Stalins close associates later justified his purges of 1937-9 on the grounds of necessary

security measures in a worsening international climate. How reasonable is this explanation?

The Soviet purges of 1937 to 1939 are renowned for their scope and brutality. Whilst the exact
number of people affected - both directly and indirectly - by the Terror is hotly debated, what is not
questioned is that the purges were initiated at the very top of the Soviet political hierarchy, by Stalin
himself. The events of the Terror cannot be explained by one occurrence or actor; it is only by
examining all the factors involved that we can attempt to understand how the Terror came about. It
is not the multi-causality of the Terror which has proved contentious amongst historians, but their
weighting. The relative importance of the factors also changes depending on whether you are
discussing the purge or the mass operations. The deteriorating international situation certainly
played its part in the development and implementation of the Terror, but there are other factors
which also triggered the Terror: ideological purity within the party, as well as Stalins personality,
internal rivalry and the Bolshevik states development must be mentioned in an analysis of the
causes of the Terror. This essay will examine these causes before coming to a conclusion as to the
credibility of using the worsening international climate as a justification for the Terror of 1937-9.
For the purposes of this essay, Terror or Yezhovshchina refers to all the campaigns carried out
between 1937 and 1939, purge denotes the party purge and mass operations indicates the campaign
amongst the general population.

It shall be assumed that close associates refers to Stalins inner circle, particularly Molotov, and
that this justification was made in their memoirs. However, their motives in justifying the Terror
decades after it happened and after Stalins death must be evaluated. Was it the fact that they felt
close to death and thus wanted to explain a possible blot on their record and so made up an excuse

or did they wholeheartedly believe that this was why Stalin unleashed the Yezhovshchina? This
will also be explored below.

By 1937, the international situation had deteriorated and war was looking increasingly likely. The
Soviet state was under pressure from Japan in the east, along the border with Manchuria, whilst the
new military power of Nazi Germany, which was slowly taking territory, was drawing ever closer to
its Western borders. In this climate, it has been suggested, Stalin and his colleagues in the Politburo
began to prepare the country to fight a war. Due to Stalins reading in early 1937 of rear-guard
uprisings against the Republican regime in Spain during that countrys civil war (Shearer in
McCloughlin and McDermott, 2003:104), the fear that enemy states might attempt to organise the
same kind of...uprisings (Shearer, paraphrasing Khlevnyuk in McCloughlin and McDermott,
2003:105) infected the leadership. To prevent such uprisings, according to this theory, the Terror
was unleashed, to remove those who at the decisive moment, might not prove dependable
(Molotov in Montefiore, 2004:248) and those who were of certain ethnic populations (Shearer in
McCoughlin and McDermott, 2003:112). This meant that all those who had previously opposed
Stalin in any way, even if they had recanted and now fully subscribed to Stalinism and be they at
the top or the bottom of the Party hierarchy, or were of national minorities (Shearer in
McCloughlin and McDermott, 2003:112), were removed from society and sent to the gulag or
executed. Leading on from this, hundreds of thousands of people were accused of being German,
Japanese and Polish spies to wipe out the vast networks of spies which, in their spy mania, the
Soviet leaders were convinced had been established within the USSR (Morris, 2004:751).

This argument focusses on external events and their internal impact. It does not take into account
the internal causes or the randomness of targets, meaning anyone could turn out to be an
enemy (Fitzpatrick, 1999:192). If the aim was to remove possible unreliable elements, then, as
2

Conquest and Thurston point out, if anything, the purges [mass operations] created more enemies
of the regime (Thurston, 1996:133) and a vast pool of potential treason (Conquest, 1990:468).
This meant that when the international situation degenerated further, resulting in invasion by the
German Army on 22 June 1941, the state was being run by less experienced staff who had risen up
the ladder as their superiors were removed, not due to competence. This not only created a sense of
uncertainly as to how long you would hold that post but also doubt that anyone actually knew what
they were doing. Whilst it is possible that Molotov and the inner circle believed this to be the
reason for the Terror, it must not be forgotten that they had access to more information than most
and so should have been able to see how unrealistic this threat actually was, implying that they were
using the good of the country as an excuse, rather than it being the actual cause.

