Stalin’s purges – what really happened?
by Andy Brooks
Stalin’s purges’ of
1937-38: what really
happened? by Yuri
Emelianov, Scientific
Socialism Research
Unit, West Bengal India
2015, 80pp, illus, £3.00.
IN RUSSIA today Joseph
Stalin is remembered as
a great war-time leader.
But he is still reviled by
the powers-that-be as a
tyrant who had his rivals
shot on trumped up
charges and sent millions
of innocent people to Siberia
during the massive
purges that swept the
Soviet Union in the 1930s.
Much of this narrative
comes from Stalin’s successor,
Nikita Krushchov,
whose anti-Stalin critique,
which began after
the 20th Communist Party
Congress, was used to
remove and disgrace all
those who opposed his
revisionist line.
Khrushchov’s lies were
used by bourgeois and
Trotskyist historians alike
to portray this period as the
time of “Stalin’s terror”.
Ludicrous figures were
given of the numbers sent
to labour camps during the
crackdown and astronomic
numbers were said to have
died in the camps. Most
claim “millions” perished.
The most rabid talk about
“25 million” in an effort to
equate Stalin with the very
real number of people who
died on the orders of Adolf
Hitler and the German
Nazis during the Second
World War.
But when the archives
were opened up in the
1990s a different picture
emerged. Two academicians
discovered that the
total number held in the
Gulags was much lower,
little more than half-a-million,
and that most were
common criminals. Other
Russian academicians are
now challenging the very
foundations of the myth
of the “great terror”. Yuri
Emelianov is one of them.
Back in 2012 Emelianov,
a social scientist in
the Communist Party of the
Russian Federation, wrote
a series of articles on the
purges that were published
in Communist Review, the
theoretical journal of the
Communist Party of Britain.
Now an Indian progressive
publishing house
has made them available
to a much larger audience.
The author draws on
archival documents and
direct past experiences in
an attempt to answer the
old questions of why did
the purges happen and who
was to blame for breaches
of Soviet legality.
Emilianov starts off by
debunking the figures for
those executed during the
purges and the numbers
sent to the Gulags that are
regularly trotted out by
Russian bourgeois historians,
even today. He then
looks at the Moscow Trials.
Most of this is familiar
ground for New Worker
readers. Some of it is not.
The purges followed
the assassination of Sergei
Kirov in Leningrad
in 1934. Kirov, regarded
as second only to Stalin
himself in the Party leadership,
was shot dead by
an agent of those long
opposed to Stalin within
the Bolshevik party. Stalin’s
enemies within the
Soviet leadership were
arrested and charged with
treason. All the accused
confessed to being members
of a secret “Block of
Rights and Trotskyites”
that was responsible for all
sorts of anti-Soviet crimes
by New Worker
correspondent
AN ESTIMATED
3,000 women took part
in the Million Women
Rise march in London’s
West End last
Saturday to mark International
Women’s
Day and to campaign
against continuing violence
against women.
It was a truly international
march strongly
supported by women
from Africa, southern
Asia and the Middle
East, many wearing colourful
traditional dress.
in preparation of a coup
to overthrow the Stalin
leadership.
Emilianov says that
“though some of the accusations
were plausible
most of them now appear
far-fetched”. But he adds:
“Practically no-one in the
Soviet Union had doubted
the indirect responsibility
of the two opposition leaders
(Zinoviev and Kamenev)
for Kirov’s murder;
so it was easy to believe
that both of them, as well
as their supporters, were
directly involved in organising
the murder not only
of Kirov but of other Soviet
leaders as well.”
The author then startlingly
argues that while
Stalin was battling against
his old foes inside the Party
there were other hidden
enemies, like Krushchov,
who posed as loyalists
while encouraging mass
arrests to sabotage the new
“Stalin” constitution plans
for secret ballots and multiple
choices at elections.
Emilianov says: “The
leaders of the provinces
and republics were afraid
that they would lose the
first general, direct, equal
and secret elections with
alternative candidates. By
resorting to reprisals they
wanted to create an atmosphere
of Red Terror, characteristic
of the situation
in Russia during the Civil
War. In such an atmosphere
it would be impossible to
conduct political debates
between different candi-
dates but it would be easy
to make loud speeches
against class enemies.”
Though Emilianov defends
Stalin he also criticises
the Soviet leader for not
bothering to “check many
of the dubious accusations
made at the Moscow Trials”;
condoning false accusations;
failing to make a
profound analysis of “these
tragic events” and not finishing
the political reform
of the Soviet Union that he,
himself, had initiated in the
first place.
There is plenty more
of this in the profusely
illustrated, quality publication
from India. It’s an
important contribution to
the study of Soviet history
and it’s available for just
£4.50 including postage
from: NCP Lit, PO Box 73,
London SW11 2PQ.
