propaganda, purges & the totalitarian state stalin’s show trials
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Propaganda, Purges & The Totalitarian State
Stalin’s Show Trials
Factors in Stalin’s Show Trials
• Collectivisation
• Economic Modernisation
• Leon Trotsky
• The Ryutin Platform
• ‘Old Bolsheviks’
• Kirov
Stalin’s Route to Power
• The original, surviving members of the October Revolution of 1917, including Lenin & Stalin.
• Would present an obstacle to Stalin’s revisionism of his minor role in the October Revolution of 1917.
• Stalin targeted these Old Bolsheviks as traitors who sought to undermine the Communist Revolution.
• Most of these, particularly Trotsky, advocated International Communism, while Stalin advocated ‘Socialism in One Country’.
• Grigory Zinoviev
• Lev Kamenev
• Nikolai Bukharin
• Genrikh Yagoda
• Karl Radek
• Sergey Kirov
• Vyacheslav Molotov
The ‘Old Bolsheviks’
Leon Trotsky:
Shadow of the Revolutionary
• Commander of Red Guards in October Revolution 1917
• Founder of the Red Army
• Very capable organiser & public orator
• Considered the natural successor to Lenin
“The end may justify the means as long as there is something that justifies the end.”
• Due to opposition to collectivisation, Stalin introduced forced collectivisation by 1929.
• Kulaks slaughtered their animals in protest and in some cases burnt their grain. Famines resulted in 1932-33. Roughly five million people died.
• In response, Stalin attempted to eradicate the Kulaks, sending out requisition squads who either killed the Kulaks or sent them to prison in the Gulags.
• Roughly five million Kulaks had been dispossessed and/ or imprisoned by 1935.
• An attempt to end private ownership of land by peasants and introduce large, collectively-owned farms in which machinery, labour & profits were shared. In some cases, collective farms were state-owned, where farmers were paid a wage similar to workers in a factory.
• Opposed bitterly by the ‘Kulaks’: peasant land owners.
• ‘Kulaks’ were an inconsistency with Communism – a wealthy, land-owning class in a Communist State. They were created by Lenin’s New Economic Policy of 1921. Many communists supported the forced eradication of these private land owners.
Collectivisation:an Ideological & Economic Imperative
The Five - Year Plans: Economic Miracle at a Price
INDUSTRIAL AIMS: AGRICULTURAL AIMS
SERGEI KIROV
• Leader of the Communist Party in Leningrad
• Loyal supporter of Stalin
• Supported Stalin’s policies of Collectivisation and even the readication of the Kulaks.
• Very popular member of the Communist Party who was elected to the Central Committee in 1934.
• Crucially, Kirov was in favour of a more relaxed style of Communism, even including certain dissidents in the Politburo.
Assassinated in 1934, probably by order of Stalin, who feared
his growing popularity & influence throughout the Communist movement.
• Origin: The ‘Cheka’ (1917 Revolution)
• State police founded in 1934 from reorganisation by Stalin to be both regular police force and state security apparatus
• The NKVD, from 1934 onwards, were given a wide mandate & enormous power, including control of fire services, security of borders, civil acts & responsibily for the operation of ‘Gulags’
• Chief state instrument of Stalin’s purges and the Show Trials
• Prominent leaders of the NKVD: Yagoda, Yezhov & Beria
Nkvd:Peoples’ Commissariat for internal affairs
• Director of the NKVD, 1934 – 1936
• Responsible for the deaths of 7 – 10 million Ukranians during forced seizures of grain supplies under the regulations of Collectivisation
• Organised the Trial of the Sixteen (1936), including the arrest, detention and interrogation of the ‘Old Bolsheviks’ e.g. Kamenev, Zinoviev.
• Replaced by Yezhov in September 1936 when Stalin accused him of being ‘’unable’’ to expose the true extent of the ‘Trotskyite conspiracy’.
• Was put on Trial in 1938 (Trial of the Twenty-One), found guilty and shot.
Genrikh YagodaDirector of NKVD (1934-1936)
ANDREI VYSHINSKYProsecutor-General
Trial of the
‘Trotskyite-Zinovievite Terrorist Centre’
The 1st Show Trial:
The Trial of the sixteen:(1936)
• Zinoviev
• Kamenev
• 14 other leading ‘Old Bolsheviks’
• Accused of murdering Sergei Kirov
• Accused of plotting to murder Stalin
• Accused of working with Trotskyites in an effort to undermine Communism in USSR
Trial of the Sixteen(1936)
Charges The Accused
Verdict: All guilty & sentenced to be shot
Trial of the SixteenThe ‘Influence’ of Trotsky
• Each of the Sixteen defendants took turns to denounce themselves, pleading guilty, incriminating themselves under the false pretense that their lives would be spared once they had publicised Trotsky’s anti-Soviet conspiracy.
“I am guilty of this that after Trotsky, I was the second organizer of the Trotsky-Zinoviev bloc which set itself the aim of murdering Stalin, Voroshilov and a number of other leaders of the party
and the government.”
- Grigory Zinoviev (1936)
Trial of
The 2nd Show Trial:
The Trial of the sixteen:(1937)
Trial of
The 3rd Show Trial:
The Trial of the sixteen:(1938)
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