Nonetheless, I feel that it is necessary here to look closely at this matter which, after all, is in testimony. Astrov testifies that the authors were Rykov […]. Comrades, the question of membership in the party seems to me simply to be naive: if a person takes the terrorist point of view against the leadership of the party, then the question as to whether he may be a party member is a naive question.
I have absolutely no relationship with terror, not by a single word or thought. When I hear these things, it seems to me that the conversation concerns other people; perhaps I am sitting here and hearing about another person. This is a most criminal thing. After this, can we label such things as shocking? Absolutely not. After everything that has happened to these gentlemen, former comrades, who have negotiated an agreement with Hitler, a sellout of the USSR, there is nothing surprising in human affairs.
Everything has to be proven and not [just] replied to using exclamation points and question marks. The following clip shows footage from one of the Moscow trials, including the indictment and public reaction to the convictions. The following was painted at a Gulag camp in Kolyma. It represents the harsh living conditions of the prisoners during brutal Russian winters. Solzhenitsyn, Alexander. The Gulag Archipelago. New York City: Basic Books, This book written by a Gulag survivor is a three volume assemblage of the terrors of like in Gulag based on the personal testimonies of survivors.
The reference to an archipelago in the title compares the camps with a chain of islands, distant and unknown to those who have never been. Solzhenitsyn attempts to bridge the gap of understanding through his portrayal of Gulag camp life.
The Gulag Archipelago shocked the Western world with its vivid portrayal of the injustices of Gulag. Upon the publication of the first volume, Solzhenitsyn was arrested for treason and exiled from the Soviet Union. His reign as dictator also made his people completely dependent on the state. Surprisingly, the legacy of the Great Purge, and Stalin himself, is lined with mixed reactions.
While most Russians regard the event as a horrific incident in history, others believe Stalin helped strengthen and propel the Soviet Union to greatness, despite his barbaric tactics.
Great Purges, New World Encyclopedia. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present. The notorious prisons, which incarcerated about 18 million The Romanov family was the last imperial dynasty to rule Russia.
During the Russian Revolution After overthrowing the centuries-old Romanov monarchy, Russia emerged from a civil war in as the newly formed Soviet Union. Under Stalin, the Soviet Union was transformed from a peasant society into an industrial and military superpower.
However, he ruled by terror, and millions of his own The Cultural Revolution was launched in China in by Communist leader Mao Zedong in order to reassert his authority over the Chinese government. Believing that current Communist leaders were taking the party, and China itself, in the wrong direction, Mao called on the The Great Awakening was a religious revival that impacted the English colonies in America during the s and s.
The movement came at a time when the idea of secular rationalism was being emphasized, and passion for religion had grown stale. Christian leaders often traveled The Russian Revolution of was one of the most explosive political events of the twentieth century.
As it turned out in , many of the White Russians Japan had employed Soviet agents. In December and February two stolen memoranda from the embassy were circulated among the Politburo members. When Poland and Japan exchanged information about the Soviet Union, they were sometimes at odds because their data did not match. By contrast Japan could not politically stabilise the Manchurian side.
It did not have enough resources to guard the borders tightly. The Great Terror took place against this background. The Soviet Union increased its subversion against Poland and its military by using Comintern agents and Communists. Japan extended its control to Heibei a province which included Beijing , where it set up a puppet government in Soviet-Japanese border clashes sharply increased in the mids. On 27 November the Soviet Union concluded a treaty of mutual military assistance with Mongolia.
On 12 March the Soviet Union and Mongolia renewed their treaty of mutual aid for ten years. Manchukuo and Mongolia held meetings to resolve the border issues. When it was announced on 25 November that Germany and Japan had signed an agreement Anti-Comintern Pact , the Mongolian delegation left the negotiation table.
