To What Extent was Stalin's Personal Paranoia the Main Reason for the Purges?

The communist system in Russia at the time certainly did lead to the likely possibility that one dictator would accrue a dangerous level of power, which would be abused by the wrong person.  Lenin’s attitudes to the Party also led to the belief by fellow members that the Party was right and therefore the leader was right, this resulted in many of the accused supporting the Purges and the lack of resistance to Stalin’s rise to power.  Lenin had himself also implemented a few tamer versions of Stalin’s terror, yet Leninism only suggested such extremes as the Purges, Stalin turned these suggestions into gospel.

The Purges can also be seen as logical in another sense, not that they follow on from the logic of Bolshevism, but that Stalin picked particular people for death as scapegoats for his own economic failures.  Marning believes that the Purges and economic failures are ‘inexorably linked’.  Marning quotes the historian William Henry Chamberlain who notes that when no improvements were achieved the ‘subconscious temptation to seek scapegoats became almost irresistible’.  In the last show trial ‘the blaming of all the errors and malpractices of the Soviet economy on sabotage by the accused was to run through the trial’.  The wreckers sabotage included attempts to use the wrong types of crop rotation, provide bad seed and throw glass into butter.  This explanation does have some evidence in the form of the last show trial’s proceedings, yet has too many other examples contradicting it.  K. Bauman was made scapegoat for the first collectivisation excesses and Stetsky an old economist was also arrested at a similar time.  Conquest does see that there was some logic in certain victims as there were failures that required scapegoats, yet it seems entirely illogical to try to improve the economic situation by shooting the best economists and scaring the next best into working harder. 

People could also be jailed for commenting that the five year plans were unrealistic.  In the first five year plans, in certain areas targets were actually exceeded.  Producer’s goods, valued at 6 milliards (1927) were expected to be worth 18.1 milliards by 1932, yet were actually valued at 23.1 milliards.  If criticism of five year plans was the reason for purging, the killings would have slowed after these successes, yet they increased.  This may have been linked to the failures of the later five year plans however, in which many initial targets were cut part way through.  Another flaw in this supposedly logical argument is that there would be no need for so many scapegoats and they would simply be needed as an example, not to be killed or subjected to such excruciating tortures as they were.  It seems more likely that the authors of the Bukharin, Rykov and Krestinsky trial decided to change the plot so as not to link everyone to the ‘Ryutin Platform’.  All who were in some vague contact with foreigners must also have been deemed to be wrecking the economy somehow as the brother of the woman who supplied the German Consul’s milk was arrested.  There were many reasons that one was risking arrest and execution; being involved in economics was simply one of them, along with being in contact with anyone foreign, posing any possible threats to Stalin’s power and to know too much about Lenin and his testament that denounced Stalin.  Ilya Ehrenburg cannot find any logic linking the victims of the Purge as the strong-minded, independent Pasternak was spared, whilst the obedient Koltsov was liquidated. 

If Stalin did possess an economic motive in relation to who was killed in the Purges then it was not his main reason, he did not begin the Purges because of his economic failings, at least not directly.  His initial reason was surely the threat he felt from possible alternatives to his leadership, as the assassination of Kirov shows.  He may have felt this threat because of his economic failures however and this indirectly caused the Purges.  It seems more likely that once the Purges began; controlling them was like directing a bull to the china shop’s exit: it may get there in the end, but at its own pace and direction, wreaking havoc in the meantime.

