Great Terror
Introduction
Great Terror Historical Background
Given the paper will focus on various historians’ interpretation and analysis of great terror, it is essential to understand the Great Terrors historical background. During this period, the events that pinpoint the beginning of great terror is the start of major executions, arrests, and leadership changes. In 1936, the Moscow Show trials had commenced, and the waves that followed until the fall of 1938, together characterized the great terror period.[1] These trials are some of the public affairs that are highly considered as shorthand for the Great Terror. The trials acted as a way that Stalin used in the solidification of his power by forcing the confessions of anti-Soviet conspiracy from many of his most political enemies.
indicate August 1936 as the first of show trials and beginning of the Great Terror.[2] During the period, the terror was set in motion when the office that was overseeing the trial Genrikh Yagoda who was heading the NKVD, was arrested and charged with Trotskyism and espionage in September of 1936 during September. Yagoda being arrested was a symbolism of massive disorganization, and managerial turnover that followed the Great Terror . The arrest enabled the Stalin’s ability to install a successor that was perfectly amenable to his political wishes for organizational chaos, and mass violence. Researchers have indicated Yagoda’s successor who was Nikolai Yezhov as the person that increased the intensity of the Great Terror. Intensity .
On July 30, 1937, Yagoda’s successor Yezhov gave an order known as Order 00447 to party officials in Moscow. He ordered for beating and threatening without sorting out by the officials[3] Besides, the order, Yezhov, set forth execution quotas, and a series of the arrests. With the action , roughly 75,000 enemies of the people were executed, and 193,000 people were sentenced to gulag labor for over four months. Further, what was to be a four months campaign that started in July 1937, it continued until November 1938, at a point that Yezhov was arrested (Henderson, “Evidence of Stalinist,”7.
Historian Interpretation and analysis of Great Terror
Introduction
starts by acknowledging historian researchers indicating the great purge as being a significant factor in the Soviet Union. Without the great purge in society, the Soviet people could have been so much different from what is seen in today’s soviet people’s society. According to researchers, the great terror had an indirect positive effect on the soviet nation’s economy.[4] With Stalin’s inaction of the terror policies, the dictator had a rational motive of imposing such terror policies. The author cites Miller and Smith (2015) argument that the presence of the Great Terror period could have resulted in the Soviet people to increase their productivity. Those people who were not purged were afraid of the purging and so they did not want to go through the great purge, and had to increase their productivity in the economy. The historians use an efficiency wage model that was made by Stiglitz, and Shapiro to make their argument of the positive effect of the great terror.
The threat of being purged for shirking work responsibilities during the period could have made individuals raise their level of productivity during the period of Terror. During the period, the enactment of workplace rule was not uniform. Stalin urged those with any workers with potential infractions to be turned in by their peers. Stalin argued that it was better to sentence 95 innocents into prison labor or execution falsely than letting five bad workers roam free. Besides, the threshold for any infractions of being considered as a person being purge worthy was so low during this period, even a person arriving to work late was considered an enemy of the people. Enforcement was ostensibly so random, and no productivity gains were realized. So it scared the workers into working harder to avoid the purge during the period of the Great Terror. Therefore, the Great Terror had an indirect positive effect, which in turn increased the productivity of the Soviet people in the economy.
Also, researchers interpreted the Great Terror prison labor as a factor that played an important role in Soviet Union Economy. Henderson indicates that during the Great Purge Period, the workforce that was working in Soviet Gulag skyrocketed, which rose by 21% by 1937.[5] The increase in the number of gulags had a significant gain in their productivity during the Great Terror period. Nordler (2003), as cited by Henderson, indicates that during the additional prisoners in Gulags in 1937 did contribute to an extra 1/17th kilogram of gold though considering the simple economic concepts like decreasing stock of gold, diminishing marginal return and among other economic indicators the contribution was significant.[6] Besides, the role of the Gulag prisoner’s productivity can be explained by the penal colony administrators and gulag managers advocating for salary increase who advocated for paying the prisoners to increase their gulag productivity. Therefore, all these shows the role of gulag prisoners played as interpreted by historians by being an important role in Soviet Union Economy. The Great Terror brought a lot of positive outcomes and well as the negatives effects in the life of citizens in the Soviet Union, economically other spheres of life. Therefore, this paper has been done with an intension of discoursing all these.