Yet within the Mongolian leading circles, there were forces in favour of continuing negotiations with Japan and wary of Soviet influence in Mongolia. Stalin responded by a Mongolian version of the Great Terror. Rumours of Japanese military actions in China reached Mongolia in July and agitated the Mongolians. Although how much influence it exerted in Xinjiang is not known, Japan had long courted the Xinjiang population. Moscow intervened in Xinjiang militarily. Like Mongolia, Xinjiang had its own Great Terror in Why this concern, which had always existed in the secret police, emerged so strongly in is not entirely known.
It is also true that the Soviet Union used fake deserters extensively to penetrate foreign countries: the secret police used its agents as convinced anti-Soviet defectors to fool foreign intelligence. This was almost certainly disinformation.
Many others of similar background met the same fate. Within the NKVD it was asserted that its Polish operation had been a failure, and many associated with anti-Polish intelligence were arrested and executed. Just as the Soviet Union recruited double spies out of foreign agents, so, it feared, did foreign countries use Soviet agents. Many of the Soviet handlers, including translators, of the intelligence sent from Tokyo by the Soviet spy, Richard Sorge, were also repressed.
NKVD Order no. The order thus specified for arrest these defectors, former Polish prisoners of war, political immigrants, Soviet agents exchanged for Polish spies and political prisoners, among others. Stalin did not trust the Koreans at all. Fearing that as long as they lived near the Soviet borders in the Far East, Japan would use them as spies and infiltrate Soviet territory, Stalin ordered their deportations from the standpoint of counter-intelligence.
It is necessary to clean up the army and its rear in the most determined manner from hostile spy and pro-Japanese elements […] the Far East is not Soviet, there the Japanese rule […] Stalin resumed the conversation by saying that it was necessary in cleansing the rear to terrorize the [Korean] district and the frontier so as to prevent any Japanese [espionage] work. The case of the Japanese Consulate in Novosibirsk in western Siberia, for instance, is instructive.
The consulate. In , pretending to go on picnics, some Japanese diplomats intelligence specialists spent most of their days on river banks to observe the transport of freight cars, whilst others monitored military bases and military factories.
Obviously they needed help from local residents some of whom may have been Soviet agents. In late more than Soviet citizens were arrested as Japanese spies and 63 of them were executed. The consulate was shut down in late In , the Japanese Consulates in Khabarovsk and Blagoveshchensk met the same fate. Stalin feared that these border military legions were so deeply penetrated by foreign spies that the legions themselves would be used by foreign countries against the Soviet Union.
True, at any given time, a degree of internal threat exists in any regime. The Soviet Union was no exception. For Stalin to think otherwise would signify poor and reckless political leadership. True, foreign intelligence was afoot everywhere. Stalin was extraordinarily cautious. Believing that one spy could determine the outcome of war, he left nothing to chance.
It was easy to glean the critical ten percent from rumours, misinformation and disinformation circulating in the world, both in and outside the country. Stalin said privately of his former political rivals whom he alleged schemed with Poland, Japan and Germany:. We were aware of certain facts as early as last year [] and were preparing to deal with them, but first we wanted to seize as many threads as possible.
They were planning an action for the beginning of this year. Their resolve failed. They were preparing in July to attack the Politburo at the Kremlin. Well, were they all spies? Of course, not. Whatever happened to them? They were cadres who could not stomach the sharp turn toward collective farms and could not make sense of this turn, because they were not trained politically, did not know the laws of social development, the laws of economic development, the laws of political development.
They turned out to be people who did not know the laws of political development, and therefore they could not stomach the sharp turn. Clearly, he had other justifications in mind. Communists and left-wing elements were ruthlessly repressed in Germany, Poland, Japan and elsewhere. The Soviet Union and the Comintern did operate its agents in these and other countries. Many were tortured to death. In sanctioning the use of torture in , Stalin asked why the socialist secret service had to be more humane in applying torture against the agents of the bourgeoisie and the enemies of workers and peasants than the bourgeois secret services were in torturing the representatives of the socialist proletariat.
