The entire membership of the Communist Party was therefore subjected to what is called a “cleansing” or “purge” in the presence of large audiences of their non-Communist fellow workers. (This is the only connection in which the Soviet people use the term “purge.” Its application by Americans to all the Soviet treason trials and in general to Soviet criminal procedure is resented by the Soviet people.) Each Communist had to relate his life history and daily activities in the presence of people who were in a position to check them. It was a brutal experience for an unpopular president of a Moscow university to explain to an examining board in the presence of his students why he merited the nation’s trust. Or for a superintendent of the large plant to expose his life history and daily activities — even to his wife’s use of one of the factory automobiles for shopping — in the presence of the plants workers, any one of whom had the right to make remarks. This was done with every Communist throughout the country; it resulted in the expulsion of large numbers from the party, and in the arrest and trial of a few.

Strong, Anna L. The Soviets Expected It. New York, New York: The Dial press, 1941, p. 136

The purge–in Russian “chiska” (cleansing)–is a long-standing institution of the Russian Communist Party. The first one I encountered was in 1921, shortly after Lenin had introduced “NEP,” his new economic policy, which involved a temporary restoration of private trade and petty capitalism and caused much heart burning amongst his followers. In that purge nearly one-third of the total membership of the party was expelled or placed on probation. To the best of my recollection, the reasons then put forward for expulsion or probation were graft, greed, personal ambition, and “conduct unbecoming to communists,” which generally meant wine, women, and song.

Duranty, Walter. The Kremlin and the People. New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1941, p. 116

Kirov’s murder brought a change, but even so the Purge that was held that winter was at first not strikingly different from earlier Purges.

Duranty, Walter. The Kremlin and the People. New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1941, p. 116

The Central Committee organized a “purge” and expelled barely 170,000 members in order to improve the party quality. Stalin has frequently been held responsible for the “purge.” He was not its author. This party-cleansing was done under Lenin’s leadership. It is a process which is unique in the history of little parties. The Bolsheviks however, do not regard it as an extraordinary measure for use only in a time of crisis, but a normal feature of party procedure. It is the means of guaranteeing Bolshevik quality. To regard it as a desperate move on the part of leaders anxious to get rid of rivals is to misunderstand how profoundly the Bolshevik party differs from all others, even from the Communist Party’s of the rest of Europe.

Murphy, John Thomas. Stalin, London, John Lane, 1945, p. 144

Lenin initiated the first great “cleansing” of the Bolshevik party just as the transition had begun from “war communism” to the new economic policy. In 1922, when, as Lenin put it, “the party had rid itself of the rascals, bureaucrats, dishonest or waivering Communists, and of Mensheviks who have re-painted their facade but who remained Mensheviks at heart,” another Congress took place; and it was this Congress which advanced Stalin to the key position of Bolshevik power. It brought him into intimate contact with every functionary of the organization, enabling him to examine their work as well as their ideas. Murphy, John Thomas. Stalin, London, John Lane, 1945, p. 145

The party maintains its quality by imposing a qualifying period before granting full membership, and by periodical ” cleanings” of those who fail to live up to the high standard set.

Murphy, John Thomas. Stalin, London, John Lane, 1945, p. 169

In all fairness I must add that no small proportion of the exiles were allowed to return home and resume their jobs after the Purge had ended.

Duranty, Walter. The Kremlin and the People. New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1941, p. 122

Besides examining Communists against whom definite complaints are made, the Control Commission at long intervals resorts to wholesale “purges” of the Party. In 1929 it was decided to institute such a purge, with a view to checking up on the rapid numerical growth of the Party, which has been increasing at the rate of about 200,000 a year during the last few years, and eliminating undesirable elements. It was estimated in advance that about 150,000 Communists, or 10 percent of the total membership (including the candidates) would be expelled during this process. In a purge every party member, regardless of whether any charges have been preferred against him or not, must appear before representatives of the Control Commission and satisfy them that he is a sound Communist in thought and action. In the factories non-party workers are sometimes called on to participate in the purge by offering judgment on the Communists and pointing out those who are shkurniki or people who look after their own skins, a familiar Russian characterization for careerists.

Chamberlin, William Henry. Soviet Russia. Boston: Little, Brown, 1930, p. 68

From time to time the party “cleans out” its membership, and this is always done an open meetings to which all workers of the given institution are invited. Each communist in the institution must give before this public an extended account of his life activities, submit to and answer all criticism, and prove before the assembled workers his fitness to remain in the “leading Party.” Members may be cleaned out not only as “hostile elements, double-dealers, violators of discipline, deganerates, career-seekers, self-seekers, morally degraded persons” but even for being merely “passive,” for having failed to keep learning and growing in knowledge and authority among the masses.

Strong, Anna Louise. This Soviet World. New York, N. Y: H. Holt and company, c1936, p. 31

I have in the course of 15 years in the Soviet Union met an occasional Communist who was a grafter, and many more who were stubborn bureaucrats and unenlightened fanatics. But I have also seen how the party throws out dead wood–not always accurately–and renews itself from the working class it leads.

