I’ve been slowly learning more stuff about socialist history and the like, and I wanted to ask about the “Great Purge”. I only know kind of background things I’ve accumulated over the years, which are very likely warped and wrong given the whole propaganda machine and all that.
So yeah, any good sources to read more about it would be greatly appreciated, as well as potential critiques/justifications from a communist perspective. I know revolutionary violence is just part of taking and maintaining power, so I get that aspect. I do also see a lot of people got killed also, so imagine there’s a bit of debate either way on it.
Thanks for anything shared in advance!
oh huh something I was reading a book about recently. In addition to everyone else's excellent comments I wanna point to James Harris' The Great Urals: Regionalism and the Evolution of the Soviet System because it completely upends the traditional scholarship of the purges.
Here is a libgen link to it: https://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=E10CBD3C52CDF7D5D258AC666D67FAB6
I'm gonna copy the description from libgen to emphasize I'm not editorializing when i sing the book's praises:
In very dry, academic writing, with constant, painstaking reference to the archival sources, Harris lays out facts building to his conclusion that there was a massive USSR wide conspiracy, and as the NKVD was sent in to uncover it the conspirators covered it up harder (including using the non-violent purges to purge non-corrupt officials, scientists, managers, workers). The conspirators systemically distorted production potential of their territory; repeatedly, in several different regions, leaders encouraged overestimation of the quantity of ore, and often the quality of ore deposits. Some of the copper and coal they claimed would be the basis of soviet industry literally couldn't even be used for industrial production. Hundreds of millions of rubles were wasted on facilities, and the conspirators covered it up harder (for example, scientists who disagreed with inflated guesses were--purged by the clique!). This conspiracy wasn't a Nazi plot, or a trotskyist plot, or an SR plot, or a tsarist plot--all of this was done to cover up regional authorities' incompetence and corruption (which dated back to literally 1917).
This excerpt from the conclusion is a good summary of his conclusions:
I would only add that by "not permitted to cite "objective reasons" for economic problems" Harris means "they had lied so, so much over the last 15 years that when Stalin ordered for much lower, more reasonable (based on the numbers central had) quotas but demanded absolute fullfilment of them, the regional authorities still couldn't meet quotas and explaining why would reveal their conspiracy.
Another highlight was the financial commisariat giving the gulags less than 10% of the money the centre ordered them to (it took years for the centre to find out, thousands died). Yet another highlight was the Ukrainian regional authorities (which ofc , death to him, was high up in) using central orders for dekulakization to eradicate any peasants they felt unruly (they made a profitable partnership with the ural factory managers who needed forced labour). Similarly, regional authorities used coercion in collectivization even in periods when the centre was repeatedly ordering them not to.
Thanks for the info!