Tag Archives: Purges

Purging for the Good of the State

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Stalin had a clear agenda for what he wanted to get done in the Soviet economy. The base of the society rests on if they can get food, so naturally agriculture is very important to the success of an economy. Due to the poor results he was getting from the agricultural sector, he sought to find new ways to inspire production from the Soviet people.

Interestingly, the dominant force within Soviet argriculture were the kulaks, the peasants who controlled the majority of production or were doing well for themselves. While the term represented a large spectrum of wealth, they were an oddball in a socialist country. Stalin saw these people to be enemies of the state and began to discredit them through party agitators and eventually began to purge them. (( http://soviethistory.msu.edu/1929-2/collectivization/ )) Stalin realized that these kulaks did hold a tremendous amount of power on a local level, which matters more to the everyday lives of the Soviet citizen. In his essay regarding the grain crisis, he reiterates that those who seek to return to kulak farming are similar to that of the great serf estates of the tsarist regime. (( http://soviethistory.msu.edu/1929-2/collectivization/collectivization-texts/stalin-on-the-grain-crisis/ )) He also mentions that the kulak is the antithesis of communism, and for that reason alone, it should not be allowed. Stalin mentions how the kulaks have lost a large amount of power in the years leading up to his writing, and now they can finally bring the power of the kulaks into the realm of the state so that it can produce for everyone. (( http://soviethistory.msu.edu/1929-2/collectivization/collectivization-texts/stalin-on-the-liquidation-of-the-kulak/ ))

A year after his essay on the liquidation of the kulaks, Stalin writes in the party newspaper, Pravda, that the successes of liquidating an entire class of people has been phenomenal for the state as a whole. The success was “dizzying” and this sets a very dangerous precedent for the rest of Stalin’s reign. He is justifying the murder of his own people for the good of the state and the party. He sees success in the rural community through his destruction of the kulaks, writing, “It shows that the radical turn of the rural districts towards Socialism may already be regarded as guaranteed.” (( http://soviethistory.msu.edu/1929-2/collectivization/collectivization-texts/dizzy-with-success/ )) By defending murder for the good of the state, Stalin is tightening his grip on the Soviet Union more and more.

The rural parts of the Soviet Union were always going to be the hardest to adjust to socialism, and Stalin believed that drastic steps were needed to impose it upon them. By removing their local “lords” and replacing them with the state, Stalin is taking the steps towards having socialism entirely in one country.

 

Stalin’s Accusations of Subversion

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Stalin’s attempts to remove any political factions that were pitted against him provide an iconic example of a totalitarian rise to power.  These ambitions are summarized definitively in “Purges,” a document published in 1935.  In this passage, Stalin’s prose reveals his feelings that the extant companions of Lenin in the Soviet Union constituted a threat to his own political prowess and thus needed to be eliminated by whatever means necessary to decimate their power and credibility with the general public.

Stalin accused figures such as Bukharin, Zinoviev, and Trotsky of “insincerity and duplicity” in their statements of allegiance to the state and claimed that they were responsible for numerous acts of subversion, most significantly “a villainous plot against the life of S.M. Kirov. (Stalin)  The more poignant purpose of these accusations was to portray these Old Bolsheviks as enemies of the “common cause.” (Stalin)  By extension, these opponents of Stalinism became the collective enemy of the public.  Thus, by publishing “Purges,” Stalin attempted to simultaneously denounce the likes of the Old Bolsheviks and create a unifying “us against them” mentality amongst the Russian population.  The administrative technique of “unification against a common enemy” is pervasive throughout history and is evident in countless examples of leadership beyond the political sphere.   “Purges,” however, is one of the most archetypal instances of the usage of this tool.

Do you think that Stalin’s accusations of “insincerity and duplicity” against the Old Bolsheviks were a calculated act of propaganda or simply the product of paranoia? (Stalin)

Gulag Archipelago and Labor Camp

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In the Gulag Archipelago,  Solzhenitsynt describes the labor camps in which mass numbers of prisoners and political undesirables were literally worked to death. The first question this article elicits from me is if these prison workers had the same frame of mind Podlubnyi had in his diaries. The labor process was used as a means of rehabilitation for the mind of a law breaker or political deviant, and maximum efforts were vehemently supported by the state. The state was also extremely unsympathetic towards the humans rights violations that the prison laborers worked through on a daily basis. It was estimated that 1% of the original total of workers died per day, but the social protocol was that every worker “managed” their obstacles. Statisticians lied about the number of labor related deaths, and logically deduced that since there were 100,000 workers at the projects beginning, and 100,000 at its end, than there must have been zero total deaths, despite the fact that it all of these workers had been replaced.

the labor camps in which mass numbers of prisoners and political undesirables were literally worked to death. The first question this article elicits from me is if these prison workers had the same frame of mind Podlubnyi had in his diaries. The labor process was used as a means of rehabilitation for the mind of a law breaker or political deviant, and maximum efforts were vehemently supported by the state. The state was also extremely unsympathetic towards the humans rights violations that the prison laborers worked through on a daily basis. It was estimated that 1% of the original total of workers died per day, but the social protocol was that every worker “managed” their obstacles. Statisticians lied about the number of labor related deaths, and logically deduced that since there were 100,000 workers at the projects beginning, and 100,000 at its end, than there must have been zero total deaths, despite the fact that it all of these workers had been replaced.

The Gulag were a Soviet Union government agency that was used by Stalin as a form of political repression and social control. During this era, many civilians were arrested and unfairly tried because they were assumed to be political threats. Along side with labor camps, Stalin would also use purges as a form of political control. Although purges had been taking place since as early as 1921 by the Bolsheviks, they were very heightened during Stalin’s Terror in the 1930’s and greatly altered the social dynamic between the citizen and the state.

Did these workers have the same Soviet mindset as Podlubnyi? Did they see themselves as Stalin and the party saw them? What was the civilian populated that wasn’t under containment by Stalin thinking? How did societies structure fluctuate with paranoia?