The course presents the life and deeds of Joseph Stalin, the leader of the Soviet Union from 1924 till 1953. It analyses the reasons for his actions and their results, as well as the causes of his popularity in Russia today. It offers an analysis of the phenomenon of Stalinism and of its significance for Russia and beyond. In the late 1920s – early 1930s Stalin directed the massive and rapid industrialisation of the country and the forced collectivisation of its agriculture. The industrialisation was based on forced labour, and collectivisation on repression, but both helped to create the material base for the Soviet defence industry. In the late 1930s Stalin unleashed mass terror against the Soviet people, in which millions perished. In his view this helped to rid the country of any potential internal enemies on the eve of the coming war. The USSR, together with its allies, won the Second World War, but at the cost of dozens of millions of lives. Stalin was instrumental in creating the post-war order. The system which he created in the 1930s shaped the USSR as it was during his lifetime and for decades after his death. It also influenced the lives of millions of people beyond the Soviet borders. The course will enable those who take it to develop an informed understanding of the Stalin era and of the phenomenon of Stalinism.
5.11.1. The First Show Trials
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From the course by National Research University Higher School of Economics
Stalin and Stalinism in Russian History
62 ratings
National Research University Higher School of Economics
62 ratings
From the lesson
The Dictator
Lecture 5 describes the establishment of Stalin’s unchallenged and unchallengeable dictatorship. It gives an outline of Stalin’s terror campaigns and analyses their effect on Soviet society. It also looks in the creation of the new generation of Soviet elite, moulded by Stalin.
Meet the Instructors
Irina FilatovaProfessor
Faculty of Humanities / School of History
[MUSIC]
Hello.
Today, we shall speak about one of the most difficult periods in Russian history.
It is 1930s, the time of Stalin's terror,
particularly the late 1930s.
The time of his great terror.
Bolsheviks never shunned terror, generally speaking.
Lenin often wrote or said, shoot or shoot as many as possible.
Priests, saboteurs, Mensheviks, prostitutes, whoever.
Revolution was associated with death.
It is either death to capital or it is death to the revolution.
It is either death to capitalist or it's death to workers.
So, glory to Red terror was the slogan of the early 1920s,
but Stalin created a completely different situation.
He put terror on an industrial basis.
In 1928, engineering staff and technical staff of
a coal mine in Shakhty, in Donbass were arrested.
They were charged with sabotage with creating an underground organization and
with ties with foreign anti-Soviet centres.
This was called economic counterrevolution in Donbass.
The accused were tortured to extract confessions and
documents against them were falsified.
One, Evdokimov, an OGPU representative in North Caucasus,
in 1937, told the story of how this trial came into existence.
What he said was that there would have been no trial, if it were not for Stalin.
In 1927, he met Stalin in Sochi and
Stalin asked him about the accidents
in Shakhty, in the Donbass area.
The OGPU representative candidly said that they were watching
all these accidents of which there were many, but
they could not pin them on anybody in particular.
Then Stalin said, well, it is quite obvious to me that there is
an underground organization at work there.
That is easy to establish.
What is not easy to establish and
that I want you to find out is who is managing them?
Is it Polish general staff or
is it the Belgians who had owned this factory?
The first drafts of charges and of the proceedings
were sent to the central committee for approval.
So indeed, if there were no Stalin there would have been no trial.
It was a public show trial the first of many.
11 people were sentenced to death, many more to imprisonment.
Stalin personally distributed the sentences.
These people to be executed.
These people to be imprisoned.
It was a staunch warning to all those who wanted to risk their lives,
engineering or technical staff.
Those who had too much energy or
initiative to do something on their own.
So, there would be no more initiative from these quarters.
In 1930, another conspiracy was uncovered.
This was the underground Industrial Party.
Creation of the OGPU completely, there was no such party.
But people who were accused, again, they were mainly technical staff.
They were accused of sabotage,
the creation of crisis of supplies of say,
products of metallurgical industry or something else.
