The Great Purge: Stalin's Darkest Moment

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[seanoreiley]

I worked with a woman who was a child during the whole Holodomor. One day, for whatever reason she decided to tell me about part of it, and told me how it got so bad that her mother had to choose to stop feeding a sick child in order to ensure that the rest of her children survived. They had to sit there and watch as the child died.

[ZombiiChix]

I have a sibling who is an unapologetic Stalinist that claims the holodomor was caused by bad weather... And that Stalin is only considered a dictator because of FBI propaganda. It's genuinely really depressing

[andreasmuller]

And that´s still only a small part of Stalins body count. The man was utterly insane.

[Erik_Ice_Fang]

Even after years of being reminded of the Purge, that body count (and %) of senior political and military figures is insane. How the hell do you kill that many offices down to the battalion level is actually unbelievable. Its wonder the USSR survived WW2 even with all the help

[SparkBerry]

Visited Stalin's birthplace in Gori, Georgia recently. The museum doesn't mention the atrocities, as it was built during the Soviet era. The Occupation Museum in Tblisi however makes it very clear who the villians were.

[johnmcguigan]

The great tenor Sergei Koslovsky was added to one of the execution lists. He also happened to be Stalin's favorite singer, and was occasionally called to the Kremlin in the middle of the night to sing for Stalin. (A remarkable operatic tenor, Koslovsky also recorded albums of Russian popular folk songs.) When Stalin saw Koslovsky's name on the execution list, he crossed it off, replying in anger, "If Koslovsky is executed, who will sing for us? YOU?" Yes, music hath charms....

[fishyerik]

If you ever gain great power, try to remember this: If you have to kill your own people on an industrial scale to stay in power, you might not be as great leader as you think you are. Also, "purging" your opponents, and potential opponents, among your own subjects instead of exercising your power in a constructive manner, tends to become a sisyphean task.

[josephschultz]

It's absolutely soul-crushing to think about how many people within the Soviet Union were _murdered_ just to satiate the ego of this one megalomaniac man. The body count is an intense and humbling thing to think about and, unlike Adolf Hitler, there are people in former Soviet Bloc states that still think of him as an overall force for good as a world-changer.

That is wild to me. And horribly, utterly depressing.

[helenafarkas]

there is a REASON that during the early stages of Hitler's invasion of the soviet union, the german troops were treated as LIBERATORS. it's not hard to imagine that if orders had been different on how to treat the soviet civilians, that Hitler might have easily taken soviet territory and been able to turn it's massive military capabilities against the West. instead they treated the soviet civilians as racially impure and subhuman, which quickly soured the welcome they recieved, which was among the largest of hitler's mistakes

[ukoutdoors]

There was a Russian joke from soviet times: A man and his wife were sleeping one night when they were awoken by a hammering on the door at 3am. They sat up, looking at each other with fear on their faces. Eventually the husband said 'well, I suppose I'll have to see who's there'. He returned a few moments later and said with relief -' wonderful news, darling. The building is on fire'.

[multiyapples]

Rest in peace to those that passed away.

[rashkavar]

It is notable that the Red Army purge as mentioned *did* severely reduce the Soviets' military capacity. Just look at their first war after this incident: the Winter War against Finland. The Finns fought valiantly, but their defensive tactics were not really all that innovative at first, and only really got innovative because the Soviets were presenting tactical options that had previously been largely unavailable because...well, competent commanders don't make mistakes that big.

But as they blundered their way through that war, they learned. Marching into a Finnish meat grinder is a very good incentive to learn how to survive walking into meat grinders, and by the time Operation Barbarossa came along, they were well on the way to a structural recovery that would make the Red Army capable of taking on the Wehrmacht. It took them another year and a bit of walking into a German meat grinder to finish learning that lesson, but they had enough soldiers and territory to lose that said lesson could be learned before they were in an unwinnable situation.

(It's remarkable just how cleanly the tides of war turn in WWII, especially in this theatre. North Africa had a bunch of back-and-forth in Libya early on, but aside from that, before Operation Torch and Stalingrad, the Germans win the vast majority of their battles, after those 2 events, they lose the vast majority. (Seriously, the Battle of the Bulge is the closest thing I can think of to a significant victory and that's an unmitigated disaster where they burn their reserves in a suicidal offensive.) Similarly, the Japanese Navy win pretty much everything up to Midway, and lose pretty much everything after. (The Japanese Army is mostly tied up in China where my understanding is much more spotty and, iirc, the official record is also pretty spotty.))

[ttuny]

Maybe I missed it but you failed to mention Trotsky ended up with an axe in his head while in exile.

[katrinaprescott]

By far the best history of the Great Purge is "The Great Terror" by Robert Conquest. He first wrote the book using information from dissidents and samizdat in the 1960s as well as some reasonably accurate information released during that decade by the Soviets. He was able to refine and mostly reaffirm his original narrative in 1989-1990 with official records made available through Glastnost and the fall of the Soviet Union.

Kirov was most likely assassinated by the secret police at Stalin's direction. It is true he was a Stalin supporter, but he was also a popular politician in his own right with a strong power base in Leningrad. By getting rid of him Stalin eliminated a potential future rival and provided a justification for eliminating the rest of his rivals, actual and potential.
One interesting thing Conquest noted is that despite the fact that Stalin was a dictator, he still didn't have the absolute power Hitler did. So while Hitler was able to act unilaterally based on the "führerprinzip", Stalin had to go through the motions of trials and involving the Politboro. He still got what he wanted but he had to go through a pretense to do it.

[blenderbanana]

"Stalin killed every other second in command & high officer; but he would never murder me."
- ☺️

[lisapop]

I didn't know that about the Polish or accused Poles. Both my husband and my family are Polish but they both came to the US pre ww2. We were taught about the purge in school. We learned about the politicians, military, jews, kulacks, even khazacks, but no mention of the Poles and accused Poles. No wonder why they were so brutal to them in the war and after

[jollyjohnthepirate]

According to Stalin there was nothing like the sleep he enjoyed after watching all his enemies killed. Once the purge got started going if your neighbor was on the list and wasn't home the agents might just take you. Because if they came up short on their lists the agents themselves might be sent in their place. There was a multi story apartment building that had an elevator that was usable only by agents. It opened into the flats by a door. Everyone who lived there had to use the stairs.

[joshuawhinery]

Psychopathy, paranoia and power politics create a VERY scary sort of madness when combined

[michinwaygook]

Don't forget that Sergei Korolev was put in a Gulag in Siberia and almost died there. Korolev was one of the Soviet Union's biggest trade secrets at the time and was the man that started the Space Race. Like the Americans the Russians were trying to design ballistic missiles that could cross the ocean. It was Korolev that redirected their attention to space (i.e. put a satellite up there and you could spy on the Americans).

You should do a whole video on this man. He was the glue holding the Soviet Space Program together and when he died it fell apart around their ears. The Soviets had 50+ firsts to the Americans 20+ firsts. The Soviets were planning on landing a man on the moon before the Americans but Sergei Korolev died before that could happen and the rest is history. What did Korolev die from? Long-term injuries suffered from his time in the Gulag in Siberia.

You should do an entire video on this man. Very few Westerners know of this man and his incredible achievements. There was a book written about him by an American named James Harford called ' Korolev: How One Man Masterminded the Soviet Drive to Beat America to the Moon'. James Harford was a graduate of Yale College in mechanical engineering and was for 37 years the staff director of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

[Damien-ogsk]

Though being a work of fiction, the film "captain volkogonov escaped" is a terrifying portrayal of Stalin's purges