Henderson (2019) Great Terror analysis and interpretation
To prove the economic impact of great terror on the Soviet Union, the historian uses anthropometric data to study Soviet Economy history. Henderson indicates the anthropometric data can be used as an interpretation of economic facts. It supplements the traditional measures of economic interpretation like GDP when such data is not available.[7] During the Great Terror period depending on the nature of the system of government of dictatorship, the people could have doctored the data so that to keep the citizen loyal to the system of the government of the day by Stalin. Therefore anthropometric data can be a good measure of economic growth during the great terror period, measuring the living standards as it is tied to the health and nutrition status of the population under study. Average height can be used as a measure of the socio-economic wellbeing of a population under study. In the international context, adult height is an indicator of the function of sanitation, net nutrition, and proximity of disease which a nation provides. Typically, economic historians have used adult height to understand long term growth of paths of nations. Therefore, using the height of the Soviet people, the historian can interpret and analyze the Great Terror.
The historian’s analysis of data from the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring revealed a particular pattern that supports his analysis and interpretation of the Great Terror. The author’s research findings show that as a result of the great Stalin purge of the 1930s, coupled with the great famine, the health of the people deteriorated.[8] It resulted in soviet people in many people experiencing short heights during this period, and all these are attributed to ill-health and malnutrition. Despite the historian’s work limitation, the article has several strengths, all of which contribute to its relevance to the analysis and interpretation of the Great Terror. The author acknowledges the Great Terror as having negative social and economic impacts of the great purge period through the assessment of people’s health. It shows the historian interprets and analyses the Great Terror as having adverse social and economic effects on the cultural and health lives of the citizens of the Soviet Union.
The Historian has highlighted his analysis of the Great Terror differently. The author describes the Great Terror occurrence to be between 1935 to1939, which follows two dimensions[9] First, the historian analyses the great terror as a period that is flawed with government policies. From 1934 the Soviet Union increased its strict laws on divorce, abortion, and taking children’s responsibility, thus strengthening the families in the Soviet Union. It was part of the regime upholding conservatism. Using this approach, the author can indicate the terror of the period. Similarly, the historian stresses the Great Terror period by focusing on how the Great Terror period had repression on Soviet People. People suffered from mass arrest, intending to destroy all types of trust and loyalty except to the State. The Historian highlights that during the period of Great Terror, no one was allowed to have attachments that could outweigh the tasks that were given by the leadership or diverting their attention and energy. To this end, the historian highlights it as the reason for the Totalitarian System during the Great Terror Period.
He goes ahead to highlights instances during the Great Terror that shows the approaches shown in the latter paragraph. It shows how the historian interprets and gives an analysis of the period. During the period, the author indicates the great terror is a presumable regime with pressure on domestic life.[10] For instance, in 1930, there were almost 175,000 legal abortions that took place in Moscow alone. Further, in the year 1934, the number still was high at 154,000, which was a higher number than the birth of 57,000 children in the city.[11] The regime during the Great Terror was probably worried about the situation in the fact that the population’s birth rate was declining. The population had fallen due to collectivism and death from famine, which took place from 1932 to 1933. Therefore, in 1935 the Great Terror regime made an effort to make the population increase. The regime made the divorce process to be more difficult where those who had marriages terminated were marked in their passports. For the succeeding divorces, in 1936, the regime set an increasingly higher payment. The actions in the Great Terror on divorcer were widely popular.
Besides, as soon as the new divorce laws appeared, the regime forbade abortions in the Soviet Union. During the Great Terror period, the regime’s concern about population growth did probably override any desire of the leadership accommodating women. The banning of abortion resulted in Soviet Union abortion cases dropping from 2,335 in 1935 third quarter to 50 in the same period of 1936. In comparison with birth rates in the city of Moscow was higher where the same two-quarter increase was from 18,246 to 32,632.[12] By the middle of the 1930 decade, it was a new image of women and the family. It became prominent in every aspect of Soviet propaganda and culture in the Soviet Union. The author indicates Stalin himself lent his image, name, relatives, and prestige to the campaign of a strong family.[13] Stalin’s involvement personally as the father of his people was extremely rare and perhaps unique, where he had limited his role in public to handshakes and commentaries. Further, the author indicates that in different novels, Stalin was depicted as a father figure. Stalin appeared in Kremlin with his offspring in many photographs, where he looked deeply affectionate towards the children.
