Editing Stalinism (section)

=== Purges and executions ===
{{Main|Great Purge|Case of the Anti-Soviet "Bloc of Rightists and Trotskyites"|Case of the Trotskyist Anti-Soviet Military Organization|Sandarmokh|1937 mass execution of Belarusians|Vinnytsia massacre|1941 Red Army Purge|Leningrad case| Polish Operation of the NKVD|Katyn massacre|Case of the Union of Liberation of Belarus|NKVD prisoner massacres|Estonian Operation of the NKVD|Metro-Vickers Affair|Latvian Operation of the NKVD|Stalin's shooting lists|Finnish Operation of the NKVD}}
{{multiple image|align=right|direction=horizontal|width=100|image1=Execute 346 Berias letter to Politburo.jpg|caption1=|image2=Execute 346 Stalins resolution.jpg|caption2=|image3=Execute 346 Politburo passes.jpg|footer=Left: [[Lavrenty Beria]]'s January 1940 letter to Stalin asking permission to execute 346 "[[Enemy of the people|enemies of the Communist Party and of the Soviet authorities]]" who conducted "counter-revolutionary, right-Trotskyite plotting and spying activities"<br />Middle: Stalin's handwriting: "за" (support)<br />Right: the [[Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union|Politburo]]'s decision is signed by Stalin}}
As head of the [[Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union]], Stalin consolidated nearly absolute power in the 1930s with a Great Purge of the party that claimed to expel "opportunists" and "counter-revolutionary infiltrators".<ref name="Figes">[[Orlando Figes|Figes, Orlando]]. 2007. ''The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russia''. {{ISBN|0-8050-7461-9}}.</ref>{{sfn|Gellately|2007}} Those targeted by the purge were often expelled from the party; more severe measures ranged from banishment to the [[Gulag#Formation and expansion under Stalin|Gulag labor camps]] to execution after trials held by [[NKVD troika]]s.<ref name="Figes" /><ref>[[Ian Kershaw|Kershaw, Ian]], and [[Moshe Lewin]]. 1997. ''Stalinism and Nazism: Dictatorships in Comparison''. Cambridge: [[Cambridge University Press]]. {{ISBN|0-521-56521-9}}. p. 300.</ref><ref>[[Leo Kuper|Kuper, Leo]]. 1982. ''Genocide: Its Political Use in the Twentieth Century''. [[Yale University Press]]. {{ISBN|0-300-03120-3}}.</ref>

In the 1930s, Stalin became increasingly worried about Leningrad party head [[Sergei Kirov]]'s growing popularity. At the [[17th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)|1934 Party Congress]], where the vote for the new Central Committee was held, Kirov received only three negative votes (the fewest of any candidate), while Stalin received over 100.{{sfn|Brackman|2001|p=204}}<ref group="lower-roman">An exact number of negative votes is unknown. In his memoirs, [[Anastas Mikoyan]] writes that out of 1,225 delegates, around 270 voted against Stalin and that the official number of negative votes was given as three, with the rest of ballots destroyed. Following [[Nikita Khrushchev]]'s "[[On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences|Secret Speech]]" in 1956, a commission of the central committee investigated the votes and found that 267 ballots were missing.</ref> After Kirov's assassination, which Stalin may have orchestrated, Stalin invented a detailed scheme to implicate opposition leaders in the murder, including Trotsky, [[Lev Kamenev]], and [[Grigory Zinoviev]].{{sfn|Brackman|2001|pp=205–206}} Thereafter, the investigations and trials expanded.{{sfn|Brackman|2001|p=207}} Stalin passed a new law on "terrorist organizations and terrorist acts" that were to be investigated for no more than ten days, with no prosecution, defense attorneys, or appeals, followed by a sentence to be imposed "quickly."{{sfn|Overy|2004|p=182}} Stalin's Politburo also issued directives on quotas for mass arrests and executions.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Harris |first1=James |title=The Anatomy of Terror: Political Violence under Stalin |date=11 July 2013 |publisher=OUP Oxford |isbn=978-0-19-965566-3 |page=15 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8190eftcnDwC&dq=Stalin+quotas+police&pg=PA15 |language=en}}</ref> Under Stalin, the [[death penalty]] was extended to adolescents as young as 12 years old in 1935.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Mccauley |first1=Martin |title=Stalin and Stalinism: Revised 3rd Edition |date=13 September 2013 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-317-86369-4 |page=49 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=oQ7dAAAAQBAJ&dq=stalin+death+penalty+12+years+old&pg=PA49 |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Wright |first1=Patrick |title=Iron Curtain: From Stage to Cold War |date=28 October 2009 |publisher=OUP Oxford |isbn=978-0-19-162284-7 |page=342 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Ps5wZUFnE7IC&dq=stalin+death+penalty+12+years+old&pg=PA342 |language=en}}</ref>{{sfn|Boobbyer|2000|p=160}}

