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WHAT WAS THE IMPACT OF THE 'GREAT TERROR'? - Coggle Diagram
WHAT WAS THE IMPACT OF THE 'GREAT TERROR'?
SOCIAL
ETHNIC CLEANSING
1941
400,000 Volga Germans deported to Siberia and Central Asia
Koreans and Poles were also deported or sent to camps
Seen as a possible threat to the union of the USSR (as they are the group most likely to want independence)
MILITARY
23,000 officers shot or dismissed
This had disatrous consequences in WWII, as the competant leaders were either dead, in exile, or in gulags
50% of armed forces officers were imprisoned or executed (25% reinstated by 1940)
Unsurprisingly created an attitude of fear across the country, and discouraged people to do anything that may have been considered anti-Soviet in fear of being punished. It may also have been a by-product of over-zealous local officials who needed to stick to their quotas but did not have enough dissidents to properly fulfill it.
ECONOMIC
COLLECTIVISAITION
INDUSTRY
Specialists like engineers and doctors were executed
The
1928 Shakhty Trial
began the precedent of show trials that condemned 'class enemies' (normal people accused ot sabotage and anti-Soviet behaviour) and tried 53 engineers and managers from Shakhty for sabotage
Those who did not fulfill their work quotas (which were usually impossibly high) were convicted of sabotage, and this often forced managers into a spiral of fudging the numbers
Gulag workers were used as slave labour to construct things like the Volga-White Sea Canal
POLITICAL
THE NKVD
The NKVD carried out most of the Terror including the purges, the arrests, the gulags and the show trials
STALIN'S OPPONENTS
Show Trials
were used to punish potential threats to Stalin's rule and the forced confessions acted as useful propaganda
Trials like the
Trial of 21
were used by Stalin both to remove potential enemies (in this case Bukharin, Rykov and Yagoda), but also as propaganda - these were high-level figures in the Party and their forced confessions were poignant as such
Kirov's Murder
, though it may have been ordered by Stalin or the NKVD, was used by the former as justification to crack down on 'dissidency'
850,000 members of the party dismissed between 1938-39
The Terror resulted in Stalin's position of power being increadibly strong as his potential opponents were almost completely wiped out