In 1936, the drive of bolstering the family image by the regime continued using another leading figure in identifying the family as a traditional and happy home life with new heroes. For instance, the regime used the famous Stakhanovite workers in magazines where they tickled their children in magazines pictures. Besides, the loftiest achievers of the day who were the pilots were riding in parades while holding their children. Further, during the Great Terror, women were recognized in wives conference in 1936, where they were taught on placing flowers in dormitories and using silverware.[14] The Great Terror period was an overreaching endorsement of family values and family stability. The message was clear that if Stalin, among other celebrities, were strongly supporting the family, then everyone else should also participate in upholding the family values and stability.
On the other hand, the historian indicates that there were the mass arrests of people increasing trust and loyalty to the state. In the period of the Great Terror, there was the mass arrest of individuals, especially during 1937-1938.[15] In the late 30s, the number of people arrested was extremely vexed. The author indicates the number well known by extrapolation was 18.8 million and less than 1 million. Several arrests were made during this period of Great Purge and it was not to destroy families but to make the individual in destroying all types of trust and loyalty except to the State. Thurston indicates that during the Great Terror, some of the people who were arrested were parents to young children. However, the family members’ arrest did not affect the family members. Wolfgang Leonhard and ten others indicated that their parents were arrested during the period. The arrest of the parents did not lead them as offspring of the parents into system opposition. The offspring’s believed that the great terror was necessary for the real enemies. Further, the historian indicated in 1935, Evgeniya Ginzburg who was a dedicated communist woman, explains after the arrest husband though she loved him, she repudiated her husband. Belief in the necessity of catching enemies in the Soviet Union made family members in accepting even the arrest of their own as a right.
According to the historian, the great terror by no means affected the families. The Terror had a limited impact on friendship and family. During this period, the arrest was, at no instance, perceived as if it affected the family ties. Those who faced repression during the great terror period did not even weaken the family ties as it involved cases where real guilt was in existence. Therefore, none of the arrests implies that it was a great deal of tragedy that exists for an individual and their families. With the arrest, society and family life as a whole was not shattered.
Fitzpatrick Sheila interprets and analyses the Great Terror differently. The Historian using the mice buried the Cat is a way of expressing how in real-world the Soviet Union in 1937.[16] It is an expression of how the mice who symbolize the peasants are taking revenge through political strength on the corrupt bosses without outside encouragement. The peasant’s mice are helping the predator which is the system of governance locating their prey who are the people who oppressed them during the Great Terror. They do so by writing letters of complaints and denunciations against the Cat bosses. The complaints are used in the construction of show trials where peasants were making a denunciation against local bosses. Therefore, the historian interprets the great terror using show trials and denunciation from the peasants as a way of interpreting The Great Terror.
With the peasants show trials against the local bosses, the historian can analyze Great Terror that happened in the Soviet Union people. The historian interprets several proceedings during the raion trials that happened in 1937 which happened as a Soviet Carnival in which for a few days, the world turned upside down and mice the peasants were able to mock and taunt cats the local bosses with impunity.[17] The raion trials throw a disconcerting light on the big show trials Moscow besides showing clearly how the Great Purge was as a whole.
In the show trials, the peasants were giving different circumstances that indicated how the Great Terror period was all about. The historian indicates several instances where the peasants expressed their oppression during the Great Terror period. The peasants accused the local bosses of abuse of power, agricultural disasters, and favoritism, suppression of democracy, and expulsion and liquidation.[18] The trials on the complaint interpret and analyses the great terror in the Soviet Union. The peasants had an opportunity to bury the cat with these charges at the trials. For instance, the bosses were accused of being harmful to the peasants besides offending their sense of propriety and fairness. All these were away; the historian was able to analyze and interpret the Great Terror that happened on the Soviet people.