The figure whose presence looms over the whole of this period is Stalin. Whilst the degree of his
control and level of planning in the events which unfolded in the USSR between 1937 and 1939 is
debated, it is undeniable that he initiated the Terror and helped create the national atmosphere which
led to its continuation. His experience in creating a cannibalistic inquisition (Montefiore,
2008:226) is evident in his hunt for traitors in Baku in late 1909. This quest for traitors, real and
imagined (Montefiore, 2008:226) demonstrates that he had the capability to plan and carry out a
campaign directed at specific groups and individuals, as this was aimed purely at the Party
apparatus in Baku. Consequently, Stalin had experience to add to his personality, which possessed
a cruel streak, even a sadistic one (Smith, 1968:191) and certainly shaped (Montefiore,
2004:20) the Terror. Thurston asserts that Stalins personality directly affected the outcome of the
Terror, even going so far as to say that a different leadership would have resulted in a different
outcome (1996:227-228). In his speech in 1956, Khrushchev - although not a neutral witness
without vested interests - clearly lays the blame for the Terror at Stalins feet. He decries Stalins

abuse of power and details how the Central Committee, Politburo and Party in general were
increasingly ignored by Stalin in his willfulness [sic] (Khrushchevs Secret Speech, 1956).

However, the effect of Stalin himself on the course of the Terror must not be over estimated.
Thurston also claims that Stalins leadership was conspicuous by its absence during the Terror and
that its most notable feature was his consistent inconsistency (1996:70). The role of the Politburo in
the formulation of the Terror is also disputed. Khlevnyuk explicitly mentions Stalin and his
colleagues (in Ili, 2006:38-39) suggesting that Stalin did not make the decisions on his own but in
consultation with the upper echelons of the Party. Other historians are not so explicit in their
conclusions on the involvement of the Politburo but tend to focus on the impact of Stalin as an
individual with supreme power, rather than as a member of a governing body, such as the Politburo,
diminishing that bodys importance. Therefore, whilst the Politburo undoubtedly played a part in
the decision making process at this time, this was almost certainly considered of less importance
than Stalins own opinion. Conquest, despite his disillusionment with Communism as an ideology
and, therefore, potential to look especially harshly on the Soviet state, asserts that the leadership
had constantly spoken against unfair expulsion (1990:248) from the Party, although he does
acknowledge that ulterior motives came into play with this, and adds that an attempt was made to
block the Purge (1990:172) at the February 1937 Plenum of the Central Committee. As Smith
points out, Stalin was domineering (1968:34) and had an inability to suffer any
criticism (1968:36), indicating that he was unlikely to listen to, let alone follow, anothers
suggestion, especially if it directly contradicted his own. Stalin, therefore, played a key role in
beginning the Terror. Other evidence, however - for example Thurston (1996), Getty (1985), Getty
and Naumov (1999) - suggests that the central administration lost control of the purges as local
officials strove to out perform each other and exceed targets. This implies that Stalins role
diminished as the Terror continued and the mass operations began on a larger scale. Molotov and
4

the immediate circle around Stalin would be unlikely to blame him alone for the Terror as Molotov,
in particular, was still a believer in Stalinism when he gave a series of interviews to Feliks Chuev,
published posthumously in 1993. It is conceivable, therefore, that Molotov and the inner circle saw
security as a way to move the blame from the person they still idolised.

Violence is the beating heart of the Communist ideology: the Communist Manifesto states that the
violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie lays the foundation for the sway of the proletariat (Marx and
Engels, 2002:232). The Bolshevik regime began to purge the Party during the Civil War when its
ranks swelled rapidly and the leaders were afraid of being swamped by careerists and selfseekers (Figes, 2008:34). It can be argued that for a regime built on bloodshed to reject violence
when it felt threatened by foreign powers would be to forget its heritage and so to initiate a purge
seemed the culturally and historically appropriate thing to do. It is undeniable, however, that those
purges were less all-encompassing than the 1937-9 Terror, and that to include the entire population
of a state in a purge campaign is to risk losing the vital support of the proletariat; to justify the
Terror as a natural progression of Leninism, therefore, would be a betrayal of all that the Bolsheviks
had achieved thus far.

