Stalin’s Terror (Edexcel A-Level History): Revision Notes

Stalin's Terror

Introduction

Stalin fundamentally transformed how the Soviet secret police operated. While Lenin had used the Cheka, GPU and OGPU to attack enemies outside the Communist Party, Stalin turned the secret police against the Party itself. He expanded terror on an unprecedented scale, sending millions to the Gulags (forced labour camps). To justify this dramatic expansion of terror, Stalin developed new ideological theories that changed the entire culture and purpose of the secret police.

The NKVD under Genrikh Yagoda

Genrikh Yagoda became head of the NKVD (People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs) in July 1934. Following the murder of Sergei Kirov, Yagoda led the hunt for enemies within the Party.

Yagoda's performance

Despite organising the arrest, interrogation and trial of Zinoviev and Kamenev, Stalin found Yagoda disappointing. Stalin wanted to use Kirov's murder as an opportunity to move against Bukharin and Trotsky's supporters, but Yagoda failed to deliver this. The scale of terror in 1935 and 1936 remained relatively modest by Soviet standards, which frustrated Stalin's ambitions.

Yagoda's significance

However, Yagoda played a crucial role in the Great Terror by helping Stalin turn the NKVD against the Communist Party itself. This marked a turning point in Soviet politics - the secret police was no longer just fighting external enemies but targeting Party members themselves.

Yagoda's background and fate

Yagoda joined the Bolsheviks in 1907 and the Cheka soon after its creation, rising to deputy chief by 1923. During the 1920s, he aligned with Bukharin and the Right of the Party. Between 1921 and 1933, he supervised construction of the Moscow-Volga Canal using Gulag labour, during which over 20,000 prisoners died. He also played a role in the Great Famine in Ukraine, ensuring the starvation of victims.

Stalin allegedly confided in Yagoda that he preferred loyalty through fear rather than conviction, because convictions could change but fear remained constant. Eventually, Stalin blamed Yagoda for slow progress in the early terror and had him arrested. Yagoda was tried as part of the Trial of the 21 in 1938 and executed.

Sharpening class struggle

To justify expanding terror beyond what Lenin had used, Stalin developed a new theory called the doctrine of sharpening class struggle.

The theory explained

Stalin argued that as socialism advanced and became more successful, the class struggle would actually intensify rather than decrease. According to this theory, capitalists and class enemies would fight harder as socialism succeeded. This completely reversed Lenin's assumptions, which had predicted that class struggle would diminish as socialism progressed.

Purpose of the doctrine

This theory provided ideological justification for ever-increasing levels of terror. It explained why more repression was needed precisely when socialism appeared to be succeeding, allowing Stalin to extend terror indefinitely.

Terror under Nikolai Yezhov

Nikolai Yezhov played a key role in radicalising the NKVD. Under his leadership, the Great Terror spread to engulf the entire Soviet government and society.

Yezhov's background

Born in 1895, Yezhov joined the Communist Party in October 1917. By the mid-1930s, he had become one of Stalin's most trusted ministers, serving as head of the NKVD, member of the Politburo, and holding various senior positions in economic ministries. He was known as an efficient, hardworking minister and a committed Communist who skillfully manipulated the system to gain promotions.

Yezhov's eventual fate

When it became clear Stalin planned to arrest him, Yezhov became depressed and turned to alcohol. Unable to cope with the pressure, he resigned in 1938 and was arrested in 1939. His execution was kept secret for a decade because Stalin wanted to avoid drawing attention to Yezhov's work at the NKVD. Yezhov and over 300 of his closest associates were shot in 1940. Before his death, Yezhov claimed his only crime was not killing enough Russians.

Yezhov and the new NKVD

Yezhov transformed the NKVD into a ruthless organisation capable of enforcing ever-growing terror, reflecting the doctrine of sharpening class struggle.

Key changes introduced

Stalin set targets: Stalin established specific targets for arrests, executions and deportations that the NKVD had to meet.

Purge of the NKVD (1937): Many NKVD agents had been Communists since 1918, making them loyal to the Party and sometimes to Stalin's opponents. They also opposed mass terror in socialist society for ideological reasons. Purging these old agents allowed Stalin to accelerate the terror.

Recruitment of new agents: The new NKVD agents had no loyalty to the Party and no ideological opposition to terror. Many simply enjoyed the power and violence, or wanted career advancement. This made them more willing to carry out extreme measures.

The conveyor belt system

Yezhov introduced the 'conveyor belt system' to speed up obtaining confessions from victims. This system involved groups of NKVD agents working in shifts around the clock, meaning torture and interrogation could continue relentlessly without pause until prisoners confessed. This brutal method proved highly effective, leading to the Trial of the 17 and the Trial of the 21.

Yezhovshchina

Under Yezhov, terror attacked all aspects of Soviet life: the Party, the army, industry and collective farms.

The Yezhov bloodbath

Between 1937 and 1938, historian Donald Rayfield describes what occurred as the 'Yezhov bloodbath'. This period became known as 'Yezhovshchina', meaning the whole of Soviet society was engulfed in Yezhov's terror. The scale was staggering:

• Approximately 1.5 million people (about 10% of the male adult population) were arrested
• Around 635,000 were deported, often to Siberia
• Over 680,000 were executed

Impact on government districts

Yezhovshchina transformed the government districts of Moscow and Leningrad into ghost towns. Mass arrests of government officials left entire apartment blocks empty, creating eerie, depopulated areas.

Who was targeted

The terror focused on the social group most likely to oppose Stalin: urban educated men between the ages of 30 and 45 holding senior positions in government. These were the people with the knowledge, connections and authority to potentially challenge Stalin's power.

Manual workers and women were much less likely to be arrested because they were not in positions to threaten Stalin. Statistics show that 95% of those targeted were men; only 5% were women.