Strong, Anna Louise. This Soviet World. New York, N. Y: H. Holt and company, c1936, p. 37

It would be a mistake to regard the 1933 chistka as having been directed solely against members of the opposition. The largest single group expelled were “passive” party members: those carried on the roles but not participating in party work. Next came violators of party discipline, bureaucrats, corrupt officials, and those who had hidden past crimes. Members of dissident groups did not even figure in the final tallies. Stalin himself characterized the purge has a measure against bureaucratism, red tape, deganerates, and careerists, “to raise the level of organizational leadership.” The vast majority of those expelled were fresh recruits who had entered the party since 1929, rather than Old Bolshevik oppositionists. Nevertheless, the 1933 purge expelled about 18 percent of the party’s members and must be seen as a hard-line policy or signal from Moscow.

Getty & Naumov, The Road to Terror. New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, c1999, p. 127

“Not everyone who wishes can belong to the party,” said Stalin; “it is not given to everyone to brave its labors and its torments.”

Barbusse, Henri. Stalin. New York: The Macmillan company, 1935, p. 280

Western students have applied the word “purge” to everything from political trials to police terror to nonpolitical expulsions from the party. The label “Great Purges,” which encompasses practically all party activities between 1933 and 1939, is an example of such broad usage. Yet the Communist Party defined and used the word quite specifically. The term “purge” (chistka–a sweeping or cleaning) only applied to the periodic membership screenings of the ranks of the party. These membership operations were designed to weed the party of hangers-on, nonparticipants, drunken officials, and people with false identification papers, as well as ideological “enemies” or “aliens.” In the majority of purges, political crimes or deviations pertained to a minority of those expelled. No Soviet source or usage ever referred to the Ezhovshchina (the height of police arrests and terror in 1937) as a purge, and party leaders discussed that event and purges in entirely separate contexts. No political or nonpolitical trial was ever called a purge, and under no circumstances were operations, arrests, or terror involving nonparty citizens referred to as purges. A party member at the time would have been mystified by such a label.

Getty, A. Origins of the Great Purges. Cambridge, N. Y.: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1985, p. 38

It is to these operations [periodic cleansings] and not to trials, arrests, or prosecutions, that the Soviet usage of the term “purge” applies. The 1919 operation was called pereregistratsiia, “reregistration.” The 1921 purge, and each subsequent purge, was called proverka (verification) or chistka (a cleaning, cleaning out, combing out, or sweeping). For consistency and accuracy, the term “purge” will be applied below only to a membership-accounting operation.

Getty, A. Origins of the Great Purges. Cambridge, N. Y.: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1985, p. 40

Lenin's period of most intense purging - The Red Terror - was a blip compared to Stalin's purges.

Lenin's purges might have killed somewhere around 50-100k from 1917-1922. That millions died from the Red Terror was propaganda picked up in Western media at the time, and has been largely discredited. Also at the time, Western countries, Japan, and even Nationalist China were openly working against the USSR with saboteurs and spies hoping to crush the nascent communist experiment from spreading. That doesn't even include the actual White Army remnants who had designs of continuing the Russian Civil War, which could have caused millions of more deaths if a civil war were to reignite.

Stalin had at least 750k shot as enemies of the state from 1929-1953 - we have paperwork. That does not even include death from forced labor or gulags. Stalin's purges of the armed forces leadership during the 1930's probably caused millions of extra deaths of Soviet soldiers during WWII because of a dearth of good military officers.

Lenin's Red Terror, like it or not, cleaned up a lot of problems left over after the fragile success of the Russian Revolution. Stalin's purges were largely directed at enemies of Stalin, not the State.

…The picture is clearly not a simple one of Stalin, as despot, getting rid of his enemies. It is a complex picture, combining the acts of many groups. Stalin’s responsibility was that, being “distrustful and suspicious”–a not unnatural state in a man whose close friend has been assassinated and who has heard in open court that his own assassination was planned–he appointed Yezhov, gave orders to hurry up the investigations and sentences, and devised the theory that enemies multiplied as socialism nears success. Yezhov, later found to be a madman, gave the affective orders. The Central Committee, convinced by Stalin’s argument and Yezhov’s reports, also approved the acts. The actual initiators, as stated by Khrushchev, were “provocateurs”–i.e., agents of Nazi-fascism–and “conscienceless careerists”–i.e., men who invented plots to advance their own jobs. This analysis by Khrushchev does not greatly differ from that of my exiled friend, who said that the Nazi fifth-column “penetrated high in the GPU and arrested the wrong people.”… The Soviet investigators who are reviewing the cases will, I think, eventually get to the bottom of them. They will find the key, most probably, in actual, extensive penetration of the GPU by a Nazi fifth-column, in many actual plots, and in the impact of these on a highly suspicious man who saw his own assassination plotted and believed he was saving the Revolution by drastic purge.

