Khlevnyuk's "Objectives of the Great Terror

Khlevnyuk's "Objectives of the Great Terror

The first objective of the Great Terror, the Moscow Show Trials, involved three main trials; The Zinoviev trial in 1936, The Trotskyite trial in 1937 and The Bukharin trial in 1938. All who were included in these trials had to confess to a number of things that Stalin wanted them to confess to. This was so that Stalin could show to the Russian people that they were traitors and should be killed, instead of showing the public that the real objective that he wanted the trials to take place, was to get rid of opposition.

In every trial the accused all confessed to being part of the Trotskyite-Zinovievite Counter-Revolutionary Plot to destroy Communism, they all confessed to killing Kirov, plotting to kill Lenin and Stalin, sabotaging industry, spying for Germany, Britain, the USA and Japan, and that Trotsky was behind all of this. Each and every person who was accused was found guilty and was shot.

The second part of the Terror was the Army Purge in 1937, which was very sudden and came without warning. Stalin ordered for most generals to be shot, including the principle thinker of the Red Army Marshal Tukhachevsky. Also officers were arrested on a large scale because Stalin wanted to show that he had all of the power and was in definitely in charge. This may have also happened because Stalin wanted to live up to and be better then Hitler, and so he got the idea from the 'Night of the Long Knives' in 1934.

The next section of the Terror was the Mass Purge and was carried out by Stalin's secret police the NKVD, no longer the Cheka. This was based upon the Trotskyite-Zinovievite Plot and involved a storm of arrests on a huge scale. Victims were accused of being 'enemies of the people' and like in the Moscow Show Trials were made to confess to things that they did not do. However, this was a big success for Stalin because large numbers of Russians began to believe that there was such a plot, even though Stalin had obviously made it all up. The head of the NKVD Yagoda wasn't even safe and in 1936 he was arrested to show to others in the secret police that Stalin meant business. His successor Yezhov also disappeared in 1938 and the new head of the NKVD, Beria, stopped ...