Stalin can be alleviated of the weight of some of his crimes to an extent, because he did not have absolute power over the entire Purges.  Although Stalin had set the wheels in motion he would never have assumed that the country would be so thoroughly purged.  Chris Ward sees this as predictable; he argues that if the purges grew out of the logic of Bolshevism then the Yezhovschina was bound to grow from the Purges.  The Yezhovschina was the time in which Yezhov, known as the bloodthirsty dwarf was head of the secret police, the N.K.V.D.  It was sometimes believed that Stalin knew nothing of what was going on at the time.  It is certainly true that when Yezhov himself was purged and Beria took over his role, the terror eased somewhat.  Stalin clearly did not choose everyone who was arrested, denouncing was often done to settle a score and people had to denounce for fear of being denounced themselves.  J. Arch Getty believes that Yezhov was pursuing his own agenda and resistance came in the form of more accusations.  The N.K.V.D. then had to act or else they may be purged; it was the most vicious of circles.  Hosking was right in noting that ‘What Stalin set in motion had a dynamic of its own’.  Once Yezhov had begun this Purge, he could not slow its pace for it would appear that he was collaborating with someone to reduce kills and Stalin had targets for arrests.  A source closer to Stalin, his daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva, has a slightly different view on things.  Although her being there at the time may well make her account more reliable, due to the lack of middle men, there is also a danger that her dislike for a character personally may lead to the assumption that they must be causing the terror.  Alliluyeva feels that ‘the spell cast by this terrifying evil genius (Beria) on my father was extremely powerful and it never failed to work’.  Despite this implication, it is also worth noting that Alliluyeva also finds it hard to believe that Stalin was linked to the death of Kirov,  despite the peculiar circumstances.  There were no guards around Kirov when he was shot, the assassin had been interrupted on an earlier attempt, yet was not arrested and received preferential treatment in prison.  Alliluyeva’s opinions may be affected by her confidence in her father and belief in his innocence.

Stalin’s actual need for the Purges was distorted by Yezhov, Beria to some extent and the ordinary Soviet citizens.  For fear of being purged themselves the country had to denounce and look out for any hint of sabotage or espionage.  It was logical that Yezhovschina would stem from the Purges, yet none could have foreseen the level the Purges reached before they began.  After Kirov’s murder the Purges increased in pace and atrocity and Stalin is not to blame for this, except indirectly, as he set the ball rolling.

Trotsky does concede that the terror increased in stature daily, but he attributes this to Stalin’s attitude by saying ‘Stalin is like a man who tries to quench his thirst with salted water’  A number of those who knew Stalin personally look to his persona to explain the Purges.  With the example of Trotsky this could well be due to a grudge he held against Stalin for having him exiled.  Trotsky was not entirely critical of Stalin, so his writings are not simply anti-Stalin as Trotsky’s correspondent appreciates that if it weren’t for Stalin’s isolation and the hatred of him ‘everything would have fallen into pieces’  Trotsky does tell some fairly gruesome stories of Stalin, which seem doubtful, he would apparently entertain himself at his country home by slitting sheep’s throats.  Kamenev also felt this fear surrounding his presence, as Trotsky quotes him as saying that when you talk to Stalin ‘He is figuring how to liquidate you without being punished’.  Other highly famous critics of Stalin’s mental health were Khrushchev and Lenin.  Khrushchev described Stalin as ‘sickly suspicious’, and that he saw ‘enemies’, two-facers’ and ‘spies’ everywhere.  Lenin recognised that the Purges, or something similar could occur before Stalin was in power, Stalin feared people letting this secret slip.  Had someone capitalised on this vulnerable situation of Stalin’s, the Purges may never have occurred as Lenin warned people in his Testament that Stalin may not be able to use the power with ‘sufficient caution’ and in a postscript a few days later Lenin suggested ‘Stalin’s removal from the General Secretary position’. 

There are differing opinions even on the mental health that Stalin suffered as Alan Bullock describes him not as paranoid but narcissistic.  This is a psychological state in which the victim is so absorbed with themselves that nothing else is real by comparison.  Bullock implies that deaths that Stalin ordered did not seem as serious to him as to other people.  This has some weight behind it as Stalin would casually sign thousands of people to their death in an instant.  Stalin did to some extent admit that his state of mind was not level and that his attitude towards other human beings was one of huge indifference.  After his second wife, Ekaterina Svanidze died he was believed to have said ‘This creature softened my stony heart. She is dead and with her died my last warm feeling for all human beings.’  Not all who knew him personally were so critical of him; unsurprisingly it is Stalin’s daughter who defends his state of mind claiming that ‘under no circumstances could one call him neurotic’

Stalin had not made the Purges up entirely as there were alleged attempts on Stalin’s life by a young woman in a library.  The ‘Ryutin Platform’ was a two-hundred page book criticising the Russian situation and fifty of the pages attacked Stalin personally calling for his removal.  Stalin exaggerated these isolated threats, turning them into a continual attack by others on himself and Bolshevism.