Abuse of power was the real picture of the Great Terror period. The historian indicates that in show trials, this was among the most peasant’s accusations to the local bosses. The witnesses who undertook the charges against the local bosses were among the most bitter on the local bosses. The rural officials were associated in the trials with insults, humiliations, curses, unjustified arrests, and intimidations as being one of the commonplaces in the behavior of rural officials towards the peasants.[19] For instance, one of the trials a woman aged eighty years old who was a peasant was in tears explaining how the chairman of sel’sovet beat her husband and dumped the husband in a wheelbarrow which made the husband succumb to the injuries. Besides, another witness describes how the raion official once made four kolkhoz brigade leaders climb on the stove and he was to stay there at the watch of guarded police officers for four hours. When the people inquired from the kolkhoz chairman why he was subjecting someone through such an inhumane act, he was following orders and he feared being subjected to the same activity too.
The chairman of sel’sovet who made peasants go through wild behavior, was Radchuk. Many peasant witnesses described him as a person who made them undergo physical assault and forced entry into homes of kolkhoz Niki during the Great Terror in at the Novgorod raion trial.[20] He even broke down the doors of some witnesses who gave their pleas during the trials. Also, during ten trials, peasants indicated that they were subjected to the imposition of arbitrary fines and money levies by the sel’sovet officials. The witness in Shirfiaevo indicates that the authority had an organized night brigade which was formed to descend on the peasants in the dead night, where they took inventory by searching for properties that could be seized. Even more, the country chairman used to take five or four kilograms of meat from each calf or pig that were slaughtered plus vodka whenever he visited the villages. Through the trials, the historian can analyze and interpret the Great Terror period.
Also, expulsion and liquidation were part of the great terror period which the historian analyses in his paper. Of all the peasant’s grievances presented in the trials, they were part of the complaints that were made by the peasants’ grievances. These grievances were given both by the 1937 raion trials and letters that were received by Krest’ianskaiaia Gazeta during the same period. During the Great terror, it was evident that the people were subjected to heavy taxation among other factors considering farming outside kolkhoz was not viable long-term viability. Therefore, the peasants were expelled frequently and when they departed to work somewhere else for wages, they risked losing private plots and houses through liquidations. Departing from the community looking for different jobs became a struggle between righteous peasants and power abusing local leaders, the kolkhoz, and sel’soviet chairmen. According to Fitzpatrick, she indicates that in the Alshki trial, many of the witnesses argue that they were unjustly expelled from the Path to Socialism Kolkhoz. [21]
Just because of unauthorized departure because a peasant is on the brink of starvation as they were not able to harvest, they faced mass expulsion and forced to departure out of collective farms. The raion officials could liquidate the land from the peasants, and so even a whole village could lose its property.[22] Even more, the officials were going ahead further to the confiscation of the peasant’s property including agricultural equipment, kolkhoz’s properties, and even the collective properties of the peasants. Further, if the kolkhoz Niki and local officials had a conflict, they were endangered as the official’s violent confrontation. It preceded liquidation.
Another factor that was indicated that analyses the Great Terror period on peasants is agricultural disasters. Fitzpatrick indicates that the peasants blamed the officials for failure in meeting the needs of the peasants. The officials allowed for little grain distribution among the households of kolkhoz and so brought them on the brink of starving during the great terror period.[23] Besides, the Great Terror was characterized by favoritism towards the former Kulaks at the expense of Peasants and also, they faced suppression of Kolkhoz Democracy. Also, these were evident in peasants’ victims’ confessions during the trials.
Through the narrative of raion trials, the historian can analyze and interpret the Great Terror period. It shows the Great terror as being a nightmare period to top the peasants. The evil bosses were exploiting and abusing the peasants who were victims during this whole time. The historian has presented the relationship between the peasants and bosses using the trials. It is an analysis and interpretation of the historian of the Great Terror period.
The author uses a Nordic approach in the analysis of accounts from newspapers and Swedish people on the issue of propaganda during the great terror. The media does play a vital role in the spread of propagandist ideals that characterize the Great Terror. The purpose of the media is a vital Soviet tool for state-run propaganda. Through the spread of hate, the author clearly shows how Stalin was able to advance his dictatorship regime and repress the people. In brief, the historian through the approach can analyze and interpret the Great Terror.
