The terror, however, was only beginning, for the Stalinist revolution was about to embark on its bloodiest rampage of all. Hints of what was to come had emerged in the show trials of the more prominent characters who were tarred with the brush of treason, but no one could have guessed the scope of the unprecedented butchery that was to be visited on the country.
CHAPTER 2
Exterminating Internal Threats to Socialist Unity
What came to be called the Great Terror did not begin with a single order from Stalin. The terror had three interrelated sides. The first aimed mainly at political opponents, the second focused more broadly on social opposition, above all the kulaks, and the third pursued ethnic groups that might threaten inner security in the event of war. Stalin would never admit it, perhaps not even to himself, but the terror amounted to a final settling of accounts with anyone who had ever raised an eyebrow at his leadership or policies. Somewhere along the line, he concluded that his opponents would never change their minds and had to be eliminated.1
Recent studies have shown that the menacing international situation, the growing concern about the rise of fascism, the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, and the increasing threat of war influenced the purges and the terror at home. Stalin was prone to claiming that ever-present “foreign threats,” the “encirclement” of the country by enemy states, and the alleged presence of fifth columnists called for more repression. In the Great Terror, all of these allegations and wild speculations worked in tandem to produce the worst series of mass murders in Soviet history.2
STALIN’S FINAL RECKONING WITH SOCIAL AND POLITICAL OPPOSITION
Kremlin rationalizations for the terror, and especially the show trials, were printed in the press, though the stories were so far-fetched that, at this point, some people could not believe them. However, one noted and fairly representative “true believer” saw the show trials as “an expression of some far-sighted policy.” He said “that on balance Stalin was right in deciding on these terrible measures in order to discredit all forms of political opposition, once and for all. We were a besieged fortress; we had to be united, knowing neither vacillation nor doubt.”3 On the other hand, one skeptic recalled thinking they were not expected to take the stories literally. “At most we accepted the fantasies in a symbolic, allegorical sense.”4
Remarkably, the foreign press invited to the show trials generally bought into the trumped-up charges and the guilty verdicts. So did U.S. ambassador Joseph Davies, who was convinced that the conspirators, including key military leaders, had tried to carry out a coup and barely failed.5
In his concluding speech to the February–March 1937 Central Committee plenum, Stalin offered an older but trusted rationalization for the terror. After two decades of Soviet rule, why were there so many traitors, spies, and “wreckers with a party card”? Why had antiparty and anti-Soviet activities spread even into the top leadership? The answer, according to the Boss, was that the party had been focusing on economic construction, and blinded by its great successes, it had ignored warning signs and forgotten about the capitalist powers “encircling” the country.
Bukharin had mocked this “strange theory” to explain resistance in 1929, but Stalin and his disciples pulled it out often in the 1930s. Its main thesis was that the “further forward we move, the more success we will have, the greater fury we can expect from what remains of the defeated exploiting classes, the more intense will be the struggle they put up, the harder they will try to harm the Soviet state, and the more desperate they will become as they grasp at the last resort of the doomed.” These “vestiges of the defeated classes,” the “have beens,” would stop at nothing, including trying to rally the “backward elements.” Stalin called for vigilance against the ever-present threats, all the more dangerous for their links to foreign powers. His speeches on this theme were published in the press, issued as pamphlets for the education of the public, and even used in the indictments at the show trials.6
Thus it came about that Stalin began to wonder whether even the NKVD, “the avant-garde of the party,” deserved the praise it received. His new favorite Nikolai Yezhov reported on its poor leadership and led a purge of its ranks, arresting its ex-chief Genrikh Yagoda.7
On August 3, 1937, Stalin directed regional secretaries of the party “to organize, in each district of each region, two or three public show trials of enemies of the people—agricultural saboteurs” who supposedly had “wormed their way” into various party and state organizations in order to undermine operations. He and Molotov reinforced this directive on September 10 and again on October 2 with regard to specific kinds of “wrecking” in agriculture that should be pilloried. Already by December 10, Attorney General of the USSR Andrei Vyshinsky reported that 626 provincial show trials had been held. Although fewer would take place in 1938, there was a minimum of 5,612 convictions, resulting in at least 1,955 executions. These trials were meant to be publicized as part of the state’s “pedagogical” mission, and they reveal another of the many sides of the terror.8
The effects of the provincial show trials and the purges varied according to the enthusiasm of the Communist bosses. Nikita Khrushchev later would play the role of the betrayed innocent, but in 1937–38 his rampage through the Moscow party was one of the bloodiest. Posted to Ukraine in early 1938, he replaced its entire leadership and had thousands arrested and “repressed.” The two hundred members of the Ukrainian Central Committee were reduced to three. Between 1933 and 1939 in the USSR as a whole, 1.8 million were expelled from the party and 1 million new and more loyal members were recruited, whereby it became a more reliable Stalinist institution than ever.9
Stalin played a hands-on role and wanted to be informed about interrogations. At times he gave instructions regarding who should be beaten, took part in the strict wording of indictments, and even helped compose the prosecutor’s final statements.10 He pursued opponents in the Politburo and the Central Committee, which, in spite of applauding him, lost close to 70 percent of its members.11 Nor was his supposedly beloved Georgia spared. Even before the end of 1937, Lavrenti Beria, head of the NKVD there, reported that over 12,000 had been arrested and more than half of them convicted.12
Also on the agenda was a purge of the armed forces. Stalin had been alerted back in 1930 that General Mikhail Tukhachevsky, one of the leaders of the Red Army, had become the favorite of “anti-Soviet elements” among the “Rightists” in the party. The general was a no-nonsense kind of person who ruffled the less gifted political appointees, and at the time Stalin had even called him a “Napoleonchik,” the very charge once leveled against Trotsky.13 However, after the secret police did a thorough check on Tukhachevsky in 1930, Stalin seemed pleased enough to drop the matter.14 The general went on to introduce major military reforms and became a marshal of the Soviet Union. Exactly what triggered his fall in May 1937 remains in dispute.