Likelihood of Another Post WW2 Great Purge?

[Bored Young Man]

How likely was another purge had Stalin lived longer?

The first Great Purge was initiated by Stalin against anyone who didn't owe their position purely to Stalin enabled by a highly centralized and brutal system created by Lenin. Stalin's perceived enemies, many of whom were created by Stalin's murderous policies were mostly cowed, imprisoned or dead.

While it eventually ended in the late 30s as Stalin realized the damage he had wrought upon his kingdom he took no responsibility and blamed it on men he appointed instead. Just in time too as the Nazi invasion required capable men to rise in the ranks and act on their own initiative.

However, the men vital in fighting off the Nazis (technocrats called the Leningrad circle) were also men who didn't owe their positions purely to Stalin and it begs the question of whether another Great Purge was coming to eliminate real and perceived autonomy and alternatives outside of Stalin's control.

 

[Sam R.]

The first Great Purge was initiated by Stalin

Read Sheila Fitzpatrick and get back to us mate. Great man historiography of the Soviet Union is garbage.

 

[Lalli]

With longer living Stalin second waves of purges is certain. It is then another thing how massive these would are.

 

[marktaha]

Time of his death- Doctors' Plot , deport the Jews - I believe there's a thread on these lines.

 

[Raferty]

Read Sheila Fitzpatrick and get back to us mate. Great man historiography of the Soviet Union is garbage.

The Great Purge was not just one guy, and Fitzpatrick does show it had an element of virality to it that got well out of hand with much local initiative, but at the end of the day, we have ample documentation of Stalin's approval of execution lists, and more strikingly, correspondence between him and NKVD personnel on what the forced confessions were to include.

The biggest question about the Purge is why it happened. Most historians have speculated without firm conclusions - Conquest and Trotsky's psychoanalytic explanation of paranoia doesn't explain it, the Old Bolshevik thesis doesn't hold water when you look at the rates of their execution versus newer members, Russification of the party, same deal.

Kotkin's tentative idea about the desire for a new class of functionaries (as evidenced by the 1938 Short Course lessons, where Stalin got extremely angry at his new proteges for not understanding what he wanted them to) might seem to get at something. The desire to break the inner circle and make them subservient, eh, maybe that explains the detention of their wives and hangers ons, but not why, say, the Turkmenistan Party organization had to be purged.

 

[Raferty]

The Great Purge was enormously destabilizing to the country and wasn't nearly as targeted as one would think it was.

If you're talking about something akin to the 1936 Show Trials, that may be possible. The Leningrad Circle, and possibly some elements of the military, could be shown to be the Mad Dogs of a Zionist-Trotskyite conspiracy to establish capitalism in some kind of garish spectacle. I think however that it's unlikely that you would see a new purge of the lower elements of the party as in 1937. Stalin had the power and authority to do this, but also keep in mind that his health was in serious decline by the end of the war and he wasn't working the same kind of hours he used to that allowed for despotic micromanagement.

 

[RousseauX]

How likely was another purge had Stalin lived longer?

The first Great Purge was initiated by Stalin against anyone who didn't owe their position purely to Stalin enabled by a highly centralized and brutal system created by Lenin. Stalin's perceived enemies, many of whom were created by Stalin's murderous policies were mostly cowed, imprisoned or dead.

While it eventually ended in the late 30s as Stalin realized the damage he had wrought upon his kingdom he took no responsibility and blamed it on men he appointed instead. Just in time too as the Nazi invasion required capable men to rise in the ranks and act on their own initiative.

However, the men vital in fighting off the Nazis (technocrats called the Leningrad circle) were also men who didn't owe their positions purely to Stalin and it begs the question of whether another Great Purge was coming to eliminate real and perceived autonomy and alternatives outside of Stalin's control.

100%

Because the second great purge had -already- begun in the months before Stalin died, with Molotov and Mikoyan the next targets in the same way the former left/right opposition had being the targets in the 30s. They had already being sidelined from power and were months if not weeks away from being arrested before Stalin died. Molotov's Jewish wife Polina had already being arrested for "treason" and gulaged in 1948.

Just as in the 1930s Molotov, Mikoyan and other younger politburo members had purged the olders generation of revolutionaries like Zinoviev and Bukharin now a younger generation would be brought in to purge the now senior-most leadership. The only reason why it -didn't- happen was that Stalin died when he did.

The second purge would be anti-Semitic in nature this time. The doctor's plot and the purge of the Jewish anti-fascist league had all the characteristics of a purge from the 1930s: contrived evidence, confessions obtained through torture, then the "spread" of guilt by association with everyone who ever talked to them up to and including Politburo members. That doesn't mean -only- Jews would be targeted, just they would be the primary targets.

Read Twilight of the Red Tsar if you want a really well written timeline of what second great purge would look like

 

[Sam R.]

Kotkin's tentative idea about the desire for a new class of functionaries (as evidenced by the 1938 Short Course lessons, where Stalin got extremely angry at his new proteges for not understanding what he wanted them to) might seem to get at something. The desire to break the inner circle and make them subservient, eh, maybe that explains the detention of their wives and hangers ons, but not why, say, the Turkmenistan Party organization had to be purged.

I'm with Djilas that its about nomenklatura class power, that the class will destroy its constituent members in order to ensure its continued class rule, which explains why the post-war purges stop around 1949 with Leningrad and the Fraternal Parties, because power is secure. The atypically *small* purges in fraternal societies after 1956 show that nomenklatura power is cemented and uncontested. Fitzpatrick's claim that the newest party members were most influential in localised actions tends to support this, as it is both advancement and class security.

yours,
Sam R.