Can someone please explain what the great terror was in Russian history just before WW2? :)?

Question

Can someone please explain what the great terror was in Russian history just before WW2? :)?

Answer 1

During the Bolshevik Revolution thousands of Russians died as Vladimir Lenin took power in 1917. After Lenin died in 1924 his successor, Josef Stalin took control of Russia. Stalin embarked on dozens of massive building projects. He forced millions of Russians to help build his massive dreams. A lot of them died. He also had mass executions of political prisoners, imposers, and any one else he didn't like. Stalin ordered and caused the deaths of over 20 million people.

Answer 2

MOSCOW. (Gennady Bordyugov for RIA Novosti) - 70 years ago saw the beginning of a monumental event in Russian and world history: the great purges.

The goal of these mass arrests and executions was to wipe out domestic enemies on the eve of the anticipated war with Germany. The operations conducted in 1937-1938, which later became known as the Great Terror, had three clear dimensions.

The so-called "personnel revolution," or political crackdown, is the best known. It started in the fall of 1936 with the infamous Moscow Trials, in which industrial ministers, party functionaries, military leaders, writers and scientists were convicted of trumped-up charges of anti-Soviet activities. These trials shaped the world's initial idea of who the victims of the terror were.

The second key dimension of the terror was linked with what is often called "the kulak operation" because it was directed against the kulaks, or rich peasants. In its Order #00447 of July 30, 1937, approved by the Bolshevik (Communist) Party Central Committee on July 31, the NKVD (Soviet secret police) defined the groups to be targeted and described them in detailed lists. A new category - criminal offenders (bandits, robbers, thieves, smugglers and swindlers) - was added to the traditional list of hostile elements (ex-kulaks, members of anti-Soviet parties, rebels, fascists, spies and the clergy).

In this way, the political leaders criminalized protests and other manifestations of social discontent, while at the same time politicizing routine crimes, regarding them as opposition to Soviet law and order. The NKVD specified the punishment (death for the former and eight to 10 years in prison or a concentration camp for the latter), and established quotas for the number of people to be imprisoned and executed in each region, territory and republic. All in all, 767,397 people were sentenced under this monstrous order, of whom, according to the latest estimates, 386,798 were shot.

The third and least studied dimension of the terror deals with the elimination of "counter-revolutionary national contingents" between February and November 1938. Initially, these purges were eclipsed by the main operation against the kulaks. But the purge of Germans (NKVD Order #00439) was launched simultaneously in late July 1937 (NKVD Order #00439); the liquidation of "Polish subversives and spies" followed in August (Order #00485); and in September the NKVD launched an operation against the so-called "Harbin expatriates" - mostly Russians who had worked on the Chinese Military Railroad and returned home only to be blacklisted as "Japanese spies" (Order #00593).

The biggest "ethnic" operation was the deportation of the entire Korean population from the Far East to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.

These four actions were spearheaded against the Soviet Union's main foes: Germany, Poland and Japan. The NKVD and the Central Committee associated the purges with stepped-up efforts to counter enemy intelligence operations, above all in border areas and at defense installations; the "enemy" was also suspected of provoking insurgencies.

In 1938, the purges spread en masse to the Afghans, Estonians, Latvians, Finns, Greeks, Iranians, Chinese, Romanians, and finally Bulgarians and Macedonians residing on Soviet territory. A total of 335,513 people were convicted under NKVD "ethnic" orders; an estimated 244,925 of them - 73% - were sentenced to death.

The Great Terror's main operation (Order #00447) also had an ethnic dimension. This is often the subject of informed discussions, but it is also sometimes exploited for political purposes. Historians often quote Ukrainian People's Commissar of the Interior Alexader Uspensky as saying that all Ukrainian Poles and Germans were engaged in spying and subversion and that 75%-80% of Ukrainians were "bourgeois nationalists."

People's Commissar Lavrenty Beria was fighting against "counter-revolutionary nationalists" in Georgia, while NKVD officer Vladimir Mikhailov was doing the same in Tatarstan. In Turkmenistan, the authorities were worried about the activities of the armed nationalist forces (former Basmachi, or counter-revolutionary robbers in Central Asia, and emigre religious leaders who were ostensibly trying to establish a "Turkic-Tatar state"). The republican communist parties showered the Kremlin with requests to raise death quotas for ethnic and other operations.

However, now the purges of nationalists are often blamed not on Stalin and his government, but on the Jews or Russians in the regime. The n***s were the first to make such an allegation when, after losing the battle of Stalingrad, they emphasized the ethnic side of the terror in order to mobilize armed detachments of ethnic minorities. Later on, various emigre circles began to play the terror's ethnic card. These efforts began to wear away at the essence of the Great Terror, that horrific tragedy of the 20th century.

Answer 3

The purges happened around the time of the Great Depression 1934-39, after some guy named Surgei Kirov got killed off by a guy named Nikolayev (name sorta reminds me of nickelodeon).  They were called purges too I think.  In 1928-32 something called the 5 year plan was completed in 4 years. then another 2 5 year plans were done, not sure how long each lasted.  The purges were blaming people givin the 5 year plans trouble, like scientists and army people. A little over a decade later, in 1950, America had that Mcartney thing til 1953, the same time as the Korean war.  If it gets hard to remember it makes it easier to remember it happened during mid to late of the great depression decade.

Answer 4

You probably mean Stalin's purges. He had thousands (maybe millions) of people accused of any form of disloyalty sent to prison camps or murdered outright. He'd had so many high ranking officers killed that the military really suffered from a lack of decent leadership at the start of the war.

Answer 5

Josef Stalin.  The dictator of Russia who murdered millions of his countrymen in the service of Marxist utopianism.  Read any of Alexandr Solzenyitzen's books, such as "The Gulag Archipelago" for an idea of life in those days.  Dreadful.

Answer 6

Stalin executed many people who disagreed with him - often, the only warning would be a knock on your door at 2 am and some police there to take you away - including even people in the Communist party.  Essentially, no one was safe.

Answer 7

The russian were having night mares of what happened in Warsaw Poland in 1920 during the Polish-soviet war