The exact medical terminology for Stalin’s state of mind remains debatable.  It is certain that Stalin was suspicious and showed signs of paranoia, as those who knew him can account for.  It may be that eye-witnesses explanations of the Purges are altered as they may not take wider factors into consideration, but may see Stalin himself as the cause, as it predominantly tends to be those that knew him that point to this reason for the Purges, Stalin’s paranoia certainly played a large part in the Purges occurrence.

Just as Marning claims there is a link between the Purges and economic failures of the era, Deutscher notes another coincidence in the Purges timing.  The first trial occurred just a few months after Hitler marched into the Rhineland and the last trial ended as the Nazi’s occupied Austria.  Perhaps Stalin had killed those that objected, or may object to an alliance with Nazi Germany, which could be mutually beneficial.  Conquest too has suggested that particularly the Purge of the Army ‘was to give him the freedom of manoeuvre which finally produced the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939’  Rybakov too saw the Purges as a way for Stalin to avoid any condemnation about his foreign policy, as he says that ‘the sole socialist country in the world could survive only if it were unshakably stable’.

This controversial desire of Stalin’s to form an alliance with Germany, does explain why the Army were purged, yet not the rest of the terror.  Once again, although Stalin probably did not initiate the Purges for this reason it was a convenient end product.  Although it is fairly unlikely that there would have been much disapproval of Stalin’s decision, he was the sort of character, who would rather be rid of any chance of confrontation in the future, instead of waiting for it to arrive.

The nature of Leninism, did not logically lead to the Purges, but to the situation in which the Purges could happen, if the wrong sort of person became dictator of the Party.  Lenin’s attitude to the Party, also led to the relative agreement with the Purges that most of the accused felt.  The Purges then became almost inevitable as a man of Stalin’s nature assumed power, as he distrusted almost everyone and genuinely feared a plot against him.  However, once the Purges had begun, the effect was like a rolling snowball, as each person feared for their own lives, they tried to save themselves by denouncing others.  Just as Stalin’s nature led to the Purges, growing from Bolshevism, Yezhov’s nature led to the Yezhovschina growing from the Purges.  Stalin did not initiate the Purges because of a desire to make economic scapegoats or unify the country in foreign policy opinion, but whilst the Purge occurred he seized these opportunities.  Had it not been for Stalin’s paranoia the Purges would never have occurred.

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Bibliography

Alan Bullock, Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives, London, 2nd ed., 1998, HarperCollins Publishers

Alan Wood, Stalin and Stalinism, Suffolk, 2nd ed., 1993, Clays ltd.

Isaac Deutscher, Stalin, London, 2nd ed., 1990, Clays ltd.

Stephen Lee, Stalin and the Soviet Union, 1999, London, Clays ltd.

John Laver, From Revolutionary to Despot, London, 1993, Hodder and Stoughton ltd.

Jonathan Lewis and Phillip Whitehead, Stalin: A Time for Judgement, London, 1990, Methuen London

Harold Shukman, Stalin, Stroud, 1990

Gregory Freeze, Russia: A History, Oxford, 1997

Geoffrey Hosking, A History of the Soviet Union, London, 1985, William Collins and Sons and Company ltd.

Robert Conquest, The Great Terror, U.S.A., 2nd ed., 1973, Macmillan London ltd.

Chris Ward, Stalin’s Russia, Great Britain, 1993, Hodder Headline PLC

Robert H. McNeal, Stalin, Man and Ruler, London, 1988, Macmillan press ltd.

Svetlana Alliluyeva, Twenty Letters to a Friend, London, 1967, Hutchinson and Co. ltd.

Leon Trotsky, Stalin, (translated by Charles Malamuth), Norwich, 1947, Jarrold and Sons ltd.

        

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