How Far Was Stalin personally Responsible For The Great Purges?

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Mark Weale

How Far Was Stalin personally Responsible For The Great Purges?

Under Stalin's leadership, approximately 70 000 people were murdered during the purges of 1928 to 1940, and some 12 million people died as a result of Stalin's sending them to the Gulags otherwise known as the camps, and these estimates are described as being conservative. Many historians believe that up to 17 million people could have died as a result of Stalin's purges. Was this due to Stalin's paranoia, or were other factors involved in these huge numbers of dead?

After Lenin's death, Stalin succeeded him as leader after a gap of about three years. He had achieved his position through skilful maneuvering and ruthlessness in his dealings with fellow party members. Stalin had been brought up as a Georgian peasant, but his lack of regard for his fellow human beings had been shown by his brutal repression of Georgia in Sept 1918. Stalin was willing to use whatever means necessary to achieve his goals. After Stalin took over the leadership in 1928, huge advances occurred in the state of Russia's economy, and Stalin succeeded in changing Russia from a backward power, restrained for many years under the ties of repressive, incompetent Tsars, into a world Superpower, capable of sustaining an arms race requiring military expenditure of up to 15% per year. This modernization of Russia was achieved in an extremely short period of time, as Stalin himself said:

"We are 50 or 100 years behind the western powers, if the revolution is to survive, we must make up this gap in 10 years"

Whether the gap with the west was made up as quickly as Stalin intended is insignificant at this point, the fact is that the gap was made up in a very short time. In order to achieve this, Stalin was willing to remove opponents to his ideas. This resulted in parts of the party opposed to Stalin's ideas being purged. Although these deaths can't be excused, there was at least a purpose in these purges and they cannot be simply attributed to Stalin's paranoia.

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As Stalin tried to improve Russia he also increasingly centralized the government, this was beneficial as it allowed Stalin to make all of the decisions that he needed to make in order to achieve his policy of catching up with the west. However, he also set almost impossible targets through Gosplan for his five-year plans. When these targets were not met, the blame would naturally have fallen on Stalin. However, Stalin's power was based on a cult of personality, which made Stalin a kind of human God who could not be wrong. Therefore, in order to avoid the blame falling ...

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