Great Purge: Targeting of Government and Party Members (1930s USSR)

SUMMARY

The Great Purge, also known as the Great Terror, was a campaign of political repression in the Soviet Union from 1936 to 1938. It involved widespread arrests, executions, and imprisonment of millions of people, including both ordinary citizens and prominent members of the Communist Party. A narrative circulating on Reddit claims that the purges primarily affected government and party members, with the number of victims in the 'hundreds of thousands at most'. This claim is partially corroborated by historical accounts acknowledging the significant targeting of party members, but historical sources generally indicate a broader scope of repression beyond just party and government officials and higher overall casualty figures.

CLAIMS

1. SINGLE-SOURCECONF 0.80

   The Great Purge primarily affected government and party members.

   — attributed to: A 2023 Reddit post on r/DebateCommunism

   • https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateCommunism/comments/13rqy87/what_exactly_were_the_purges/
2. SINGLE-SOURCECONF 0.70

   The total number of people affected by the purges was 'several hundred thousand at most'.

   — attributed to: A 2023 Reddit post on r/DebateCommunism

   • https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateCommunism/comments/13rqy87/what_exactly_were_the_purges/
3. CORROBORATEDCONF 0.90

   The purge of the party was accompanied by a purge of society, indicating a broader scope beyond just party members.

   — attributed to: Wikipedia

   • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge
4. CORROBORATEDCONF 0.90

   A distinctive feature of the Great Purge was that members of the ruling party were included on a massive scale as victims.

   — attributed to: Wikipedia

   • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge
5. VERIFIEDCONF 1.00

   The Great Purge involved widely publicized show trials and closed trials targeting prominent Old Bolsheviks who were found guilty of treason and executed or imprisoned.

   — attributed to: Britannica

   • https://www.britannica.com/event/Great-Purge

TIMELINE

• 1924Stalin emerged victorious from the power struggle following Lenin's death, but his position was not entirely secure. [src]
• 1920s lateHardships of the first five-year plan increased opposition to Stalin both within the party and the country. [src]
• 1934At the Party Conference, many began to turn their attention towards Kirov as an alternative, more moderate leader. [src]
• 1936-1938The Great Purge (also known as the Great Terror) took place in the Soviet Union. [src]
• 1937-1938Quantitative analysis of purges in the Red Army conducted. [src]

ENTITIES

• PERSON Joseph Stalin — Leader of the Soviet Union
• ORG Communist Party of the Soviet Union — Governing political party
• PLACE Soviet Union — Nation where the purges occurred
• EVENT Great Purge — Campaign of political repression
• PERSON Old Bolsheviks — Early members of the Bolshevik Party, often targets of the purges

OPEN QUESTIONS — PENDING LEADS

• What are the most widely accepted scholarly estimates for the total number of victims (executions, Gulag deaths) of the Great Purge, disaggregated by party status and general population?
• Are there academic historical analyses that specifically challenge the claim that purges *primarily* affected government/party members, detailing the scale of repression against other population segments?
• What primary source documentation exists regarding the directives or stated intentions behind the Great Purge, indicating whether the initial focus was predominantly on party cleansing or broader societal control?
• Which human rights organizations or historical research institutes have published comprehensive reports on the Great Purge, and what are their conclusions regarding victim demographics?
• How do post-Soviet era declassified archives contribute to understanding the scope and targeting of the Great Purge, particularly concerning non-party members?

EVIDENCE — CAPTURED SOURCES

1. [WEB] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge [archived]

   A distinctive feature of the Great Purge was that, for the first time, members of the ruling party were included on a massive scale as victims of the repression. In addition to ordinary citizens, prominent members of the Communist Party were also targets of the purges. [44] The p…

2. [WEB] https://www.britannica.com/event/Great-Purge [archived]

   Great Purge, three widely publicized show trials and a series of closed, unpublicized trials held in the Soviet Union during the late 1930s, in which many prominent Old Bolsheviks were found guilty of treason and executed or imprisoned. Learn more about the Great Purge in this ar…

3. [WEB] https://natwinn.substack.com/p/the-criteria-of-truth-in-the-historiography