After that, several trials, known as the [[Moscow Trials]], were held, but the procedures were replicated throughout the country. [[Article 58 (RSFSR Penal Code)|Article 58]] of the legal code, which listed prohibited [[Anti-Sovietism|anti-Soviet activities]] as a counter-revolutionary crime, was applied most broadly.{{sfn|Tucker|1992|p=456}} Many alleged anti-Soviet pretexts were used to brand individuals as "enemies of the people", starting the cycle of public persecution, often proceeding to interrogation, torture, and deportation, if not death. The Russian word [[:wikt:troika|''troika'']] thereby gained a new meaning: a quick, simplified trial by a committee of three subordinated to the NKVD troika—with sentencing carried out within 24 hours.{{sfn|Overy|2004|p=182}} Stalin's hand-picked [[executioner]] [[Vasili Blokhin]] was entrusted with carrying out some of the high-profile executions in this period.<ref>[[Timothy Snyder|Snyder, Timothy]]. ''Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin.'' [[Basic Books]], 2010. {{ISBN|0-465-00239-0}} p. 137.</ref>{{multiple image
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| caption2          = [[Nikolai Yezhov]], shown walking with Stalin in the top photo from the 1930s, was killed in 1940 and following his execution was edited out of the photo by Soviet censors<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.newseum.org/berlinwall/commissar_vanishes/vanishes.htm|title=Newseum: The Commissar Vanishes|access-date=July 19, 2008|archive-date=June 11, 2008|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080611034558/http://www.newseum.org/berlinwall/commissar_vanishes/vanishes.htm|url-status=dead}}</ref> (such retouching was a common occurrence during Stalin's rule)
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Many military leaders were convicted of treason, and a large-scale purge of [[Red Army]] officers followed.<ref group="lower-roman">The scale of Stalin's purge of [[Red Army]] officers was exceptional—90% of all generals and 80% of all colonels were killed. This included three out of five Marshals; 13 out of 15 Army commanders; 57 of 85 Corps commanders; 110 of 195 divisional commanders; and 220 of 406 brigade commanders, as well as all commanders of military districts.{{citation needed|date=October 2020}}

Carell, P. [1964] 1974. ''Hitler's War on Russia: The Story of the German Defeat in the East''  (first Indian ed.), translated by [[Ewald Osers|E. Osers]]. Delhi: B.I. Publications. p. 195.</ref> The repression of many formerly high-ranking revolutionaries and party members led Trotsky to claim that a "river of blood" separated Stalin's regime from Lenin's.<ref>[[Robert C. Tucker|Tucker, Robert C.]] 1999. ''Stalinism: Essays in Historical Interpretation'',  (''[[American Council of Learned Societies]] Planning Group on Comparative Communist'' Studies). [[Transaction Publishers]]. {{ISBN|0-7658-0483-2}}. p. 5.</ref> In August 1940, Trotsky was assassinated in Mexico, where he had lived in exile since January 1937. This eliminated the last of Stalin's opponents among the former Party leadership.{{sfn|Overy|2004|p=338}}

[[Mass operations of the NKVD]] also targeted "national contingents" (foreign ethnicities) such as [[Polish people|Poles]], [[ethnic Germans]], and [[Koreans]]. A total of 350,000 (144,000 of them Poles) were arrested and 247,157 (110,000 Poles) were executed.{{sfn|Montefiore|2004|p=229}} Many Americans who had emigrated to the Soviet Union during the worst of the [[Great Depression]] were executed, while others were sent to prison camps or gulags.<ref>Tzouliadis, Tim. August 2, 2008.) "[http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_7537000/7537585.stm Nightmare in the workers paradise]." [[BBC]].</ref><ref>Tzouliadis, Tim. 2008. ''The Forsaken: An American Tragedy in Stalin's Russia''. [[Penguin Press]], {{ISBN|1-59420-168-4}}.</ref> Concurrent with the purges, efforts were made to rewrite the history in Soviet textbooks and other propaganda materials. Notable people executed by [[NKVD]] were removed from the texts and photographs as though they had never existed.