Of course, there was a connection with foreign powers, foreign governments and
the party was supposed to prepare the grounds for an intervention.
The funny thing was that it was said that the counterrevolutionary
government which was supposed to seize power after the intervention
was to consist of Palchinsky who was one of the accused,
who had already been executed by the time of the trial.
Then pre-revolutionary industrialist Ryabushinsky who was in exile and
who had also died before the trial and then historian Tarle,
who was supposed to be a foreign minister,
who had absolutely nothing to do with the whole project.
In 1934, first December, Stalin's close associate.
Sergei Kirov was murdered in Leningrad.
This was a momentous event.
The assassin was found very easily.
It was a minor party member Nikolayev who
used to work in the same building as Kirov,
but who had been sacked.
He still had a pass to the building.
And so, entered it easily.
He was psychologically unstable and it is not clear why he did it.
Kirov may or may not have had an affair with his wife.
But of course, he was arrested and this was not the end of it.
This was just the beginning.
Stalin decided that he could connect Kirov's
murder was Zinoviev and Zinoviev's supporters.
Because if you remember,
Zinoviev was the previous party boss of Leningrad.
The trials in connection with the Kirov murder and the conspiracies,
the Zinoviev conspiracy continued for two years, 1934 and 1935.
Stalin organized the trials up to the smallest details.
Dozens were executed.
Zinoviev and Kamenev were also on trial, but their lives were temporarily spared.
Later on, there were rumors that Stalin himself could
have organized this assassination of Kirov.
There are no archival documents to support this.
But of course, Stalin was a great politician.
So, he could not fail to notice the usefulness of this assassination for
his political purposes.
What were the reasons for
this attack on the Stalin old guard?
It is quite obvious, look at these faces.
This is the old guard, old Bolsheviks who were there at the time of learning and
who were there at the beginning of Stalin's career.
They do not see themselves as unequal to Stalin.
They are the same.
They are lively people.
They have their own opinions.
They cheer him, but they he knew perfectly well
that they do remember the Lenin testament that
they do remember that at that moment when whole Stalin career could finish.
Zinoviev and Kamenev were the people who saved him.
They also remembered that Bukharin and Ryikov
were against Stalin's policy of collectivisation in the Politbeuro and
that the majority of Politbeuro was with them.
They also remembered that it was only the central committee
which helped Stalin to defeat them.
So for them, Stalin was still somehow the first among equals and
he did not like that.
What he also did not like was the fact that these
people occupied too many important positions.
In the mid-1930s, 30 to 40,000 top and
middle party and government positions were occupied
by people who did not start their careers under Stalin.
They had their own networks.
They had their own loyalties.
And so, they had to be replaced.
They had to be replaced with unthinkingly loyal and
enthusiastically devoted people.
People devoted to Stalin and Stalin alone.
In 1935, there was another trial, the so-called Kremlin trial.
At the center of it was Avel Yenukidze.
Avel Yenukidze was the Secretary of
the Presidium of the Central Committee.
It was a technical position.
And yet, he was important.
Yenukidze was a personal friend of many in the Central Committee and
of Stalin himself.
And yet, he was charged with treason and
the other participants in the Kremlin trial were
charged with trying to organize terrorist acts and
of connections with Kamenev, Trotsky and Zinoviev.
For the first time, some people in this group
were accused of attempting to kill Stalin.
Again, Stalin gave instructions on how the trial should proceed.
Some of the participants were demoted.
Yenukidze was shot later in 1937,
but it was also the first that time that relatives, acquaintances and other people
were drawn into the trial just because of their ties with those were who accused.
Kirov's murder was also mentioned and
some of the participants were accused of killing Kirov.
The Kremlin trial was a launching pad for career of Nikolai Yezhov.
In 1936 in September,
he was appointed head of NKVD.
He worked for the next three years
efficiently and creatively,
implementing Stalin's policy.
[MUSIC]
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