The historian can analyze and interpret the great terror by checking the relationship of propaganda played by the media in relationship to the great terror. Kotljarchuk indicates that the performance of propaganda in the Soviet Union played a critical role in making successful indoctrination of the population.[24] Out of propaganda, the system was able to enable national operations and even mass arrests during national operations. These thrived with the help of the media during the Great Terror period.
Through media propaganda, several factors of the great terror were successful because of the Great Terror. Kotljarchuk indicates that the Stalin regime used media propaganda in the conceptualization and support of the national operations of the NKVD and the elimination of native schools during the Great Terror period.[25] The historians’ report shows that some instances were not even reported including names of arrested people, operation concrete results, operation dates, operation progress and national operations secrets. Also, the great terror was successful with the media which by propaganda, the minority population, and local authorities were prepared for mass violence. It created a negative image to the risk group, redistribution of fear, neutralization of bystanders, denunciations and collaboration appraisal and introduction of reasons for mass arrest. Therefore, the historian uses a study on the role of media on government propaganda in analyzing and interpreting the Great Terror.
Conclusion
Several historians have differently interpreted and analyzed the Great Terror. All of the historians have indicated the Great Terror period as a period that can never be forgotten in by the people of the Soviet Union as it impacted the people physically, culturally, economically socially and politically. Different researchers have interpreted and uniquely analyzed great terror. Some historian researchers have indicated the great terror as a period that was important for the Soviet people’s growth both economically, socially and culturally. Besides, other researchers have interpreted the great terror as a period of inhumanity that the soviet people will continue to face the consequences and do not want to go through such a period again.
Both historians indicate the great terror as a factor that shaped the Soviet Union people interpreting and analyzing the great terror as a positive or negative factor in the soviet people’s livelihood during that time. In the future, it is worth analyzing the historian’s perception of the Great Terror to understand how historians understand the great terror at a personal level.
Bibliography
Conquest, R. “The Great Terror: Stalin’s purge of the thirties.” Random House. (2018).
Fitzpatrick Sheila. “How the Mice Buried the Cat: Scenes from the Great Purges of 1937 in the Russian Provinces” The Russian Review, Vol. 52, No. 3 (Jul. 1993), pp. 299-320
Henderson, David. “Evidence of Stalinist Terror in Modern Adult Height Data.” Ph.D. diss., Duke University, 2019.
Kotljarchuk, Andrej. “Propaganda of Hatred and the Great Terror: A Nordic Approach.” (2017): 91-121.
Robert W. Thurston. “The Soviet Family during the Great Terror, 1935-1941” Soviet Studies, Vol. 43, No. 3 (1991), pp. 553-574
[1] Conquest, R. “ Stalin’s purge of the thirties, “136.
[2] Henderson, David. “Evidence of Stalinist Terror in Modern Adult Height Data,” 6.
[3]—Conquest, “Stalin’s purge of the thirties,” 289.
[5] Ibid, 10
[6] Ibid, 11
[7] Ibid, 12
[8] Ibid, 27
[9]—Robert, “The Soviet Family during the Great Terror, 1935-1941,” 553.
[10] Ibid, 553
[11] Ibid, 557
[12] Ibid, 557
[13] Ibid, 557
[14] Ibid, 557
[15] Ibid, 567
[16] Fitzpatrick Sheila. “How the Mice Buried the Cat,”318.
[17] Ibid, 3178
[18] Ibid, 307
[19] Ibid, 307
[20] Ibid, 308
[21] Ibid, 310
[22] Ibid, 310
[23] Ibid, 311
[24] Kotljarchuk, “Propaganda of Hatred and the Great Terror,’’92.
[25] Ibid, 112
Unnecessary comma.
Consider removing.
Who?
You can put the authors in your footnotes but try to also include them in your paragraph, might help with flow.
“It was during this period that the great terror was set in motion,”
Rephrase this…
Symbol.
Great Terror.
Stalin
Remove this.
In addition to the order,
As a result; or consequentially.
Month
Starting
What historian?
Name the author and their work.
Check spelling.
Maybe include this in your footnotes.
Awkward sentence
Remove comma.
Very interesting.
What does this mean?
What part of the regime?
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