid elite. The [[Ryutin affair]] seemed to vindicate Stalin's suspicions. [[Martemyan Ryutin|Ryutin]] was working with the even larger secret [[Bloc of Soviet Oppositions|Opposition Bloc]] in which [[Leon Trotsky]] and [[Grigory Zinoviev]] participated,<ref name=":2">{{cite web|last=Broué|first=Pierre|title=The 'Bloc' of the Oppositions against Stalin (January 1980)|url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/broue/1980/01/bloc.html|access-date=2020-12-19|website=www.marxists.org}}</ref><ref>{{citation|last=Kotkin|first=Stephen|title=Stalin: Paradoxes of Power 1878–1928}}</ref> and which later led to both of their deaths. Stalin enforced a ban on party [[political faction|factions]] and demoted those party members who had opposed him, effectively ending [[democratic centralism]].

In the new form of Party organization, the Politburo, and Stalin in particular, were the sole dispensers of ideology. This required the elimination of all Marxists with different views, especially those among the prestigious "old guard" of revolutionaries. As the purges began, the government (through the NKVD) shot Bolshevik heroes, including [[Mikhail Tukhachevsky]] and [[Béla Kun]], as well as the majority of Lenin's Politburo, for disagreements in policy. The NKVD attacked the supporters, friends, and family of these "heretical" Marxists, whether they lived in Russia or not. The NKVD nearly annihilated Trotsky's family before [[Leon Trotsky#Assassination|killing]] him in Mexico; the NKVD agent [[Ramón Mercader]] was part of an assassination task force put together by Special Agent [[Pavel Sudoplatov]], under the personal orders of Stalin.{{sfn|Andrew|Mitrokhin|2000|pp=86–87}}

[[Image:Sergei Kirov and Joseph Stalin, 1934.jpg|thumb|[[Saint Petersburg|Leningrad]] party leader [[Sergey Kirov|Sergei Kirov]] with [[Joseph Stalin|Stalin]] (and his daughter [[Svetlana Alliluyeva|Svetlana]]) in 1934]]

By 1934, several of Stalin's rivals, such as Trotsky, began calling for Stalin's removal and attempted to break his control over the party.<ref>{{Cite web |date=12 September 2018 |title=Trotsky's Struggle against Stalin |url=https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/trotskys-struggle-against-stalin |access-date=2022-08-22 |website=The National WWII Museum {{!}} New Orleans |language=en}}</ref> In this atmosphere of doubt and suspicion, the popular high-ranking official [[Sergei Kirov]] was [[Assassination of Sergei Kirov|assassinated]]. The assassination, in December 1934, led to an investigation that revealed a network of party members supposedly working against Stalin, including several of Stalin's rivals.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Who Killed Kirov? 'The Crime of the Century' |url=https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/who-killed-kirov-the-crime-the-century |access-date=2021-12-03 |website=www.wilsoncenter.org |language=en}}</ref> Many of those arrested after Kirov's murder, high-ranking party officials among them, also confessed plans to kill Stalin themselves, albeit often under duress.<ref>{{Cite book |last=People's Comissariat of Justice of the U.S.S.R. |url=https://www.amazon.com/Anti-Soviet-Trotskyites-Military-Collegium-Verbatim/dp/B0711N78KN |title=Anti-Soviet 'Bloc of Rights and Trotskyites' Heard before the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the U.S.S.R., Verbatim Report |publisher=People's Comissariat of Justice of the U.S.S.R. |year=1938 |asin=B0711N78KN}}</ref> The validity of these confessions is debated by historians, but there is consensus that Kirov's death was the flashpoint at which Stalin decided to take action and begin the purges.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Knight |first=Amy |title=Who Killed Kirov |publisher=Hill & Wang |year=1999}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last1=Getty |first1=John Arch |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=R5zx54LB-A4C |title=Origins of the Great Purges: The Soviet Communist Party Reconsidered, 1933–1938 |last2=Getty |first2=John Archibald |publisher=Cambridge University Press |year=1987 |isbn=978-0521335706 |language=en}}</ref> Some later historians came to believe that Stalin arranged the murder, or at least that there was sufficient evidence to reach such a conclusion.{{sfn|Conquest|1987|pp=122–138}} Kirov was a staunch Stalin loyalist, but Stalin may have viewed him as a potential rival because of his emerging popularity among the moderates. The [[17th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)|1934 Party Congress]] elected Kirov to the central committee with only three votes against, the fewest of any candidate, while Stalin received 292 votes against. After Kirov's assassination, the NKVD charged the ever-growing group of former oppositionists with Kirov's murder as well as a growing list of other offenses, including treason, terrorism, sabotage, and espionage.

