Under the Stalinist terror understand the repression that began in the Soviet Union in the 20s and ended in 1953. During this period, mass arrests took place, and special camps for political prisoners were created. No historian can name the exact number of victims of Stalinist repressions. More than a million people were convicted under Article 58.
Origin of the term
Stalin's terror affected almost all sectors of society. For more than twenty years, Soviet citizens lived in constant fear - one wrong word or even gesture could cost their lives. It is impossible to unequivocally answer the question of what the Stalinist terror rested on. But of course, the main component of this phenomenon is fear.
The word terror in Latin means "horror". The method of governing the country, based on instilling fear, has been used by rulers since ancient times. Ivan the Terrible served as a historical example for the Soviet leader. Stalinist terror is in some way more modernOprichnina variant.
Ideology
The midwife of history is what Karl Marx called violence. The German philosopher saw only evil in the safety and inviolability of members of society. Marx's idea was used by Stalin.
The ideological basis of the repressions that began in the 1920s was formulated in July 1928 in the Short Course on the History of the CPSU. At first, the Stalinist terror was a class struggle, which was supposedly needed to resist the overthrown forces. But the repressions continued even after all the so-called counter-revolutionaries ended up in camps or were shot. The peculiarity of Stalin's policy was the complete non-observance of the Soviet Constitution.
If at the beginning of the Stalinist repressions, the state security agencies fought against the opponents of the revolution, then by the mid-thirties, the arrests of old communists began - people selflessly devoted to the party. Ordinary Soviet citizens were already afraid not only of the NKVD officers, but also of each other. Whistleblowing has become the main tool in the fight against "enemies of the people".
Stalin's repressions were preceded by the "Red Terror", which began during the Civil War. These two political phenomena have many similarities. However, after the end of the Civil War, almost all cases of political crimes were based on the falsification of charges. During the "Red Terror", those who disagreed with the new regime, of whom there were many at the stages of creating a new state, were imprisoned and shot, first of all.
The Case of Lyceum Students
Officially, the period of Stalinist repression begins in 1922. But one of the first high-profile cases dates back to 1925. It was this year that a special department of the NKVD fabricated a case on charges of counter-revolutionary activities of graduates of the Alexander Lyceum.
February 15, over 150 people were arrested. Not all of them were related to the above-named educational institution. Among the convicts were former students of the School of Law and officers of the Life Guards of the Semenovsky Regiment. Those arrested were accused of assisting the international bourgeoisie.
Many were shot already in June. 25 people were sentenced to various terms of imprisonment. 29 arrested were sent into exile. Vladimir Schilder, a former teacher at the Alexander Lyceum, was 70 years old at that time. He died during the investigation. Nikolai Golitsyn, the last chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Russian Empire, was sentenced to death.
Shakhty case
The Article 58 charges were ridiculous. A person who does not speak foreign languages and has never communicated with a citizen of a Western state in his life could easily be accused of colluding with American agents. During the investigation, torture was often used. Only the strongest could withstand them. Often, defendants signed a confession just to complete the execution, which sometimes lasted for weeks.
In July 1928, specialists in the coal industry became victims of the Stalinist terror. This case was called "Shakhtinskoe". Heads of Donbas enterpriseswere accused of sabotage, sabotage, creation of an underground counter-revolutionary organization, assistance to foreign spies.
There were several high-profile cases in the 20s. Until the beginning of the thirties, dispossession continued. It is impossible to calculate the number of victims of Stalinist repressions, because no one in those days carefully kept statistics. In the nineties, the KGB archives became available, but even after that, researchers did not receive exhaustive information. However, separate execution lists were made public, which became a terrible symbol of Stalin's repressions.
The Great Terror is a term applied to a small period of Soviet history. It lasted only two years - from 1937 to 1938. About the victims during this period, the researchers provide more accurate data. 1,548,366 people were arrested. Shot - 681 692. It was a struggle "against the remnants of the capitalist classes".
Causes of the "great terror"
In Stalin's time, a doctrine was developed to intensify the class struggle. It was only a formal reason for the destruction of hundreds of people. Among the victims of the Stalinist terror of the 1930s were writers, scientists, military men, and engineers. Why was it necessary to get rid of representatives of the intelligentsia, specialists who could benefit the Soviet state? Historians offer different answers to these questions.
Among modern researchers there are those who are convinced that Stalin had only an indirect relation to the repressions of 1937-1938. However, the signaturehe is on almost every hit list, and there is plenty of documentary evidence of his involvement in mass arrests.
Stalin strove for sole power. Any indulgence could lead to a real, not fictional conspiracy. One of the foreign historians compared the Stalinist terror of the 1930s with the Jacobin terror. But if the latest phenomenon, which took place in France at the end of the 18th century, involved the destruction of representatives of a certain social class, then in the USSR often unrelated people were arrested and executed.
So, the reason for the repression was the desire for sole, unconditional power. But what was needed was a wording, an official justification for the need for mass arrests.
Reason
December 1, 1934, Kirov was killed. This event became a formal reason for political repression. The killer was arrested. According to the results of the investigation, again fabricated, Leonid Nikolaev did not act independently, but as a member of an opposition organization. Stalin subsequently used the assassination of Kirov in the fight against political opponents. Zinoviev, Kamenev and all their supporters were arrested.
