The Purges
"...successive purges of various sectors of society ensured slavish obedience to the 'great leader' Stalin."
-David McGill, historian
Process of the Great Terror
During the Great Terror, Joseph Stalin liquidated millions of presumed, though often innocent, political opponents.
"A tailor laying aside his needle stuck it into a newspaper on the wall so it wouldn't get lost and happened to stick it in the eye of a portrait of [Lazar] Kaganovich. A customer observed this. Article 58, ten years. A saleswoman accepting merchandise from a forwarder noted it down on a sheet of newspaper. There was no other paper. The number of pieces of soap happened to fall on the forehead of Comrade Stalin. Article 58, ten years." -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, author of The Gulag Archipelago Video from WPA Film Library.
"Fear enveloped everyone, no one could say anything openly. People were vigilant so that nobody would report on them. The fear was so great that it's still in our blood to this day." -Vladimir Besleaga, Moldovan writer |
"A society that is intense in its struggle for change has a flip side to its idealism: intolerance. People saw enemies everywhere, enemies who wanted to destroy the revolution and diminish the results of their hard work and accomplishments, enemies who wanted to restore capitalism for selfish reasons against the collective interests of the nation...In factories and offices, mass meetings were held in which people were urged to be vigilant against sabotage. It was up to common folks to make the distinction between incompetence and intentional wrecking, and any mishap might be blamed on wrecking. Denunciations became common. Neighbors denounced neighbors. Denunciations were a good way of striking against people one did not like, including one's parents, a way of eliminating people blocking one's promotion, and...a means of proving one's patriotism. Many realized that some innocent people were being victimized..." |
"Any adult inhabitant of this country, from a collective farmer up to a member of the Politburo, always knew that it would take only one careless word or gesture and he would fly off irrevocably into the abyss."
-Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, author of The Gulag Archipelago
Arbitrariness of the Great Terror
In these arrests and executions, many individuals were subjected to cruel and inhuman torture methods, being sentenced to decades of hard labor in extreme conditions for absurdly minor infractions.
"I have not been guilty of even one of the things with which I am charged and my heart is clean of even the shadow of baseness. I have never in my life told you a word of falsehood, and now, finding both feet in the grave, I am still not lying. My whole case is a typical example of provocation, slander and violation of the elementary basis of revolutionary legality...I have never betrayed you or the Party. I know that I perish because of vile and mean work of enemies of the Party and of the people, who have fabricated the provocation against me." -Robert Eikhe, in his pre-execution declaration, October 27, 1939 Video from WPA Film Library.
Click on the image below to enlarge.
"I think that the devil helps him." |
"'Enemy of the people' was a new concept that Stalin created. In doing so, he found a way to make even the innocent seem guilty. Any innocent person, member of the party or not, that Stalin wanted to purge, could be found guilty as an 'enemy of the people' without any explanation. They were physically tortured...to gain confessions, especially those of the innocent. It was a device that was used to allow Stalin to rid the party and all of Soviet society of any individuals that he deemed potentially harmful to his power. Many of the people that were found guilty under the 'enemy of the people' definition were those who had always remained loyal to the party and who were in no way guilty. They were completely undeserving of their sentences that led them to solitary confinement, years of forced labor, or execution." "Honest communists were slandered, accusations against them were fabricated, and revolutionary legality was gravely undermined." Click on the image below to enlarge.
"Stalin is a devil in human flesh. He is a dragon...If Stalin were given to my disposal, I would pour boiling lard under his skin. I would cut off his fingers and make him eat them." -Excerpt from a Harvard Project on the Soviet Social System interview with a Russian ship stoker and witness of the Stalin era |
"Throughout history, human beings have periodically slaughtered people of other countries, races, and religions. But self-inflicted mass murder is far more rare. How could a country do this to itself?"
-Adam Hochschild, author of The Unquiet Ghost: Russians Remember Stalin