Impacts of the Great Terror
"The work of the mass Purge had been done. The country was crushed."
-Robert Conquest, author of The Great Terror: A Reassessment
The Great Terror's Impact on World War II
By the end of the Great Terror in 1939, Joseph Stalin and the NKVD had liquidated more than one million Party members, in addition to thirty-five thousand high-ranking military officers, which, while solidifying Stalin's control of the Soviet Union, negatively impacted the functioning and performance of the government and military on the eve of World War II.
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"There is...no doubt that our march forward toward socialism and toward the preparation of the country’s defense would have been much more successful were it not for the tremendous loss in the cadres suffered as a result of the [Great Terror]." "His own purge of the Red Army...left few people to take charge and command. Most of the leaders of the Red Army who had perished had been the only people with great military training and war experience. Therefore immediate defense was not possible. The army had to pull back until they could step up and defend the Motherland." -Kelley Hassan, history major at Lourdes College |
The Great Terror's Impact on Soviet Industry
Economic growth slowed, trains failed to run, inventions and innovations related to science and technology were halted, and industry, literature, art, and music were stifled as a result of the Great Terror.
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"Due to the numerous arrests of Party, Soviet and economic leaders, many workers began to work uncertainly, showed overcautiousness, feared all which was new, feared their own shadows, and began to show less initiative in their work." |
The Great Terror's Impact on International Perception
The atrocities of the Great Terror negatively impacted the international perception of Stalinist leadership, leading to many individuals worldwide abandoning their support for the communist movement.
"For Russians, the Soviet experience has killed...the idea of Utopia- or at least of one that could be built on Earth, by constructing a more just and fair human society." -Adam Hochschild, author of The Unquiet Ghost: Russians Remember Stalin |
"When the news of the Great Terror reached the west, thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of people, recoiled in horror before the ideas of socialism. Under other circumstances, they would have been prepared to take part in the communist movement, the greatest international political movement in world history. But they were repulsed by what they saw and the ideas of socialism became discredited in their eyes." -University of Melbourne Professor Vadim Rogovin "...I so much wanted there to be somewhere, somewhere in the world, where they would do everything right." |