Trial of Red Army officers
After Kirov's assassination, trials of the military began. One of the first victims of the Great Terror was G. D. Gai. The commander was arrested for the phrase "Stalin must be removed," which he uttered while intoxicated. It is worth saying that in the mid-thirties, denunciation reached its zenith. People who have worked in the same organizationmany years, ceased to trust each other. Denunciations were written not only against enemies, but also against friends. Not only for selfish reasons, but also out of fear.
In 1937, a trial took place over a group of officers of the Red Army. They were accused of anti-Soviet activities and assistance to Trotsky, who by that time was already abroad. The following were on the hit list:
- Tukhachevsky M. N.
- Yakir I. E.
- Uborevich I. P.
- Eideman R. P.
- Putna V. K.
- Primakov V. M.
- Gamarnik Ya. B.
- Feldman B. M.
The witch hunt continued. In the hands of the NKVD officers was a record of negotiations between Kamenev and Bukharin - it was about creating a "right-left" opposition. In early March 1937, Stalin delivered a report that spoke of the need to liquidate the Trotskyists.
According to the report of the General Commissar of State Security Yezhov, Bukharin and Rykov planned terror against the leader. A new term appeared in Stalinist terminology - "Trotsky-Bukharin", which means "directed against the interests of the party".
In addition to the above-mentioned politicians, about 70 people were arrested. 52 shot. Among them were those who were directly involved in the repressions of the 1920s. So, they shot state security officers and politicians Yakov Agronomist, Alexander Gurevich, Levon Mirzoyan, Vladimir Polonsky, Nikolai Popov and others.
Lavrenty Beria was involved in the "Tukhachevsky case", but he managed to survive"cleansing". In 1941, he took the post of General Commissar of State Security. Beria was already shot after the death of Stalin - in December 1953.
Repressed scientists
In 1937 revolutionaries and politicians became victims of Stalin's terror. And very soon, arrests of representatives of completely different social strata began. People who had nothing to do with politics were sent to the camps. It is easy to guess what the consequences of Stalin's repressions were by reading the lists below. The "Great Terror" became a brake on the development of science, culture and art.
Scientists who fell victim to Stalinist repressions:
- Matvey Bronshtein.
- Alexander Witt.
- Hans Gelman.
- Semyon Shubin.
- Evgeny Pereplyokin.
- Innokenty Balanovsky.
- Dmitry Eropkin.
- Boris Numerov.
- Nikolai Vavilov.
- Sergei Korolev.
Writers and poets
In 1933, Osip Mandelstam wrote an epigram with obvious anti-Stalinist overtones, which he read to several dozen people. Boris Pasternak called the poet's act a suicide. He turned out to be right. Mandelstam was arrested and sent into exile in Cherdyn. There he made an unsuccessful suicide attempt, and a little later, with the assistance of Bukharin, he was transferred to Voronezh.
In 1937, the term of exile ended. In March, the poet left with his wife for a sanatorium near Moscow, where he was arrested again. Osip Mandelstam died in the camp on the forty-eighthyear of life.
Boris Pilnyak wrote "The Tale of the Unextinguished Moon" in 1926. The characters in this work are fictitious, at least as the author claims in the preface. But to anyone who read the story in the 1920s, it became clear that it was based on the version about the murder of Mikhail Frunze.
Somehow Pilnyak's work got into print. But soon it was banned. Pilnyak was arrested only in 1937, and before that he remained one of the most published prose writers. The writer's case, like all similar ones, was completely fabricated - he was accused of spying for Japan. Shot in Moscow in 1937.
Other writers and poets subjected to Stalinist repressions:
- Viktor Bagrov.
- Yuliy Berzin.
- Pavel Vasiliev.
- Sergey Klychkov.
- Vladimir Narbut.
- Peter Parfenov.
- Sergey Tretyakov.
It is worth talking about the famous theatrical figure, charged under Article 58 and sentenced to capital punishment.
Vsevolod Meyerhold
The director was arrested at the end of June 1939. His apartment was later searched. A few days later, Meyerhold's wife, Zinaida Reich, was killed. The circumstances of her death have not yet been clarified. There is a version that the NKVD officers killed her.
Meyerhold was interrogated for three weeks, tortured. He signed everything the investigators demanded. February 1, 1940 Vsevolod Meyerhold was sentenced to death. The sentence was carried out onnext day.
During the war years
In 1941, the illusion of the abolition of repression appeared. In Stalin's pre-war times, there were many officers in the camps, who were now needed at large. Together with them, about six hundred thousand people were released from places of deprivation of liberty. But it was a temporary relief. At the end of the forties, a new wave of repressions began. Now the ranks of the “enemies of the people” have been joined by soldiers and officers who were captured.
1953 Amnesty
March 5, Stalin died. Three weeks later, the Supreme Soviet of the USSR issued a decree according to which a third of the prisoners were to be released. About a million people were released. But the first to leave the camps were not political prisoners, but criminals, which instantly worsened the criminal situation in the country.