However, according to Alexander Orlov , a NKVD officer, "Stalin decided to arrange for the assassination of Kirov and to lay the crime at the door of the former leaders of the opposition and thus with one blow do away with Lenin's former comrades.
Stalin came to the conclusion that, if he could prove that Zinoviev and Kamenev and other leaders of the opposition had shed the blood of Kirov". The first ever show show trial took place in August, , of Lev Kamenev , Gregory Zinoviev , Ivan Smirnov and thirteen other party members who had been critical of Stalin. Yuri Piatakov accepted the post of chief witness "with all my heart.
And who are included in these stupefying charges, either as direct participants or, what would be no less reprehensible, as persons with knowledge of the conspiracy who failed to disclose it?
The men made confessions of their guilt. Lev Kamenev said: "I Kamenev, together with Zinoviev and Trotsky, organised and guided this conspiracy. My motives? I had become convinced that the party's - Stalin's policy - was successful and victorious. We, the opposition, had banked on a split in the party; but this hope proved groundless. We could no longer count on any serious domestic difficulties to allow us to overthrow. Stalin's leadership we were actuated by boundless hatred and by lust of power.
Gregory Zinoviev also confessed: "I would like to repeat that I am fully and utterly guilty. I am guilty of having been the organizer, second only to Trotsky, of that block whose chosen task was the killing of Stalin. I was the principal organizer of Kirov's assassination. The party saw where we were going, and warned us; Stalin warned as scores of times; but we did not heed these warnings. We entered into an alliance with Trotsky.
Most journalists covering the trial were convinced that the confessions were statements of truth. The Observer reported: "It is futile to think the trial was staged and the charges trumped up.
The government's case against the defendants Zinoviev and Kamenev is genuine. We complain because, in the absence of independent witnesses, there is no way of knowing.
It is their Zinoviev and Kamenev confession and decision to demand the death sentence for themselves that constitutes the mystery. If they had a hope of acquittal, why confess? If they were guilty of trying to murder Stalin and knew they would be shot in any case, why cringe and crawl instead of defiantly justifying their plot on revolutionary grounds?
We would be glad to hear the explanation. Anna Louise Strong , of the Moscow Daily News , defended the Great Purge: "The key to the terror, most probably, in actual, extensive penetration of the GPU by a Nazi fifth column, in many actual plots and in the impact of these on a highly suspicious man who saw his own assassination plotted and believed he was saving the Revolution by drastic purge Stalin engineered the country's modernization ruthlessly, for he was born in a ruthless land and endured ruthlessness from childhood.
He engineered suspiciously, for he had been five times exiled and must have been often betrayed. He condoned, and even authorized outrageous acts of the political police against innocent people, but so far no evidence is produced that he consciously framed them.
He wrote in the The New Republic that while watching the trial he came to the conclusion "that the confessions are true". Based on these comments the editor of the journal argued: "Some commentators, writing at a long distance from the scene, profess doubt that the executed men Zinoviev and Kamenev were guilty. It is suggested that they may have participated in a piece of stage play for the sake of friends or members of their families, held by the Soviet government as hostages and to be set free in exchange for this sacrifice.
We see no reason to accept any of these laboured hypotheses, or to take the trial in other than its face value. Foreign correspondents present at the trial pointed out that the stories of these sixteen defendants, covering a series of complicated happenings over nearly five years, corroborated each other to an extent that would be quite impossible if they were not substantially true.
The defendants gave no evidence of having been coached, parroting confessions painfully memorized in advance, or of being under any sort of duress. Leon Trotsky , who was living in exile in Mexico City , was furious with Duranty and described him as a "hypocritical psychologist" who tried to explain away the terrors of the regime with "glib and facile phrases. Yezhov quickly arranged the arrest of all the leading political figures in the Soviet Union who were critical of Stalin.
