Welcome to Russian History Retold.

Episode 310 The Great Purge, Part 1.

Last time we listened to my interview with Professor Marlene La Ruelle.

Today we begin a series on one of the most treacherous times

to be a citizen of the Soviet Union, the Great Purge, also known as the Great Terror or Yezov Chichina, aka the Period of

Yezov.

My primary sources for this episode include Robert conquest's The Great Terror, a reassessment.

Getty and Now Moths, The Road to Terror, Stalin's self-destruction of the Bolsheviks,

1932 to 1939, and Martin Amis' COBRA, The Dread. and had its first update in 1990 and then was further updated in 2008.

Because of Glaznost, scads of new material were uncovered, allowing for more detail and insight into this three-year period

when Soviet society was filled with paranoia and sheer terror.

With Lenin's death in 1924

Trotsky's deportation in 1928,

Stalin began consolidating power.

He was also quite paranoid about losing his grip on the Soviet

Union, so he had to find a way to get rid of anyone who he saw as a threat to his control.

The great purge was preceded by a smaller and less violent purge people viewed as apolitical, hangers-on, petty criminals, and other bureaucrats.

This was done between 1933 and 1936.

Prior to the release of documents from the archives post-91, the common thought was that this was a relatively small purge.

Only 400,000 members were thrown out of the Bolshevik party, and that it was bureaucratic in nature.

Turns out, the NK-D, then the Soviet secret police, was behind all of this and was laying the groundwork for the future

catastrophe.

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