Stalin`s Purges
Less than a month before Hitler invaded
Poland on September 1, 1939 and
started World War II, he signed a
non-aggression pact with Stalin. Less than two
years later, he broke the pact
and invaded the Soviet Union in the early morning
hours of June 22, 1941.
There were plenty of evidence for German aggression
before the war broke out,
yet Stalin nevertheless signed the pact which
contained the secret protocol
that divided Poland between Germany and the Soviet
Union. The reason for
signing the pact were complex, yet one of the most
important ones were the
domestic factors. Among them, the terrible effect of the
purges during the
1930s on the population, economy and especially the army. The
purges were set
off on December 1, 1934 with the murder of Sergei Kirov. He was
a member of
the Politburo, leader of the Leningrad party apparatus and had
considerable
influence in the ruling elite. His concern for the workers in
Leningrad
and his skill as an orator earned him considerable popularity. Stalin
used
his murder as a pretext for launching a broad purge that would claim
hundreds
of thousands of victims and have lasting repercussion felt to this
day.
Stalin never visited Leningrad again and directed one of his most
vicious
post-War purges against the city -- Russia's historic window to the
West. No
segment of the society was left untouched by the purges. Anyone who
caused the
slightest suspicion was removed and numerous legislature was
enacted to help
enforce them. In 1935 a law was passed which lowered the age
of criminal
responsibility. That meant the death penalty could be applied to
twelve-year-old
children (McCauley, p.93). There was also a panic response in
the primary party
organizations to expel and "expose" people in order to
protect oneself
and to show "vigilance" (Getty, p.213) The slaughter of armed
forces
began on 12 June 1937 when Tukhachevsky and some top army men were
executed,
then spread to lower ranks and then to political comissars. The
nave was
completely decapitated, all eight admirals perishing. Here's a grave
list of the
top dead: " 3 out of 5 marshals, 14 out of 16 Army commanders
Class I and
II, 8 out of 8 Admirals, 60 out of 67 Corps Commanders, 136
out of 199
Divisional Commanders, 221 out of 397 Brigade Commanders"
(McCauley, p.95)
In November 1939, Stalin ordered an attack on Finland to
move the frontier
further away from Leningrad after the Finns did not agree
to the concessions
Soviets offered. This expedition was a complete
fiasco. It cost the already
decimated Red Army around 200,000 dead and more
were wounded, while only 23,000
Finns died (McCauley, p.101). A peace
treaty was signed on 12 March, 1940, but
the incompetence and weakness of the
Red Army was revealed to the rest of the
world. This is something Hitler
filed it away for future use. After that, and
faced with increasing German
aggression, Stalin could not risk being embroiled
in a war. Hitler was in a
great hurry. An attack on Poland was scheduled for
late August. By the end of
July the Nazis realized that they must reach
agreement with the Soviets very
soon if these plans were to be safely
implemented. Hitler agreed to pay the
Soviet price for a pact. The public text
of the Nazi-Soviet Pact was simply
an agreement of nonaggression and neutrality,
referring as a precedent to the
German-Soviet neutrality pact of 1926 (Berlin
Treaty). The real agreement
was in a secret protocol which in effect partitioned
not only Poland (along
the line of the Vistula), but much of Eastern Europe. To
the Soviets were
allotted Finland, Estonia, Latvia, and Bessarabia; to the
Nazis,
everything to the West of these regions, including Lithuania. Each of the
two
signatories was to ask the other no questions about the disposition of
its
own ''sphere of interest." This nonaggression pact, coupled with the
trade
treaty and arrangements for large-scale exchange of raw materials and
armaments,
amounted to an alliance. Appeasement in Eastern Europe would
deflect German
aggression to the west. Taking into account the disastrous
condition of Russian
forces brought about from within and the severe problems
of the economy, this
was necessary for Stalin. In a way, by signing the
Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression
Pact, he was buying as much time as possible
to try prepare for the inevitable.
The inevitable happened on June 22,
1941. Molotov broke to the Russian people
the grim news about the German
attack. Stalin, as if embarrassed by the
disastrous collapse of his hopes,
shunned the limelight. He did not utter a
single word in public for almost
two weeks. He apparently waited to see what the
results of the first battles
would be, what the attitude of Great Britain and
the United States would be,
and what the feeling in his own country would be.
Locked up with his
military leaders, he discussed measures of mobilization and
strategic plans.
In the first years of the war, Soviet losses were much higher
than necessary.
The true cost of the purges had now to be paid. Morale was not
very high in
the army. About two million prisoners were taken in the first year
of the
war. The total reached five million in November 943, and there was
widespread
defeatism among the public (McCauley, p.113). However, not all
Soviet
casualties were due to the Germans. Many senior officers were
court-martialed
during this period. "Colonel-General D.G.Pavlov, commander of
the Western
Front, his chief of staff and some other officers were called
to Moscow,
court-martialed and shot on 30 June, 1941 for incompetence. They
were unfairly
treated, as was later admitted. Stalin loosed the NKVD on the
military,
reminiscent of 1937, and the political police exacted savage
retribution on
anyone who did not fulfil orders or who had carried out his
orders
unsuccessfully"(McCauley, p.129). Only at Stalingrad, in 1943, did the
tide
of war turn in favor of the Soviet Union. There are all indication that
Hitler
could have easily taken Moscow and Leningrad had he continued north
and not
turned his attention south towards Ukraine. Although there is no
dispute as to
the horror and losses brought on by Stalin's paranoid decisions
in the 1930s,
the actual number of casualties remains uncertain. Only
recently have some of
the most significant archives been declassified and
allowed a new wave of
research to start up. In addition, many of the records
were destroyed at the
time, presumably those with the most sensitive
information. Some researchers
claim that "in its worst year approximately
only 7.7% of the Red army's
leadership was discharged" (Getty, p.213).
Another factor complicating
ascertaining the actual casualties is political.
Subject of Stalin is
inextricably linked to ideology, communism, and
socialism, topics that hardly
leave anyone without strong emotions on one or
the other side. Thus, many works
even with the best intentions of unbiased
research can be subconsciously marred
by political bias. There's hope that
with the continued declassification more
documents will appear from the
archives that will be able to shed more light on
this very dark subject. The
dispute as to the exact toll of the purges will
probably never be settled.
The final count may never be known. However, it will
always remain undisputed
that the purges during the 1930s initiated by Joseph
Stalin brought
massive repercussion in all sectors of the society and greatly
endangered
Soviet Union's sovereignty and viability.
Bibliography
Stalinist
Terror: New Perspectives, edited by J. Arch Getty and Roberta T.
Manning,
Cambridge University Press, 1993 William R. Keylor, The Twentieth
Century
World: An International History, Oxford University Press, New York,
1996
Martin McCauley, The Soviet Union Since 1917, Longman Group Limited,
New York,
1981 Revelations from the Russian Archives, Library of
Congress, 1996 http://lcweb.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/intro.html