In light of revelations from Soviet archives, historians now estimate that nearly 700,000 people (353,074 in 1937 and 328,612 in 1938) were executed in the course of the terror,<ref>{{cite book|editor=McLoughlin, Barry|editor2=McDermott, Kevin|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8yorTJl1QEoC&pg=PA141|title=Stalin's Terror: High Politics and Mass Repression in the Soviet Union|publisher=[[Palgrave Macmillan]]|year=2002|isbn=978-1-4039-0119-4|page=141}}</ref> the great mass of them ordinary Soviet citizens: workers, peasants, homemakers, teachers, priests, musicians, soldiers, pensioners, ballerinas, and beggars.<ref>{{cite book|editor=McLoughlin, Barry|editor2=McDermott, Kevin|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8yorTJl1QEoC&pg=PA6|title=Stalin's Terror: High Politics and Mass Repression in the Soviet Union|publisher=[[Palgrave Macmillan]]|year=2002|isbn=978-1-4039-0119-4|page=6}}</ref><ref name=":1">Kuromiya, Hiroaki. 2007. ''The Voices of the Dead: Stalin's Great Terror in the 1930s.'' [[Yale University Press]]. {{ISBN|0-300-12389-2}}.</ref>{{Rp|4}} Scholars estimate the total death toll for the Great Purge (1936–1938) including fatalities attributed to imprisonment to be roughly 700,000-1.2 million.<ref>{{Citation |title=Introduction: the Great Purges as history |date=1985 |url=http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511572616.002 |work=Origins of the Great Purges |pages=1–9 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |doi=10.1017/cbo9780511572616.002 |isbn=978-0-521-25921-7 |access-date=2021-12-02}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|last=Homkes|first=Brett|date=2004|title=Certainty, Probability, and Stalin's Great Purge|url=https://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1032&context=mcnair|journal=McNair Scholars Journal}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Ellman |first1=Michael |title=Soviet Repression Statistics: Some Comments |journal=Europe-Asia Studies |date=2002 |volume=54 |issue=7 |pages=1151–1172 |doi=10.1080/0966813022000017177 |jstor=826310 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/826310 |issn=0966-8136}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Shearer |first1=David R. |title=Stalin and War, 1918–1953: Patterns of Repression, Mobilization, and External Threat |date=11 September 2023 |publisher=Taylor & Francis |isbn=978-1-00-095544-6 |page=vii |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=CCHMEAAAQBAJ&dq=great+purge+1.2+million&pg=PR7 |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Nelson |first1=Todd H. |title=Bringing Stalin Back In: Memory Politics and the Creation of a Useable Past in Putin's Russia |date=16 October 2019 |publisher=Rowman & Littlefield |isbn=978-1-4985-9153-9 |page=7 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=oJGyDwAAQBAJ&dq=stalin+great+purge+1.2+million&pg=PA7 |language=en}}</ref> Many of the executed were interred in [[Mass graves from Soviet mass executions|mass graves]], with some significant killing and burial sites being [[Bykivnia]], [[Kurapaty]], and [[Butovo firing range|Butovo]].<ref>[[Timothy Snyder|Snyder, Timothy]] (2010) ''Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin.'' [[Basic Books]], {{ISBN|0-465-00239-0}} p. 101.</ref>
Some Western experts believe the evidence released from the Soviet archives is understated, incomplete or unreliable.<ref>{{cite journal|author=Rosefielde, Stephen|url=http://sovietinfo.tripod.com/RSF-New_Evidence.pdf|title=Stalinism in Post-Communist Perspective: New Evidence on Killings, Forced Labour and Economic Growth in the 1930s|journal=Europe-Asia Studies|volume= 48|issue= 6|year= 1996|doi=10.1080/09668139608412393|page=959}}</ref><ref>[http://sovietinfo.tripod.com/CNQ-Comments_WCR.pdf Comment on Wheatcroft] by [[Robert Conquest]], 1999.</ref><ref>Pipes, Richard (2003) ''Communism: A History (Modern Library Chronicles)'', p. 67. {{ISBN|0-8129-6864-6}}.</ref>{{sfn|Applebaum|2003|p=584}}<ref>{{cite journal|author=Keep, John|year=1997|doi=10.4000/chs.1014|journal= Crime, Histoire & Sociétés|title=Recent Writing on Stalin's Gulag: An Overview|pages=91–112|volume= 1|issue=2|doi-access=free}}</ref> Conversely, historian [[Stephen G. Wheatcroft]], who spent much of his career researching the archives, contends that, before the collapse of the Soviet Union and the opening of the archives for historical research, "our understanding of the scale and the nature of Soviet repression has been extremely poor" and that some specialists who wish to maintain earlier high estimates of the Stalinist death toll are "finding it difficult to adapt to the new circumstances when the archives are open and when there are plenty of irrefutable data" and instead "hang on to their old [[Sovietologist|Sovietological]] methods with round-about calculations based on odd statements from emigres and other informants who are supposed to have superior knowledge."<ref>{{cite journal|last=Wheatcroft|first=S. G.|author-link=Stephen G. Wheatcroft|year=1996|title=The Scale and Nature of German and Soviet Repression and Mass Killings, 1930–45|url=http://sovietinfo.tripod.com/WCR-German_Soviet.pdf|journal=[[Europe-Asia Studies]]|volume=48|issue=8|pages=1319–53|doi=10.1080/09668139608412415|jstor=152781}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal|author=Wheatcroft, S. G.|s2cid=205667754|year=2000|title=The Scale and Nature of Stalinist Repression and its Demographic Significance: On Comments by Keep and Conquest|url=http://sovietinfo.tripod.com/WCR-Comments_KEP_CNQ.pdf|journal=Europe-Asia Studies|volume=52|issue=6|pages=1143–59|doi=10.1080/09668130050143860|pmid=19326595}}</ref>