Similarly, Stalin himself justified the Terror by saying that as socialism gets stronger, the class
struggle gets sharper (in Conquest, 1990:177), suggesting that the Terror was purely ideological in
origin. Figes agrees with this and observes that hidden enemies [constituted] an obstacle to the
building of a Communist society (2008:192). However, this cannot be the entire cause of the
Terror as not all of the victims were ordinary party members, kulaks or former members of the
bourgeoisie. The victims of the purge do not fit this theory because it is not rational to conclude
that those who helped in the struggle against the bourgeoisie could have been condemned as part of
the class struggle. Similarly, Molotov and the inner circle also seem to skim over the impact of
5

ideology as a cause of the purges as this could be perceived as a negative aspect of the doctrine they
had dedicated their lives to and so claimed it was for the greater good of the nation.

The final factor in the Terror is personal rivalry. The purge at the top of the Party enveloped former
oppositionists who had recanted their views and decided to work with Stalin despite differences in
ideology. Conquest points out that in the July 1937 Georgian Party purge, all the men involved
were old enemies of Stalin (1990:225) whilst Shearer refers to a deep-rooted fear amongst the
leadership of opposition groups such as those who were tried in the great show trials of 1936-8 (in
McCloughlin and McDermott, 2003:112). This, coupled with the fear of foreign invasion, was a
powerful motive for removing all those who could be a threat, either to personal power or to the
security of the country in event of war. In fact, it could be argued that the imminent threat of war
drew the attention of the leaders to the possibility of traitors within the Politburo and country as a
whole, leading them - but particularly Stalin, as outlined above - to see enemies everywhere.
However, political rivalry cannot account for the mass operations, whose victims had no contact
with Stalin or the leaders and so could not have been in a position to rival their power.
Unsurprisingly, Molotov and the inner circle make no mention of personal rivalry as a motive for
the purges as this would lessen their altruism and so said it was for the survival of the people in
the event of war that some had to die.

To explain the momentum of the mass operations, therefore, we must look amongst the citizens of
the USSR. Shearer points out that [t]he purge campaign [mass operations] relied heavily on a
bureaucratised process of denunciation, arrest and interrogation (in McCloughlin and McDermott,
2003:107) and, therefore, was subject to manipulation by the citizenry for its own purposes.
Indeed, Thurston states that if the situation of ordinary people had not primed them to follow his
[Stalins] lead, the violence would have been much more limited (1996:228) and Getty and
6

Naumov assert that there seems to have been a broad consensus at various stages on the need for
repression of particular groups and on cleansing the party of unreliable elements (1999:579-580).
Figes concludes that there were two broad categories [of informant]: voluntary informers, who
were usually motivated by material rewards, political beliefs or malice towards their victims; and
involuntary informers, who were entrapped by police threats or promises to help arrested
relatives (2008:259); thus complicity through denunciation did not necessarily mean support of the
regime.

In conclusion, the Terror of 1937-9 was the result of many causes, one of which was the
international climate. It is reasonable to claim that security in a worsening international situation
was a factor in triggering the Terror but not that it was the greatest, let alone the only, cause of the
Yezhovshchina, at either the highest or lowest levels of Soviet society. It has been seen that the
security of the Soviet state may be viewed as an excuse for the Terror, rather than a justification. It
may, therefore, be deduced that Molotov and Stalins inner circle within the Polituro were feeling
the need to justify a dark time in their past, rather then repeating the cause cited at the time. Whilst
Fitzpatrick is right to a certain degree when she says that there are no fully satisfactory
explanations (1999:172) for some events in history, there are areas of the Terror which have scope
for further exploration. With the continually improving access to the archives of the NKVD and
Politburo, it would be possible to see inside the meetings which saw these momentous decisions
made and provide an insight into the inner workings of the upper echelons of the Soviet state as
well as how ordinary NKVD officials decided who to arrest. Similar to this, the records of the
troikas who acted as judge and jury at the murderous height of the purge would be revealing, as
they would show how decisions of life and death were taken and how much personal rivalry
affected the quasi-judicial process of which they were a part. Whilst the exact motives of Stalin
when he initiated the Terror and of the lower officials when they seized the initiative extended to
7

them are impossible to know, we can find out more about the process of decision making and, as is
so often the case in Soviet history, carefully examine the exact language of each actor to determine
what they actually mean. Perhaps with this, we can come close to understanding one of the most
bloody events of a bloody century.

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