Local initiatives

The terror was not solely directed from the top down. Popular participation expanded and accelerated the terror at local levels.

Bottom-up terror

NKVD agents demanded higher targets: Local NKVD officials pushed for even more arrests than Stalin's quotas required, showing zealous commitment to the terror.

Workers and peasants organised show trials: At the local level, ordinary workers and peasants organised their own show trials of government employees, Party officials and factory managers. These citizens would arrest officials and try them for alleged crimes.

This popular participation showed that terror was not just imposed from above - many ordinary citizens actively participated, either from genuine belief in rooting out enemies or from personal motives like settling scores or gaining positions.

The consequences of the terror

The Great Terror had profound effects on Soviet politics, economy and society.

Stalin's strengthened position

Stalin emerged from the terror stronger than ever. The terror removed almost everyone from government who had:

• Fought in the Civil War
• Worked with Lenin
• Any claim to authority independent from Stalin

Stalin replaced these experienced officials with his own supporters - people who owed their positions and loyalty to him alone. This created a government entirely dependent on Stalin's favour.

Economic problems

The terror caused massive economic disruption. Deporting and executing factory managers, economic planners and government officials removed the experts needed to run Stalin's command economy (centrally planned economy). During the first years of the Third Five-Year Plan, production rates either declined or stagnated because the skilled personnel needed to meet targets were gone.

The perpetrators become victims

The terror claimed the lives of both Yagoda and Yezhov - the very men who had carried it out. This demonstrated that no one was safe, not even those who implemented Stalin's policies most zealously.

Lavrentiy Beria's secret police

At the end of 1938, the Great Terror began to wind down. Yezhov resigned as head of the NKVD in November and was replaced by Lavrentiy Beria. Beria's first major successes were arranging Yezhov's arrest in April 1939 and organising Trotsky's murder in Mexico in 1940.

Beria's background

Born in 1899, Beria excelled as a student of maths and science before joining the Bolsheviks in 1917. His political career began in earnest in the early 1920s when he ruthlessly repressed anti-Communist movements in Georgia. He was rewarded by being promoted to head the Georgian OGPU in 1926, where he organised Stalin's purges of the Georgian Communist Party in the mid-1930s.

Beria became head of the NKVD in 1938 and remained in this role for the rest of his life, becoming one of Stalin's most trusted government allies.

The NKVD at war

During the Second World War, Beria and the NKVD policed ethnic minorities that Stalin feared would side with Soviet enemies.

Deportation of the Kalmyks (1942)

Beria organised the mass deportation of the Kalmyks from Kalmykia (north-west of the Caspian Sea) to Siberia. Stalin feared the Kalmyks would welcome a German invasion. The brutal treatment they received in Siberia was devastating - by 1953, only 53,000 of the original population of 130,000 had survived.

Deportation of the Chechens (1944)

Beria ordered the deportation of all 460,000 Chechens from their homeland in Chechnya to Siberia within just seven days. Chechens who were unwilling or unable to leave were locked in stables and barns and burned alive. This horrific deportation resulted in approximately 170,000 deaths.

These wartime deportations demonstrated the NKVD's continued ruthlessness and Stalin's willingness to use extreme measures against entire ethnic groups.

Beria after the war

After the Second World War, Beria's NKVD continued to persecute Soviet citizens.

Treatment of Soviet prisoners of war (1945)

The NKVD interrogated the 1.5 million Soviet prisoners of war liberated from Germany. Stalin viewed these men as traitors for allowing themselves to be captured rather than fighting to the death. Most were deported to Siberia rather than being welcomed home as victims of the war.

The Leningrad Affair (1949)

Stalin launched a purge against officials in the Leningrad Party. He claimed the Leningrad Party acted independently as if it were 'an island in the Pacific'. Around 200 Party members were arrested and forced to confess to crimes against the Party. Beria may have instigated this affair because his political rivals were based in Leningrad.

The Doctors' Plot (1952-1953)

During 1952 and 1953, many of Stalin's medical staff were arrested for allegedly trying to poison him. Anti-Semitism may have been a cause of this purge, as many of the doctors were Jewish or had Jewish names, and Stalin was a well-known anti-Semite. Stalin died before the doctors could be executed, and they were released following his death.

Beria's additional responsibilities

After the Second World War, Beria was put in charge of Soviet efforts to build a nuclear bomb, showing Stalin's continued trust in him. He was also one of several senior figures with a realistic chance of winning power after Stalin's death. For most of 1953, Beria, along with Khrushchev and Malenkov, was part of the ruling alliance that replaced Stalin.

Beria's death

For Stalin's heirs, Beria was closely associated with the policy of terror. They agreed that after Stalin's death there would be no return to mass terror and no further use of the NKVD against the Party.

Therefore, just three months after Stalin's death in 1953, Beria was arrested by the NKVD and executed for treason and terrorism. Beria's death marked the symbolic end of Stalin's policy of terror and the beginning of a new era in Soviet politics.

Conclusion

Stalin's Great Terror took the use of terror to unprecedented heights. Terror became, for a time, a regular part of government. After 1938, there remained a continual threat that Stalin might unleash another wave of terror as large as that of the 1930s.

The end of mass terror

Khrushchev, who succeeded Stalin, renounced the use of mass terror and stopped using it as a weapon against the Party. He organised the rehabilitation of thousands of former Party members. Khrushchev's preferred method of social control was to encourage 'popular oversight', in which ordinary citizens disciplined themselves and each other.

In 1959, Khrushchev proudly proclaimed that there were no longer any political prisoners in the Soviet Union, declaring 'there are no political prisoners, only persons of unsound mind'. This statement reflected Khrushchev's preferred approach to dissidents, which was to subject them to compulsory psychiatric treatment rather than execution or imprisonment in Gulags.