purge

Removal (for example, from a political party) of suspected opponents or persons regarded as undesirable (often by violent means). During the 1930s purges were conducted in the USSR under Joseph Stalin, carried out by the secret police against political opponents, Communist Party members, minorities, civil servants, and large sections of the armed forces' officer corps. Some 10 million people were executed or deported to labour camps from 1934 to 1938.

In 1934 the Nazis carried out a purge of their party and a number of party leaders were executed for an alleged plot against Adolf Hitler. Later purges include communist purges in Hungary in 1949, Czechoslovakia in 1951, and China in 1955.

Soviet purges and show trials When the Bolshevik leader Lenin died in 1924, he left behind a document detailing his opinions concerning the men most likely to succeed him as leader of the USSR. ‘Lenin's Testament’ contained stinging criticisms of Josef Stalin, general secretary of the Communist Party, including that Stalin was a dangerous man and should be removed from office, that he was rude to other party leaders and members, and that he was ruthlessly ambitious, putting his own needs before those of the party and the country. In the 1930s the purges and show trials under Stalin's rule made many view Lenin's opinions as justified.

Stalin managed to have Lenin's Testament suppressed during the power struggle that followed Lenin's death. Leading Bolsheviks such as Grigory Zinovyev, Nicolai Bukharin, and Lev Kamenev, who were to be condemned to death by Stalin in the 1930s, were manipulated by Stalin to support his rise to power in the mid-1920s. Using his authority as general secretary, Stalin filled the party with his followers, appointing only those loyal to him to positions of power and influence.

Both Kamenev and Zinovyev were dismissed after aligning with Stalin's main rival, Leon Trotsky, against Stalin's New Economic Policy (NEP), which reinstated limited free-market trading – NEP supporters such as Bukharin and Aleksey Rykov were used to oust them. By 1928 Stalin was close to gaining absolute power over the USSR, and had Trotsky exiled in 1929. However, Stalin remained fearful and often paranoid about his hold over the leadership. When his own position on NEP shifted between 1926 and 1928, to the Trotskyite idea of five-year plans and rapid state-controlled modernization, Bukharin and Rykov were removed for having previously supported NEP. Thus, even before the purges and show trials of the 1930s, Stalin demonstrated his capacity to be ruthless and manipulative in his pursuit of personal power.

The period of widespread purges began after the murder of the Communist Party leader Sergei Kirov in Leningrad in 1934. Although Stalin attended the funeral and walked sombrely behind the coffin, it was widely believed that he was responsible for the murder; Nikita Khrushchev, who became leader of the USSR after Stalin's death in 1953, made a public statement to that effect in 1956. However, the accusation has never been proved by documentary evidence. Following the murder of Kirov, Stalin launched a purge of any Communist Party officials whom he suspected of plotting against Kirov and, by extension, himself. The purge quickly became Stalin's chief means of destroying his perceived enemies within the party, and a device to subjugate the people of the USSR with fear.

At the highest levels of the Communist Party Stalin eliminated any possible opposition to his rule among the ‘old guard’ of Bolsheviks who had been in the party since the time of Lenin. In 1934 a new Central Committee was elected; as the highest body in the party, Stalin needed its support to rule the country. Between 1934 and 1939 Stalin had over 100 of its members executed, usually after public show trials, where they ‘confessed’ to crimes that were often ludicrous and impossible. At the same time the higher ranks of the Red Army were purged. At least 70 members of the Supreme Military Council were executed and many others were sent to the gulags, remote prison and labour camps where 90% of inmates died.

Leading party figures such as Kamenev, Zinoviev, and Bukharin were tried and executed during the notorious show trials of 1936–38 – mass trials of groups of party officials. The accused were broken with months of torture and threats to their families, and forced to confess to treasonable activities with the capitalists, or Germany, or Trotsky, or all three. Shadowy organizations such as the ‘Bloc of Rights’ and the ‘Trotskyites’ were quoted by the prosecutor to demonstrate the organized nature of their conspiracies to overthrow Stalin and the Communist Party. Stalin used Andrei Vyshinsky, commissar of justice, as prosecutor at the show trials; a loyal supporter, Vyshinsky could be relied upon to produce the correct verdict. By the end of the trials in 1938, Stalin's grip over the party was complete.

Along with the purges and show trials of eminent Communist officials, a reign of terror spread across the USSR, as over 10 million Soviet citizens became victims of Stalin's paranoia. Stalin used the NKVD secret police to terrorize the nation. Lists were drawn up centrally giving a quota of arrests for each region, and Stalin would often adjust these quotas upwards by thousands. Anyone could be arrested for perceived association with other purged people, whether through family ties or political relations. Many were arrested for speaking out against Stalin or the purges, and ten-year prison sentences in the gulags were given to millions of people. Communist Party members suffered the greatest risk – by 1939 over one-third of all party members had been purged. As a result of the purges, Stalin created such a climate of fear within the USSR that his rule was unquestioned and secure.