Purges Of The Russian People Under Stalin example essay topic

Under Stalins leadership, approximately 70 000 people were murdered during the purges of 1928 to 1940, and some 12 million people died as a result of Stalins sending them to the Gulags otherwise known as the camps, and these estimates are described as being conservative. Many historians believe that up to 17 million people could have died as a result of Stalins purges. Was this due to Stalins paranoia, or were other factors involved in these huge numbers of dead After Lenin's death, Stalin succeeded him as leader after a gap of about three years. He had achieved his position through skilful manovering and ruthlessness in his dealings with fellow party members. Stalin had been brought up as a Georgian peasant, but his lack of regard for his fellow human beings had been shown by his brutal repression of Georgia in Sept 1918. Stalin was willing to use whatever means necessary to achieve his goals.

After Stalin took over the leadership in 1928, huge advances occurred in the state of Russias economy, and Stalin succeeded in changing Russia from a backward power, restrained for many years under the ties of repressive, incompetent Tsars, into a world Superpower, capable of sustaining an arms race requiring military expenditure of up to 15% per year. This modernisation of Russia was achieved in an extremely short period of time, as Stalin himself said: We are 50 or 100 years behind the western powers, if the revolution is to survive, we must make up this gap in 10 years Whether the gap with the west was made up as quickly as Stalin intended is insignificant at this point, the fact is that the gap was made up in a very short time. In order to achieve this, Stalin was willing to remove opponents to his ideas. This resulted in parts of the party opposed to Stalins ideas bein purged.

Although these deaths cant be excused, there was at least a purpose in these purges and they cannot be simply attributed to Stalins paranoia. As Stalin tried to improve Russia he also increasingly centralised the government, this was beneficial as it allowed Stalin to make all of the decisions that he needed to make in order to achieve his policy of catching up with the west. However, he also set almost impossible targets through Gosplan for his five-year plans. When these targets were not met, the blame would naturally have fallen on Stalin. However, Stalins power was based on a cult of personality, which made Stalin a kind of human God who could not be wrong. Therefore, in order to avoid the blame falling on him, he had to find scape goats, people who he could blame for the targets not being met.

He blamed the failure to achieve these targets on the sabotage of certain elements of society, particularly the Kulak class of rich peasants, as created by Stolypin in an attempt to preserve the Tsarist system. The existence of this class is debatable, certainly the numbers of Kulaks was nothing like the number of people accused of being Kulaks and consequently deported or shot. For example, when there was a grain shortage in Russia, Stalin simply would not accept that there was a shortage; instead he blamed the Kulaks for hoarding grain. He sent out requisitioning squads to claim what was being hoarded and deal with those who were hoarding it. It is unclear whether some grain was in fact being hoarded, but certainly, that which was being hoarded was nothing like the amount Stalin said was being hoarded. The results were that the grain, kept by the farmer as seed for next years harvest was seized, and those retaining seed were accused of hoarding.

Consequently, the next year there was mass famine due to the lack of grain for planting. All this time, Stalin was exporting grain in order to boost Russias economy. In this way Stalin avoided the blame for his failures by accusing others of sabotage. The need for someone to blame led to arrest quotas. The secret police were required by Stalin to arrest a certain number of saboteurs so that propaganda could show that the failure to meet targets set by Gosplan, targets that were unattainable, could be blamed on sabotage. Although the purging of Stalins political opponents was partially due to Stalins paranoia, it was also, as I have already mentioned, due to his fear of opposition.

He needed a free hand if his policies were to work. However, his fear of being ousted from power was not necessarily unfounded. In 1934, at the 17th annual party conference a vote of the party membership decided to replace Stalin with Kirov. There were only 3 votes against Kirov, but 292 votes against Stalin. The result was that 289 votes were burned so only there were only 3 votes against each candidate. However, Stalin could not tolerate this popularity and rivalry.

He needed absolute power. The result was that Nickolyev, the husband of Kirov secretary, murdered Kirov in December of 1934 under orders from the secret police. Kirov was given a state funeral, but Stalin set about consolidating his power by forcibly removing all those who voted against him. In this way Stalin was paranoid, he was neither willing to share nor delegate power, this was the motivation behind the centralisation of power, he wanted his power to be undiluted and absolute. Stalins greatest fear was being ousted from his position of power before his death.

The result was that he held Russia in an iron grip. Another example of his fear of losing power was the purging of the army. In early 1937, the Germans forged a letter from Tukhachevsky, the chief of staff in the Soviet army, to friends in Germany, telling of plans to overthrow Stalins regime. These documents were well planted by the Germans and found by Stalin. Stalin then became extremely fearful for his own personal safety and his loosing power. The result was the purging of the entire Russian army including the 11 Commissars for defence and 75 of the 80 members of the Supreme Military Council were executed, along with all 8 admirals and half of all the officer corps.

The result was a severely weakened Russian army just before the commencement of the Second World War. The difficulty is whether or not Stalins fear of loosing power can be described as a form of paranoia. It is clear that in so many of the actions which historians have attributed to Stalins paranoia, Stalin was at least partially justified in reacting in the way he did. For example, Stalins obsessive fear of Trotsky was at least in part justified by the legitimacy of Trotsky claim to the Russian leadership. The eventual murder of Trotsky by means of an ice pick through the head, though considered by many to be brutal and unnecessary as Trotsky was no longer a threat to the regime in South America, did prevent Trotsky informing the world of what was really going on in Russia and consequently, may have prevented outside intervention.

Stalin was clearly paranoid about his power within Russia being compromised or removed from him by others in the way that he had removed power from Bukharin, Zinoviev and Kamen ev along with the other old Bolsheviks. In this way after the Kirov threat was removed it seems that he became determined not to let any other party member come close to gaining a similar influence and gaining a position from where it was conceivably possible to oust him from power. In this way it can be said that events contributed to the repeated purging of those who posed a potential threat to his leadership either by means of past claims (the old Bolsheviks) or those whom appeared to oppose him and his policies. However, Stalin became so paranoid about those around him attempting to remove him from power that any hint of opposition led in many cases to over cautious purging. Repeatedly he purged the secret police force, and the mass purges of the army in 1937 showed how paranoid Stalin really was about losing power to a military or political threat from within the party.

He was not willing to allow any other party to compromise his supreme power in anyway for fear of losing his power. In conclusion, it seems that Stalins complex character makes it difficult to highlight any single factor to which one could contribute the great purges. Certainly, his paranoia played some part as many of the purges were unnecessary to achieve the goal of removing the threat to his power. However, in many cases, although Stalin can be described as over-zealous in his purging, the actions taken were necessary in order to maintain power.

The purges of many ordinary people can also be attributed to the search for a scapegoat to avoid the blame falling on Stalin. Stalins purges did achieve his aim by enabling Russia to become a world Superpower, however, there was a high cost. Many of the purges were extremely widespread and in my opinion, many of these deaths could be described as unnecessary and could be attributed to Stalins paranoia. However, in most cases, the purges had a motive, this was either maintenance of supreme power or else finding somebody to blame for the failure to realise his targets. In this way, Stalins paranoia was only partially to blame for the purges. His desire to maintain power and achieve near impossible targets to a greater degree led to the purges of the Russian people under Stalin.