On the morning of December 1st, 1934, Leonid Nikolaev walked inside the Party Headquarters in Leningrad, where he shot and killed Sergei Kirov, the head of the Leningrad Party organization. Owing to Joseph Stalin’s growing suspicion of party members, the death of Kirov opened the door for what became known as The Great Terror. By the end of 1939 over two million people were directly impacted by the purges, estimates put the death toll close to 800,000 people killed outright, and hundreds of thousands more sent to labor camps where many subsequently died. The Stalin left no stone unturned in his quest to eliminate threats to his power, The Terror swept through field and factory and impacted everyone from ordinary citizens to powerful officials. Beyond the assault on the average citizen and official, the Terror would also target high ranking military officials and the results would be costly to the Red Army, not just in lives but also in its preparedness for the wars to come. During the Russo-Finnish War, also known as the Winter War, the Red Army struggled to defeat the Finnish Army, which was inferior numerically, logistically, and economically. The failures of the Red Army at the onset of the Winter War can be directly correlated to Stalin’s expansion of the Purge to the Red Army. The Red Army was initially left out of the Purge, partially due to its lack of involvement in the political struggles that took place at the end of the 1920’s. The Red Army would not escape Stalin’s paranoia and on 11 June 1937 the flower of the Red Army Command was charged with treason and on the 12th they were tried and executed. The accused were all members of the group around Tukhachevsky which had pioneered military rethinking through the 1930’s. This group had developed the ideas and organization of an efficient, modern army. Those initially charged were Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky, Deputy People’s Commissar of Defense; Army Commander Iona Yakir, commanding the Kiev Military District; Army Commander Ieronim Uborevich, commanding the Byelorussian Military District; Corps Commander Robert Eideman, Head of the civil defense organization Osoaviakhim; Army Commander Avgust Kork, Head of the Military Academy; Corps Commander Vitovt Putna, Military Attaché in London; Corps Commander Vitalii Primakov, Deputy Commander of the Leningrad Military District, and several others. The men were charged with “…[the] breach of military duty and oath of allegiance, treason to their country, treason against the peoples of the USSR and treason against the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army”. Molotov claimed Tukhachevsky had been a dangerous Rightist working for the Nazis. According to Robert Conquest, in his novel The Great Terror: A Reassessment, these men were alleged to be conspiring to seize the Kremlin and take power from Stalin, although no evidence of any conspiracy ever existed. Once the best generals in the Red Army were drug off to execution Stalin launched the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD) against the officer corps as a whole. The NKVD was the agency in charge of all investigations after Stalin dismantled the OGPU. The Purge of the Red Army ended in November 1938, but the damage was already done, approximately 35,000 military leaders were discharged from the ranks. This was an unprecedented destruction of the officer corps and while it may have helped Stalin consolidate his power it also inflicted enormous damage on Soviet defense. The loss of quality leadership was felt
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After the Winter War Wipert von Blucher, the German envoy to Helsinki, concluded that the U.S.S.R. was not a first-class military power, and that Germany didn’t need to view the Soviet Union as a serious military or economic threat. Between 1937 and 1938 around seven million Soviet citizens were arrested, one million were executed, two million died in camps, and another one million were imprisoned. Taking the Purge and the Great Terror as a whole, roughly eight million people were in camps by the end of 1938. Stalin’s paranoia led him to set the Soviet Union on fire and as a result the Red Army fared poorly in the Winter War and suffered terribly at the onset of the Second World War, because it lacked quality
After the Winter War Wipert von Blucher, the German envoy to Helsinki, concluded that the U.S.S.R. was not a first-class military power, and that Germany didn’t need to view the Soviet Union as a serious military or economic threat. Between 1937 and 1938 around seven million Soviet citizens were arrested, one million were executed, two million died in camps, and another one million were imprisoned. Taking the Purge and the Great Terror as a whole, roughly eight million people were in camps by the end of 1938. Stalin’s paranoia led him to set the Soviet Union on fire and as a result the Red Army fared poorly in the Winter War and suffered terribly at the onset of the Second World War, because it lacked quality