Another justification for the purge was to remove any possible "fifth column" in case of a war. [[Vyacheslav Molotov]] and [[Lazar Kaganovich]], participants in the repression as members of the Politburo, maintained this justification throughout the purge; they each signed many death lists.{{sfn|Figes|2007|p=239}} Stalin believed war was imminent, threatened both by an explicitly hostile Germany and an expansionist Japan. The Soviet press portrayed the country as threatened from within by fascist spies.{{sfn|Conquest|1987|pp=122–138}}

From the [[October Revolution]]{{sfn|Gellately|2007}} onward,<ref>Robert Gellately, ''Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe'', 2007, Knopf, 720 pp. {{ISBN|1400040051}}</ref> Lenin had used repression against perceived and legitimate enemies of the Bolsheviks as a systematic method of instilling fear and facilitating control over the population in a campaign called the [[Red Terror]]. As the Russian Civil War drew to a close, this campaign was relaxed although the secret police did remain active. From 1924 to 1928, the mass repression—including incarceration in the Gulag system—dropped significantly.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Gulag History, Structure and Size: A View From the Secret Archives |url=https://uh.edu/~vlazarev/4389/Gulag-Gregory.htm |access-date=2022-08-24 |website=uh.edu}}</ref>

By 1929, Stalin had defeated his political opponents and gained full control over the party. He organized a committee to begin the process of industrialization of the Soviet Union. Backlash against industrialization and the collectivization of agriculture escalated, which prompted Stalin to increase police presence in rural areas. Soviet authorities increased repression against the kulaks (i.e., wealthy peasants that owned farmland) in a policy called [[dekulakization]]. The kulaks responded by destroying crop yields and other acts of sabotage against the Soviet government.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2015-10-07 |title=The First Five Year Plan, 1928–1932 |url=https://uwaterloo.ca/library/special-collections-archives/first-five-year-plan |access-date=2022-08-24 |website=Special Collections & Archives |language=en}}</ref> The food shortage led to a mass famine across the USSR and slowed the Five Year Plan.

A distinctive feature of the Great Purge was that, for the first time, members of the ruling party were included on a massive scale as victims of the repression. In addition to ordinary citizens, prominent members of the Communist Party were also targets for the purges.{{sfn|McLoughlin|McDermott|2002|p=6}} The purge of the Party was accompanied by the purge of the whole society. Soviet historians organize the Great Purge into three corresponding trials. The following events are used for the demarcation of the period:
* 1936, the [[Moscow trials#The "Anti-Soviet Trotskyist Center"|first Moscow trial]].
* 1937, introduction of [[NKVD troika]]s for implementation of "revolutionary justice."
* 1937, passage of Article 58-14 about "counter-revolutionary sabotage."
* 1937, the [[Moscow trials#The "Parallel anti-Soviet Trotskyist Center"|second Moscow trial]].
* 1937, the military purge.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Harward |first=Grant |date=2016-07-02 |title=Whitewood, Peter, ''The Red Army and the Great Terror: Stalin's Purge of the Soviet Military'' |url=http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13518046.2016.1200397 |journal=The Journal of Slavic Military Studies |volume=29 |issue=3 |pages=524–526 |doi=10.1080/13518046.2016.1200397 |s2cid=151381912 |issn=1351-8046}}</ref>
* 1938, the [[Case of the Anti-Soviet "Bloc of Rightists and Trotskyites"|third Moscow trial]].