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By Eric Hartnett and Szilard Annus
Joseph Stalin and Later purges
(1941-1953)
Under the dictatorship of Joseph Stalin, tens of millions of ordinary individuals were executed or
imprisoned in labour camps that were little more than death camps. Perceived political orientation was
the key variable in these mass atrocities. But gender played an important role, and in many respects the
Purge period of Soviet history can be considered the worst gendercide of the twentieth century.
During World War II. the purges continued
-From 1974 Stalin rules without either the Central Committee or the Politburo.
- In 1949 there were further purges when Party and Leningrad officials where arrested and shot.
- Stalin also persecuted the Jews
- In 1953 it was claimed a 'Doctor's Plot' had been uncovered in Moscow in which a Jewish medical
centre was said to be planning the murder of Stalin.
From August 1941 onwards killing and massacring of Soviet Jews became a routine
- Jewish women and children were now murdered without mercy, whereas before the Operation
Barbarossa there were relatively only few killed
- By 1943 approximately 2 million Jews were killed
Apart from Jewish genocide, Stalin’s terror against his own people continued.
- All the German communities and other “traitors” were labeled and deported to remove parts of the
USSR
By 1950 Stalin's mental and physical health had begun to deteriorate and he was absent from the
Kremlin, the government headquarters in Moscow, for long periods of time. His
subordinates were fearful of becoming victims of Stalin's growing paranoia, which manifested itself in
plans for another purge. In January 1953 Stalin ordered the arrest of a group of Kremlin doctors on
charges of plotting the medical murder of high-level Soviet officials. Just as a renewal of mass terror
seemed imminent, Stalin died of complications from a stroke in March. Although the nation was plunged
into grief, Stalin's political successors expressed relief and moved quickly to reverse some of the most
brutal features of his regime. Nikita Khrushchev, who replaced Stalin as general secretary (called first
secretary until 1966) of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), denounced Stalin's methods of
rule and political theories, known as Stalinism, in his "secret speech" to the 20th Party Congress in 1956.
Stalin's historical legacy is overwhelmingly negative. Although his policies transformed the USSR from an
agrarian-based society into an industrialized nation with a powerful military arsenal, the transformation
was accomplished at the cost of millions of lives. Stalin's militant distrust of the West and his assertion
of Soviet dominance in Eastern Europe gave rise to the Cold War. His purges of society through violent
police terror left a permanent scar on the collective memory of the people under his rule. Although
admired by some Russians, most would agree with the assessment in the West that Stalin was one of
the cruelest dictators in history.
- Leningrad affair: removing leaders and city officials, even those who were awarded after defending
Leningrad so bravely.
- Doctors Plot: Stalin thought people were planning murder against him int he Jewish medical centre.
Preparations began for a major assault on the soviet medical profession. What prevented those
preparations was Stalins death.
Stalin’s Russia 1924-53 (Michael Lynch)
- The purges established Stalin’s total control of the Party, and crushed any rivals he had.
- It created a new generation of people in the Party who were unquestioning towards him ,which
allowed him to become a totalitarian dictator with the population fearful of him.
- Another thing which he thought of was to eliminate the rivals as soon as possible in order to prepare
for war against Hitler.
Stalin died in 1953, having been dictator of the largest and one of the most powerful countries on earth,
the USSR. He retained his grip on power until the end and the methods he used while in power to
advance to the true Communist State are known as Stalinism. It was partly these methods that enabled
the USSR to become a superpower at the end of the Second World War but also contributed heavily to
the ultimate collapse of the Communist system in Eastern Europe and Russia in 1989-91.