   There is therefore a difference between a theory that denies any claim to reality in historical accounts and a historiography that is fully conscious of the complexity of historical knowledge but still assumes that real people had real thoughts and feelings that led to real actio…

4. [WEB] https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateCommunism/comments/13rqy87/what_exactly_were_the_purges/

   The purges only affected several hundred thousand (at most, though higher estimates are extrapolations that assume a rate that affected everywhere) and they were over-represented by people in the government since they were mostly party members (party members were mostly affected)…

5. [WEB] https://bfi.uchicago.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/BFI_WP_2024-154.pdf [archived]

   The Anatomy of the Great Terror: A Quantitative Analysis of the 1937-38 Purges in the Red Army

6. [WEB] https://banotes.org/european-history-1789-1945/stalins-great-terror-purges-consolidation-power/ [archived]

   The roots of terror: Setting the stage for the purges 🔗 To understand the Great Terror, we need to step back to the late 1920s and early 1930s. Stalin had emerged victorious from the power struggle following Lenin 's death in 1924, but his position wasn't entirely secure. The Co…

7. [WEB] https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110810105021212

   While his position had thus become relatively secure in the late 1920s, the hardships of the first five-year plan increased opposition to Stalin, both within the party and within the country at large. At the 1934 party conference many began to turn their attention towards Kirov a…

8. [WEB] https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/dybq8h/what_are_the_interpretations_of_the_great_purges/

   What are the scholarly interpretations of the great purges , of its origins, purpose , and how it was carried out? What is the consensus of how Involved Stalin was , and whether the purges were directed from the top down , or more from the bottom up? Archived post. New comments c…

9. [REDDIT] https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9pwf3z/are_these_claims_about_the_ukrainian_famine_of/ [archived]

   Some of the specific claims in the episode which ran counter to my understanding of the history; - The death toll of the Ukrainian famine was far below the often-cited 7.5mil, and death toll figures were intentionally inflated by anti-Communists in order to propagandize their pol…

10. [REDDIT] https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/qg5ag4/question_about_stalins_purges/

    Question about Stalin's purges Were any of the purges under Stalin based in any reality or have actual evidence. Were any real plot uncovered and stopped or were the purges the result of pure paranoia on Stalin and his supporters part? Archived post. New comments cannot be posted…

11. [REDDIT] https://www.reddit.com/r/Socialism_101/comments/1bl777y/ussr_the_purges/

    As to your second point. Yes there is. "Under Soviet rule, your proletarian party and ours will be invaded by a still larger number of bourgeois intellectuals. They will worm their way into the Soviets, the courts, and the administration, since communism cannot be built otherwise…

12. [REDDIT] https://www.reddit.com/r/communism101/comments/kgnb2r/how_do_modern_communists_evaluate_the_purge_under/ [archived]

    The purge was the purging of people of the Communist Party from membership rolls. At the same time (and in response to some of the same pressures) there were a number of trials against individuals and repression of counterrevolutionary (or at least perceived counterrevolutionary)…

13. [REDDIT] https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/lxomuh/what_was_the_real_reason_behind_stalins_great/ [archived]

    Actually, the "Official" line was that the head of the NKVD, Nikolai Yezhov, and his main advisers/subordinates, Efim Evdokimov and Mikhail Frinovsky, betrayed Stalin and carried out purges and executions behind his back.

14. [REDDIT] https://www.reddit.com/r/Socialism_101/comments/vtwjsz/what_are_stalins_great_purges_in_the_30s_i_keep/ [archived]

    Yes there were excesses as some party members used the purges as an excuse to attack their rivals, and yes those where wrong, of course. In fairness, the central committee stopped the worst of it once it learned of what had happened and put the perpetrators on trial, many purged …

CROSS-REFERENCE

• → SHARES-ACTOR Kazakh Famine of 1930-1933: Soviet Collectivization, Forced Sedentarization, and Archival Documentation — Both reference Joseph Stalin, Soviet Union
• → SHARES-ACTOR Korean War Origins: Declassified Soviet and Chinese Archives — Both reference Joseph Stalin, Soviet Union
• → SHARES-ACTOR Kazakh Famine (Asharshylyq) of 1930-1933 and Soviet Collectivization — Both reference Joseph Stalin, Soviet Union