4 TERROR AND IMPENDING WAR
Throughout 1937, the wave of repressions against members of the nomenklatura and former oppositionists continued to grow. In August, this wave turned into a tsunami when the ranks of the repressed were expanded from a few tens of thousands of officials to hundreds of thousands of ordinary Soviet citizens. It was at this point that the repression of 1937–1938 earned the name given it by Robert Conquest: “the Great Terror.”1
After the archives were opened, we learned that the Great Terror was actually a series of operations approved by the Politburo and aimed at different groups. The most far-ranging of these operations—the one against “anti-Soviet elements”—was carried out in fulfillment of NKVD Order No. 00447, approved by the Politburo on 30 July 1937 and planned for August through December. Each region and republic was assigned specific numerical targets for executions and imprisonments in camps. The quotas for the destruction of human lives were very much like those for the production of grain or metal. During the first stage, approximately two hundred thousand people were to be sent to the camps and more than seventy thousand were to be shot. Yet Order No. 00447 allowed for flexibility: local officials had the right to ask Moscow to increase the permitted number of arrests and executions. It was clear to everyone involved that this right was actually a duty. After expeditiously reaching initial targets, local authorities sent Moscow new “increased obligations,” which were almost always approved. With Moscow’s encouragement, the initial plan for destroying “enemies” was fulfilled several times over.
The first “anti-Soviet elements” affected by the operation were the kulaks, who, according to Order No. 00447, had continued their “anti-Soviet subversive activities” after returning from camps and exile. Order No. 00447 placed so much emphasis on kulaks that it has often been called “the kulak order.” This is a misnomer, however, since it provided for the arrest and execution of many other population groups: former members of parties that opposed the Bolsheviks, former members of the White Guard, surviving tsarist officials, “enemies” who had completed their sentences and been released, and political prisoners still in the camps. Toward the end of the list came common criminals.
This list of targets suggests that the operation’s purpose was the extermination or imprisonment of anyone the Stalinist leadership considered a current or potential threat. This goal was even more clear-cut in the “nationalities” operations that were conducted alongside the “anti-Soviet elements” operation. The “nationalities” operations were also planned in Moscow and governed by special NKVD orders approved by the Politburo. They had a catastrophic impact on the Soviet Union’s ethnic Poles, Germans, Romanians, Latvians, Estonians, Finns, Greeks, Afghans, Iranians, Chinese, Bulgarians, and Macedonians. The Soviet leadership viewed all these groups as ripe for recruitment by hostile foreign powers. A special operation was also conducted against Soviet employees of the Chinese Eastern Railway, who had returned to the USSR from Harbin after the railway was sold to Japan in 1935.
The two campaigns, the “anti-Soviet elements” and the “nationalities” operations, comprised the Great Terror. It was a highly centralized effort begun in the summer of 1937 and concluded in November 1938. Based on the most recent knowledge, approximately 1.6 million people were arrested, and 700,000 of them were shot.2 An unknown number perished in NKVD torture chambers. Over the roughly year-and-a-half duration of the Great Terror, approximately 1,500 “enemies” were killed every day. None of Stalin’s other crimes against the Soviet population matched the Great Terror in either scale or savagery, and human history offers few episodes that compare.
These figures explain why the Great Terror has come to symbolize Stalin’s dictatorship and personal cruelty. That Stalin himself was the inspiration behind the Terror has never been disputed by serious scholars, and further evidence of his involvement was found after the opening of the archives, which revealed how closely Moscow directed the operations. Having put to rest any lingering doubts that Stalin was the instigator and organizer of the Great Terror, historians have now turned to the task of reconstructing his plans and calculations during these bloody months. Scholars have debated Stalin’s motives for years. The horrific nature of his deeds has led some to think he might have been insane. Clinical proof of such a possibility is undoubtedly beyond reach at this point, but we do have extensive evidence of Stalin’s mental state during this period. For the first time in many years he did not take his usual summer vacation in the south, remaining in Moscow to oversee the roundup. More telling are the many notations and instructions he left on interrogation protocols and the vast body of correspondence between him and the NKVD during this period.
Com. Yezhov: Very important. You have to go through the Udmurt, Mari, Chuvash, and Mordov republics; go through them with a broom.3
Beat Unshlikht for not naming the Polish agents for each region.4
Comrade Yezhov: Very good! Keep on digging and cleaning out this Polish spy filth.5
You don’t need to “check,” you need to arrest.6
Valter (a German). Beat Valter.7
One important source for understanding the fury Stalin unleashed in 1937–1938 is the complete transcripts of his speeches and remarks from this period; these have recently become available. Unusually convoluted and incoherent, they are filled with references to conspiracies and omnipresent enemies. In remarks to a meeting of the defense commissar’s council on 2 June 1937, Stalin asserted, “Every party member, honest non-member, and citizen of the USSR has not only the right but also the duty to report any failings that he notices. Even if only 5 percent are true, it will still be worthwhile.”8 In another example, the top-performing workers in the metallurgical and coal industries, while being honored with a special reception at the Kremlin on 29 October 1937, were told by Stalin that he was not certain he could trust even them: “I’m not even sure that everyone present, I truly apologize to you, is for the people. I’m not sure whether even among you, I again apologize, there might be people who are working for the Soviet government but at the same time have set themselves up with some intelligence agency in the West—Japanese, German, or Polish—for insurance.” These words, which must surely have surprised those present, were expunged from the official record of the reception.9
These examples, of which there are many, are consistent with a statement made by the commissar for foreign trade, Arkady Rozengolts, and contained in his NKVD case file. Rozengolts, who knew Stalin well, described him as “suspicious to the point of insanity” and felt that by 1937 he had changed. In the past, Rozengolts noted, whenever he had reported to Stalin, the vozhd had calmly signed whatever papers needed his signature. Now he would fall into “a fit, a mad fit of rage.”10 This rage was undoubtedly an important factor in the huge scope and brutality of the Great Terror. By the same token, Stalin’s agitated state does not fully explain the decisions he made throughout this period. Pivotal questions remain unanswered. With whom was Stalin so furious, and why did this fury emerge specifically then?