The Secret Police broke prisoners down by intense interrogation. This included the threat to arrest and execute members of the prisoner's family if they did not confess. The interrogation went on for several days and nights and eventually they became so exhausted and disoriented that they signed confessions agreeing that they had been attempting to overthrow the government. They were accused of working with Leon Trotsky in an attempt to overthrow the Soviet government with the objective of restoring capitalism.
Robin Page Arnot , a leading figure in the British Communist Party , wrote: "A second Moscow trial, held in January , revealed the wider ramifications of the conspiracy. The volume of evidence brought forward at this trial was sufficient to convince the most sceptical that these men, in conjunction with Trotsky and with the Fascist Powers, had carried through a series of abominable crimes involving loss of life and wreckage on a very considerable scale.
Edvard Radzinsky , the author of Stalin has pointed out: "After they saw that Piatakov was ready to collaborate in any way required, they gave him a more complicated role.
In the trials he joined the defendants, those whom he had meant to blacken. He was arrested, but was at first recalcitrant. Ordzhonikidze in person urged him to accept the role assigned to him in exchange for his life.
No one was so well qualified as Piatakov to destroy Trotsky, his former god and now the Party's worst enemy, in the eyes of the country and the whole world. He finally agreed I to do it as a matter of 'the highest expediency,' and began rehearsals with the interrogators.
One of the journalists covering the trial, Lion Feuchtwanger , commented: "Those who faced the court could not possibly be thought of as tormented and desperate beings. In appearance the accused were well-groomed and well-dressed men with relaxed and unconstrained manners.
They drank tea, and there were newspapers sticking out of their pockets Altogether, it looked more like a debate The impression created was that the accused, the prosecutor, and the judges were all inspired by the same single - I almost said sporting - objective, to explain all that had happened with the maximum precision. If a theatrical producer had been called on to stage such a trial he would probably have needed several rehearsals to achieve that sort of teamwork among the accused.
Yuri Piatakov and twelve of the accused were found guilty and sentenced to death. Karl Radek and Grigori Sokolnikov were sentenced to ten years. Feuchtwanger commented that Radek "gave the condemned men a guilty smile, as though embarrassed by his luck. But what transpired surpassed all my expectations of human baseness.
It was all there, terrorism, intervention, the Gestapo, theft, sabotage, subversion All out of careerism, greed, and the love of pleasure, the desire to have mistresses, to travel abroad, together with some sort of nebulous prospect of seizing power by a palace revolution. Where was their elementary feeling of patriotism, of love for their motherland? These moral freaks deserved their fate My soul is ablaze with anger and hatred. Their execution will not satisfy me.
I should like to torture them, break them on the wheel, burn them alive for all the vile things they have done. He argued that since November , that agents working for Nazi Germany had infiltrated the ranks of the Soviet leadership, while Trotsky, like an exiled monarch, was the leader of the conspiracy to overthrow Stalin. Duranty went on to claim that this conspiracy had involved many men in the highest echelons of government.
But now "their Trojan horse was broken, and its occupants destroyed. James William Crowl , the author of Angels in Stalin's Paradise has argued: "Although Louis Fischer reserved judgment on the trials, Duranty vigorously defended them. According to him, Trotsky had created a spy network at the very time that Germany and Japan were spreading their own spy organizations in Russia.
He explained that the two groups shared a hatred for Stalin, and fascist agents had cooperated with the Trotskyites in Kirov's assassination. The show-trials, Duranty insisted, had revealed the Trotskyite-fascist link beyond question. The trials showed just as clearly, he argued on 14th July, , that Stalin's arrest of thousands of these agents had spared the country from a wave of assassinations.
Duranty charged that those who worried about the rights of the defendants or claimed that their confessions had been gained by drugs or torture, only served the interests of Germany and Japan. The next show trials took place in March, , and involved twenty-one leading members of the party.
They were accused of being involved with Leon Trotsky in a plot against Joseph Stalin and with spying for foreign powers. They were all found guilty and were either executed or died in labour camps. Stalin now decided to purge the Red Army.
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