why did Stalin introduce the Great Terror?
- Created by: Reece Colley
- Created on: 11-05-13 16:32
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- why did Stalin Start the Great terror?
- Congress of victors
- Congress came together to celebrate the "victories" of stalin's economic tactics
- Voted for who they wanted on the central committee, Kirov got 1,225 votes Stalin got 927
- Old Bolsheviks tried to convince Kirov to Stand for Stalin's job as General Secretary
- Stalin found out and came to the conclusion that the Communist party could not be trusted
- Paranoia
- the congress of victors showed Stalin that the party could not be trusted
- Stalin saw enemies in the party and wanted to remove them.
- scared that Trotsky, Zinoviev and Kaminev had fallen from influence, so could he
- believed his former enemies where not wholly followers of his plans
- Some of the older Bolsheviks knew of what he had done to rise to power and how Lenin wanted him gone when he died
- feared assassination from either the red army of the NKVD
- Genrikh Yagoda fueled his paranoia by compiling evidence to surgest the peasants despised him for collectivization and some people in the party wanted to remove him
- Economic benefits
- served two purposes
- more people in labour camps meant more slave labour
- projects such as Magniogorsk where built with a large amount of slave labour and "willing volunteers
- would give an excuse for the economic problems
- wreckers in the economy where in cahoots with Trotsky and Kamanev
- derived attention from the harshness of the five year plans
- evidence that the terror was economically motivated was the Trial of the Shakhty engineers and the Menshevik trials of 1931
- trial of the agricultural officials 1933
- both cases people where found guilty of economic sabotage
- both cases people where found guilty of economic sabotage
- trial of the agricultural officials 1933
- more people in labour camps meant more slave labour
- served two purposes
- Kirov's murder
- immediate and public reason for the Terror
- Stalin had attempted to keep Kirov out of the Politburo by sending him to Lenigrad
- Stalin had been defeated by Kirov in a vote to get Mikhail Riutin executed
- Riutin had sent around a letter that was highly critical of Stalin
- Kirov was murdered in Leningrad
- Blame shoved on a "Troskyite-Zinovievite" plot
- this lead to Zinoviev and Kamanev being arrested
- Blame shoved on a "Troskyite-Zinovievite" plot
- convenient for stalin, removed biggest threat and allowed him to execute two old enamies
- gave Stalin an excuse to hunt down the people responsible for the plot. ie. Kirov's supporters
- was actually a plot to remove Kirov and remove all who had voted against him
- gave Stalin an excuse to hunt down the people responsible for the plot. ie. Kirov's supporters
- Congress of victors
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