[Author’s Name]
[Institution’s Name]
Essay on Joseph Stalin's Civilian Purge
Stalin is mostly believed to have been a man of naked power who adapted his ideas at will whenever it suited him. From this perspective, he was a cynic, an opportunist and a shrewd pragmatist perhaps a tactician of genius but never a man of principle. To attempt to understand the logic of Stalin’s broader doctrines is therefore not worth the trouble. The effort is allegedly based on a fundamental misunderstanding, namely that Stalin’s thought had some kind of inner logic instead of being an accumulation of ad hoc adaptations. Stalin’s ideas were determined by the interaction of circumstance and his own power hunger rather than being an active element of their own, shaping actual policies. These ideas counted for little if it comes to understanding what actually happened in the USSR between 1928 and 1953, for they were determined by Stalinist reality instead of determining that reality.
The Great Purge
From the start of 1935 to the summer of 1936 the broom of Stalin's terroristic purge swept through Soviet society at lower levels. Many expelled party members and others were arrested and sent to camps or exiled. Although reflected in the official press, the repressions went on with a minimum of fanfare. Party expulsions occurred under the auspices of announced procedures for a long overdue "checkup of party documents" followed by an "exchange of party cards." With very few exceptions, leading figures in the regime, both in Moscow and the provinces were little affected. This was the period of quiet terror.
The poet Anna Akhmatova called it comparatively "vegetarian." 1 Yet, many a human tragedy was played out in the quietly terrorized Russia of that time. (M. R. Werner, Joseph Stalin, 1940, Pg. 15-23)The command for a campaign of repressions came in a new circular letter, dated 18 January 1935, from Stalin's Central Committee headquarters to all party organizations......
