State Terror, the NKVD and Early Purges (AQA A-Level History): Revision Notes
State Terror, the NKVD and Early Purges
The origins of state terror in the USSR
State terror refers to a means by which a government controls the population and removes opposition through the systematic use of control and fear. Under Stalin, terror became an instrument of government policy itself, not simply a tool to maintain power.
The USSR had already developed the machinery of state terror under Lenin well before Stalin's rise to dominance. The Soviet people lived under strict surveillance carried out by Party activists and informers. Lenin established the Cheka in December 1917, describing it as his "sharp sword of the revolution". From 1922 to 1934, security functions were carried out by the Department of Political Police, known as the OGPU. This organisation also supervised a network of labour camps that had been constructed since 1918 to replace the old tsarist prison camps.
By 1928, the USSR was already a police state. What changed under Stalin was not the existence of terror, but its scale, targets, and integration into the broader political system.
Stalin's extension of terror, 1929-1934
During his rise to the leadership position, Stalin expanded the use of terror both within the Party and across Soviet society. In 1929, he expelled Trotsky from the USSR and removed Bukharin from the Politburo, eliminating his main political rivals. These actions demonstrated Stalin's willingness to use institutional power to crush opposition.
The enforcement of collectivisation from 1930 onwards provided Stalin with opportunities to employ terror on a massive scale. He expelled some of his former supporters from the Party in 1930 for criticising the excesses of collectivisation. In 1931, he put a group of former Mensheviks and SRs (Socialist Revolutionaries) on trial. As he pushed through the Five Year Plans for industry, Stalin sent specialists and engineers whom he accused of machine-breaking and sabotage to labour camps.
These early purges served multiple purposes. They removed potential sources of opposition, created scapegoats for economic difficulties, and established an atmosphere of fear that discouraged criticism of Stalin's policies.
Early show trials and industrial sabotage
The Shakhty trial (1928)
The Shakhty Trial: Establishing the Pattern of Show Trials
In 1928, managers and technicians at the Shakhty coal mine who had questioned the pace of industrialisation were accused of "counter-revolutionary activity". They were subjected to a public show trial in which they were forced to confess their supposed crimes.
Outcome: Five were executed and others received long prison sentences. Following this trial, Gosplan (the State Planning Committee) was subsequently purged of ex-Mensheviks, and further trials took place throughout the USSR.
Significance: This trial established the template for using technical problems as evidence of political sabotage.
The Industrial Party trial (1930)
The Industrial Party Trial: Scapegoating for Industrialisation Failures
In November 1930, the Industrial Party show trial targeted sabotage and treason. A random group of industrialists, Mensheviks and SRs were accused of sabotage.
Purpose: This trial served to blame technical specialists for the difficulties and failures of rapid industrialisation, deflecting criticism away from Stalin's policies.
The Metro-Vickers trial (1933)
The Metro-Vickers Trial: Extending Terror to Foreign Engineers
In 1933, British specialists working for the Metro-Vickers company were found guilty of wrecking activities.
Significance: This trial extended the pattern of scapegoating to foreign engineers, suggesting that external enemies were undermining Soviet industrial progress.
These trials established a pattern that would characterise Stalinist terror: public confessions extracted under pressure, the conflation of technical problems with political sabotage, and the creation of enemies who could be blamed for policy failures.
The Ryutin affair and party opposition
By the end of the first Five Year Plan in 1932, there were renewed signs of opposition to Stalin's leadership. The forced collectivisation and the 1932-33 famine had weakened Stalin's position, leading to a further round of party purges.
Martemyan Ryutin (1890-1937), a former Moscow Party Secretary who had been expelled from the party in 1930 for calling for changes in policy, circulated a 200-page document entitled "Stalin and the Crisis of the Proletarian Dictatorship" among Party members in March 1932. This became known as the "Ryutin Platform" and was followed by another document urging Stalin's removal.
Stalin called for the execution of these "traitors", but he was over-ruled (possibly by Kirov, the popular Leningrad Party leader who had been considered a likely successor to Stalin). Ryutin was imprisoned for ten years, while Zinoviev, Kamenev and 14 others were expelled from the Party for failure to report the existence of the document. There were 24 further expulsions the following month.
By 1934, approximately one-fifth of the Party had been branded "Ryutinites" and expelled in a non-violent purge or chistka. This represented the last significant organised opposition within the Party before the Great Terror began.
Understanding the terminology:
Purge literally means a "cleaning out of impurities". This term was primarily used to describe forcible expulsions from the Communist Party, but in the later 1930s it came to mean the removal of anyone deemed a political enemy.
Chistka is a Russian word for a political purge.
Ryutin was ultimately executed in January 1937 as part of the Yezhovshchina (Great Purge).
The creation of the NKVD (1934)
In 1934, the USSR's internal security was transferred to the NKVD (People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs). This new organisation was led in turn by Yagoda, Yezhov and Beria. In the same year, the ordinary police were also placed under the control of the NKVD, and the labour camps were reorganised into a national network, known as the Gulags.
The significance of centralisation:
This reorganisation unified the whole system of policing and state repression under a single organisation, the NKVD. This centralisation made the terror apparatus more efficient and gave Stalin greater control over the instruments of repression.
Key figure: Genrikh Yagoda (1891-1938)
Genrikh Yagoda had joined the Cheka at the end of the Civil War and became head of the secret police (NKVD) in 1934. He was responsible for preparing the first major show trial in 1936. However, he was accused of being insufficiently thorough in his work, arrested, tried, and executed in 1938.
Yagoda's fate illustrated that even those who administered Stalin's terror were not safe from it. This created an atmosphere where loyalty provided no protection, further intensifying the climate of fear.
Chronology of early terror and purges
| Year | Events |
|---|---|
| 1928 | Shakhty trial of managers and technicians accused of sabotage |
| 1929 | Trotsky expelled from the USSR; Bukharin removed from the Politburo |
| 1930 | Enforcement of collectivisation and coercion of the kulaks; Industrial Party show trial for sabotage and treason; Stalin expelled former supporters who criticised collectivisation |
| 1931 | Trial of several former Mensheviks and SRs |
| 1932 | Martemyan Ryutin circulated his platform opposing Stalin; Stalin's wife Nadezhda Allilugeva committed suicide |
| 1933 | Metro-Vickers trial of British engineers for "sabotage" |
| 1934 | Seventeenth Party Congress; OGPU replaced by NKVD; Kirov murdered; approximately one-fifth of the Party expelled |
Key Points to Remember:
- State terror existed under Lenin, but Stalin extended its scale and made it a central instrument of government policy.
- Early show trials (Shakhty 1928, Industrial Party 1930, Metro-Vickers 1933) blamed technical specialists and former political opponents for economic problems, deflecting criticism from Stalin's policies.
- The Ryutin Platform (1932) represented the last organised opposition within the Party before the Great Terror, and approximately 20% of Party members were purged by 1934.
- The creation of the NKVD in 1934 unified the entire security and repression apparatus under one organisation, making Stalin's control more efficient.
- Even those who administered terror, like Yagoda, could become victims of the system they helped create.