Stalin personally signed 357 [[proscription]] lists in 1937 and 1938 that condemned 40,000 people to execution, about 90% of whom are confirmed to have been shot.<ref name="Ellman">{{cite journal|author=Ellman, Michael|s2cid=53655536|year=2007|title=Stalin and the Soviet Famine of 1932–33 Revisited|url=http://www.paulbogdanor.com/left/soviet/famine/ellman1933.pdf|journal=Europe-Asia Studies|volume=59|issue=4|pages=663–93|doi=10.1080/09668130701291899|access-date=April 6, 2014|archive-date=October 14, 2007|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071014232729/http://www1.fee.uva.nl/pp/mjellman/|url-status=dead}}</ref> While reviewing one such list, he reportedly muttered to no one in particular: "Who's going to remember all this riff-raff in ten or twenty years? No one. Who remembers the names now of the [[boyar]]s [[Ivan the Terrible]] got rid of? No one."<ref>[[Dmitri Volkogonov|Volkogonov, Dmitri]]. 1991. ''Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy''. New York. p. 210. {{ISBN|0-7615-0718-3}}.</ref> In addition, Stalin dispatched a contingent of NKVD operatives to [[Mongolian People's Republic|Mongolia]], established a Mongolian version of the NKVD ''troika'', and unleashed a [[Stalinist repressions in Mongolia|bloody purge]] in which tens of thousands were executed as "Japanese spies", as Mongolian ruler [[Khorloogiin Choibalsan]] closely followed Stalin's lead.<ref name=":1" />{{Rp|2}} Stalin had ordered for 100,000 [[Buddhist]] [[lama]]s in Mongolia to be liquidated but the political leader [[Peljidiin Genden]] resisted the order.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Baabar |first1=Bat-Ėrdėniĭn |title=History of Mongolia |date=1999 |publisher=Monsudar Pub. |isbn=978-99929-0-038-3 |page=322 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xXxxAAAAMAAJ |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Kotkin |first1=Stephen |last2=Elleman |first2=Bruce Allen |title=Mongolia in the Twentieth Century |date=12 February 2015 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-317-46010-7 |page=112 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FWmmBgAAQBAJ&dq=stalin+100,000+order+mongolia&pg=PA112 |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Dashpu̇rėv |first1=Danzankhorloogiĭn |last2=Soni |first2=Sharad Kumar |title=Reign of Terror in Mongolia, 1920–1990 |date=1992 |publisher=South Asian Publishers |isbn=978-1-881318-15-6 |page=44 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Aw4cAAAAIAAJ&q=stalin+100,000+order+mongolia |language=en}}</ref>

