Consolidating

PURGING:
Stalin spent the rest of his life consolidating his power; one method was the Stalinist purges. Stalin did begin to prosecute ‘enemies’ such as the Ryutin group, who claimed Stalin, brought the revolution to the edge of destruction. They were expelled from the party, with over 1 million excluded.

Purges at first were to make sure party members stood inline. They used their privilege cards for checking, in which suspect members would not receive there’s back after checking. Stalin used this system to stop any series challenge. After 1934, Purges turned into the terrorising of party members, as Stalin was a paranoid man and believed many were plotting against him. These were the Post Kirov purges, Kirov being a politburo member who disliked the quickness of the modernisation in Russia, who Nikolaev shot dead for sleeping with his wife but was also definitely influenced by Stalin.

Stalin exploited the shooting and signed a ‘decree against terrorist acts’ which gave his police force limitless powers. Stalin used this to blame the Trotskyites and Leftists, who must now be hunted down, imprisoned and executed. Serge ‘response was 114 people executed the arrest of the entire left’. As the enrolled members of which Stalin was accountable for, they all supported him fully as a means of showing their loyalty, and Stalin knew they would stay loyal. The Purge that followed the Kirov affair saw posts being filled by such members as Zhdanov, Vyshinsky and Poskrebyshev. Yagoda was the man behind the purge and the NKVD (ogpu/cheka)
This decree saw 1108 delegates from the 1996 congress members executed. What followed was the Great Purge
- the Party
- the Armed Services
- People

The LEFT- Trotskyite, Kamenevite, Zinovievite counter revolutionary bloc, message was sent out to begin finding suspects who took part in this bloc and soon Kamenev and Zinoviev had been put on public trial of which they pleaded guilty. They confessed due to mental and physical torture. Their confessions made it difficult for anyone else to resist as they were all lesser and weaker men.

THE RIGHT- Rykov, Tomsky and Bukharin all under formal investigation, but because it took so long, Yezhov replaced Yagoda as he was too lenient. The trial of the Anti-soviet Trotskyite centre saw the minister of finance for the FYP to incriminate his own friends of the right to save himself, and now Yezhov could prosecuted Bukharin, in which Bukharin gave a stirring speech in court.

ARMED FORCES: Stalin needed them under his complete supervision, and took steps to constantly transfer the high ranks to lessen the possibility of resistance. A ‘gigantic conspiracy’ saw the chief of general staff arrested with other generals, ‘heroes of civil war’, claiming of spying for the Germans and Japanese. In eighteen months
- Eleven War Commissars removed from office, with three marshals dismissed
- Half of the officers shot or arrested
- 14 out of 16 commanders executed.
The Soviet Navy and the Air also did not escape, these purges critically weakened the armed forces of the soviet union, something stalin wanted to maintain.

PEOPLE PURGE: As spoken before about the workers at the industrial plant, used to strike fear within the workers to meet deadlines. Many foreign communists within Russia were persecuted and the trials spread across the country. Mass repression, everyone lived in fear.
- 1 in 8 arrested during purges
- Every family saw the lose of a member

The Purges eventually consumed themselves. Interrogators themselves became victims, and so trust itself broke down into the fact that families would backstab each other to save themselves

THE NVKD
Yagoda was the first person in control. After all, they were be the people who inforced the purges. Stalin centralised the major law between enforcement agencies
- civilian police
- secret police
- labour camp and guards
- border security.

They became the NKVD (New cheka or OGPU). Legal proceedings also brought a new special military court to deal with ‘serious crimes’, which could be anything from terrorism to whatever Stalin thought was an act against him. This such system allowed the purges to work efficiently and effectively
They
– rounded up the LEFTISTS, Kamenev and Zinoviev were executed due to Kirov’s death
– The NKVD got confessions by methods of physical and mental torture, Kamenev and Zinoviev being evidence.
– The successor, Yezhov simply arrested anyone against Stalin.
– Rounded up the rights, Bukharin, Tomsky and Rykov

SOVIET LABOUR CAMPS
The labour camps are on equivalent to Hitler and Mao Zedong. They were used predominately for the middle to lower classes, and by 1941 and purges, there was an estimated 8 million within the labour camps. The camps had terrible conditions, often in the coldest part of the country; it is fair to say that a sentence there is equal to a death sentence, as the harsh labour conditions were beyond imagination.
- Limited food
- Cramped
- Struggle to simply survive
Sentences could also be extended at the will of Stalin.

WILLING SUBORDINATES?
Many did welcome the purges as a chance to settle old scores, and advancing themselves by getting into the posts of victims. These people, saw Stalin as a genuine saviour. As stalin’s industrial and agricultural policies were so damaging, it is as though they (along with purges) had re-created a Tsarist system, with central control and under the cover of ‘communism’. Stalin had no trouble in finding subordinates, as the loyalty shown to him removed any doubts. They became the Nomenklatura, privileged elite who ran the party machine, they were all Stalin men who had no dedication to the Bolsheviks, as they completely replaced the party of old. There privileges were endless, so the more people they eliminated, the more likely it was to keep their jobs. His comrades so, became as paranoid as he was.