Source: New Worker, No 1814 Week commencing 13 March 2015 Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
by Andy Brooks
Stalin’s purges’ of
1937-38: what really
happened? by Yuri
Emelianov, Scientific
Socialism Research
Unit, West Bengal India
2015, 80pp, illus, £3.00.
IN RUSSIA today Joseph
Stalin is remembered as
a great war-time leader.
But he is still reviled by
the powers-that-be as a
tyrant who had his rivals
shot on trumped up
charges and sent millions
of innocent people to Siberia
during the massive
purges that swept the
Soviet Union in the 1930s.
Much of this narrative
comes from Stalin’s successor,
Nikita Krushchov,
whose anti-Stalin critique,
which began after
the 20th Communist Party
Congress, was used to
remove and disgrace all
those who opposed his
revisionist line.
Khrushchov’s lies were
used by bourgeois and
Trotskyist historians alike
to portray this period as the
time of “Stalin’s terror”.
Ludicrous figures were
given of the numbers sent
to labour camps during the
crackdown and astronomic
numbers were said to have
died in the camps. Most
claim “millions” perished.
The most rabid talk about
“25 million” in an effort to
equate Stalin with the very
real number of people who
died on the orders of Adolf
Hitler and the German
Nazis during the Second
World War.
But when the archives
were opened up in the
1990s a different picture
emerged. Two academicians
discovered that the
total number held in the
Gulags was much lower,
little more than half-a-million,
and that most were
common criminals. Other
Russian academicians are
now challenging the very
foundations of the myth
of the “great terror”. Yuri
Emelianov is one of them.
Back in 2012 Emelianov,
a social scientist in
the Communist Party of the
Russian Federation, wrote
a series of articles on the
purges that were published
in Communist Review, the
theoretical journal of the
Communist Party of Britain.
Now an Indian progressive
publishing house
has made them available
to a much larger audience.
The author draws on
archival documents and
direct past experiences in
an attempt to answer the
old questions of why did
the purges happen and who
was to blame for breaches
of Soviet legality.
Emilianov starts off by
debunking the figures for
those executed during the
purges and the numbers
sent to the Gulags that are
regularly trotted out by
Russian bourgeois historians,
even today. He then
looks at the Moscow Trials.
Most of this is familiar
ground for New Worker
readers. Some of it is not.
The purges followed
the assassination of Sergei
Kirov in Leningrad
in 1934. Kirov, regarded
as second only to Stalin
himself in the Party leadership,
was shot dead by
an agent of those long
opposed to Stalin within
the Bolshevik party. Stalin’s
enemies within the
Soviet leadership were
arrested and charged with
treason. All the accused
confessed to being members
of a secret “Block of
Rights and Trotskyites”
that was responsible for all
sorts of anti-Soviet crimes
by New Worker
correspondent
AN ESTIMATED
3,000 women took part
in the Million Women
Rise march in London’s
West End last
Saturday to mark International
Women’s
Day and to campaign
against continuing violence
against women.
It was a truly international
march strongly
supported by women
from Africa, southern
Asia and the Middle
East, many wearing colourful
traditional dress.
in preparation of a coup
to overthrow the Stalin
leadership.
Emilianov says that
“though some of the accusations
were plausible
most of them now appear
far-fetched”. But he adds:
“Practically no-one in the
Soviet Union had doubted
the indirect responsibility
of the two opposition leaders
(Zinoviev and Kamenev)
for Kirov’s murder;
so it was easy to believe
that both of them, as well
as their supporters, were
directly involved in organising
the murder not only
of Kirov but of other Soviet
leaders as well.”
The author then startlingly
argues that while
Stalin was battling against
his old foes inside the Party
there were other hidden
enemies, like Krushchov,
who posed as loyalists
while encouraging mass
arrests to sabotage the new
“Stalin” constitution plans
for secret ballots and multiple
choices at elections.
Emilianov says: “The
leaders of the provinces
and republics were afraid
that they would lose the
first general, direct, equal
and secret elections with
alternative candidates. By
resorting to reprisals they
wanted to create an atmosphere
of Red Terror, characteristic
of the situation
in Russia during the Civil
War. In such an atmosphere
it would be impossible to
conduct political debates
between different candi-
dates but it would be easy
to make loud speeches
against class enemies.”
Though Emilianov defends
Stalin he also criticises
the Soviet leader for not
bothering to “check many
of the dubious accusations
made at the Moscow Trials”;
condoning false accusations;
failing to make a
profound analysis of “these
tragic events” and not finishing
the political reform
of the Soviet Union that he,
himself, had initiated in the
first place.
There is plenty more
of this in the profusely
illustrated, quality publication
from India. It’s an
important contribution to
the study of Soviet history
and it’s available for just
£4.50 including postage
from: NCP Lit, PO Box 73,
London SW11 2PQ.
Source: New Worker, No 1814 Week commencing 13 March 2015 Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
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