Under Stalinist influence in the [[Mongolian People's Republic]], an estimated 17,000 monks were killed, official figures show.<ref name="reuters">{{cite news |last=Thomas |first=Natalie |date=2018-06-04 |title=Young monks lead revival of Buddhism in Mongolia after years of repression. |url=https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-mongolia-monks-idUKKCN1J104O |work=Reuters. |access-date=2023-07-06}}</ref> Stalinist forces also oversaw purges of anti-Stalinist elements among the Spanish Republican insurgents, including the [[Trotskyist]] allied [[POUM]] faction and [[anarchist]] groups, during the [[Spanish Civil War]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Sakwa |first1=Richard |title=Soviet Politics: In Perspective |date=12 November 2012 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-134-90996-4 |page=43 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=SQSiM2vPO54C&dq=spanish+civil+war+stalin+purged+nin&pg=PA43 |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Whitehead |first1=Jonathan |title=The End of the Spanish Civil War: Alicante 1939 |date=4 April 2024 |publisher=Pen and Sword History |isbn=978-1-399-06395-1 |page=81 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=7aLsEAAAQBAJ&dq=andreu+nin+stalin+purges&pg=PA81 |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Service |first1=Robert |title=Comrades!: A History of World Communism |date=2007 |publisher=Harvard University Press |isbn=978-0-674-02530-1 |page=212 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Frgm5QodnFoC&dq=andreu+nin+stalin+purged&pg=PA211 |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Kocho-Williams |first1=Alastair |title=Russia's International Relations in the Twentieth Century |date=4 January 2013 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-136-15747-9 |page=60 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Vu2kOJbrCuMC&dq=spanish+civil+war+stalin+purged+nin&pg=PA61 |language=en}}</ref>

During the 1930s and 1940s, the Soviet leadership sent NKVD squads into other countries to murder defectors and opponents of the Soviet regime. Victims of such plots included Trotsky, [[Yevhen Konovalets]], [[Ignace Poretsky]], Rudolf Klement, [[Alexander Kutepov]], [[Evgeny Miller]], and the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification ([[POUM]]) leadership in Catalonia (e.g., [[Andreu Nin Pérez|Andréu Nin Pérez]]).<ref>{{cite journal|author=Ellman, Michael|s2cid=13880089|year=2005|url=http://www.paulbogdanor.com/left/soviet/famine/ellman.pdf|title=The Role of Leadership Perceptions and of Intent in the Soviet Famine of 1931–1934|journal=Europe-Asia Studies|page=826|volume=57|issue=6|doi=10.1080/09668130500199392|access-date=April 6, 2014|archive-date=February 27, 2009|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090227181110/http://www.paulbogdanor.com/left/soviet/famine/ellman.pdf|url-status=dead}}</ref> [[Joseph Berger-Barzilai]], co-founder of the [[Communist Party of Palestine]], spent twenty five years in Stalin's prisons and concentrations camps after the purges in 1937.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Deutscher |first1=Isaac |title=The Prophet: The Life of Leon Trotsky |date=5 January 2015 |publisher=Verso Books |isbn=978-1-78168-721-5 |page=1443|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YGznDwAAQBAJ&q=isaac+deutscher+trotsky+the+prophet |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Wasserstein |first1=Bernard |title=On the Eve: The Jews of Europe Before the Second World War |date=May 2012 |publisher=Simon and Schuster |isbn=978-1-4165-9427-7 |page=395 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HJSQZJKHX_8C&dq=Joseph+Berger-Barzilai+purge&pg=PA395 |language=en}}</ref>