Strong, Anna Louise. The Stalin Era. New York: Mainstream, 1956, p. 68

Yet more: in this great purge the fact was established that the German, Japanese, and Polish espionage services had wormed their way far into Russia, gaining access to the highest circles. The Deputy People’s Commissar for Agriculture, a Galacian Ukrainian, proved to have been for many years a Polish spy. The Soviet ambassador in Turkey, Karakhan, was shot as a German spy…. Karakhan fell into the hands of a beautiful German woman, and as a result into the hands of the Hitlerist intelligence service.

Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 304

Another important personality, though not so famous, was Boris Steiger, the official head of the foreign section of the Fine Arts Department. In reality he was an important representative of the secret police for liaison with the foreign diplomats, and an influential adviser of the Foreign Ministry. The Japanese had found out something compromising in his past, and had blackmailed him. He became a Japanese spy. He, too, was shot. Thus there had been discovered a whole series of high officials who had been carrying out espionage for foreign Powers. A morbid fear of espionage spread over Russia. Large numbers of foreigners, the remainder of the foreign specialists in the Soviet Union, and Communist refugees from Hitler, were arrested, some on suspicion of espionage, others because they were supposed to be in close touch with members of the Russian opposition.

Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 305

It has not been realized in the world outside the Soviet Union that in these trials of 1936 to 1938 the most widespread conspiracy in the world’s history came to judgment. In that conspiracy were involved not only ex-leaders of the party and a former head of the government, but also fully a dozen members of the Government who were still in office, and the supreme commander of the army, the Chief of Staff, almost all the army commanders, and in addition a considerable number of senior officers; the Minister of Police and the highest police officials; the Deputy People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs, almost all the ambassadors and ministers representing the Soviet Union abroad, almost the whole of the diplomatic staff of the ministry in Moscow; and also highly-placed judges and members of the governments of the federal republics.

Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New York: Staples Press, 1952, p. 308

… but power was passing altogether from Stalin to a still somewhat nebulous motley of adventurers, militarists, and political police bosses and imperialists. They already were sufficiently strong to hold up a decision of the Government. When we had all returned to Karlshorst, I was visited in my office by a comrade standing very high indeed. For though powerless still to overthrow the regime, we revolutionary Democrats were by this time strong enough to have our men in many key places.

Tokaev, Grigori. Comrade X. London: Harvill Press,1956, p. 354 (Personal note: Traitor, anti-communist, and former Soviet Air Forces Colonel Grigori Tokaev here in his book admitted not only the existence of underground opposition groups against the Soviet government but also admitted his own membership and that the membership of counter-revolutionaries penetrated all levels of Soviet Society)

At least in the official rhetoric of the day, not a great deal distinguished “spies” from White Guards, kulaks, Trotskyites, and Zinovievites. From the Stalinist viewpoint, they may have operated from different perspectives, but they were all seen as threats to the USSR. Considered this way, the 43,072 discovered in these categories up until December 1935 was large, especially considering that many of these people had held responsible posts. Imagine the outcry, and the fear, if in 1948 the FBI had announced that more than 40,000 enemies of the United States had been discovered operating inside the country’s ruling bodies. The allegation that one person, Alger Hiss, had been a Soviet agent was enough to send America into a minor frenzy, even though our enemies were on the other sides of the oceans. Forty thousand real and desperate foes, all presumably busy recruiting others, could inflict tremendous damage on any country.

Thurston, Robert. Life and Terror in Stalin’s Russia, 1934-1941. New Haven: Yale University Press, c1996, p. 31

There is one important earlier case generally recognized as that of a genuine spy– Konar, who became Assistant People’s Commissar of Agriculture until accidentally exposed. He was a Polish agent who had been given the papers of a dead Red Army soldier in 1920, and in ten years had thus risen high in the hierarchy, until exposed by someone who chanced to have seen the real Konar.

Conquest, Robert. he Great Terror. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990, p. 270

[At the Feb. March 1937 Plenum Stalin stated]: Comrades! From the reports and discussions held previously at the plenum, it is obvious that we have here a problem that could be characterized by three basic facts. First–the harmful and diversionary espionage of foreign country agents, in whose ranks the Trotskyites played a very active part. They managed to involve practically all of our organizations to a greater or lesser degree industrial, administrative, and party organizations. Secondly–agents of foreign countries, including Trotskyites, have managed to worm themselves not only into the lower party organs, but also they managed to get some top ranking posts in the government and party. Thirdly–some of our leading comrades, in the Central Committee and in regions of the country, not only were not able to expose these agents, diversionists, spies, and assassins, but they became unwilling tools in this anti-State work and even unknowingly appointed some of these agents to responsible positions. These are undeniable facts, according to the reports and documents that we heard during this plenum.

Lucas and Ukas. Trans. and Ed. Secret Documents. Toronto, Canada: Northstar Compass, 1996, p. 227