Historiographic review of the great terror in Russia (1936- 1938) - Assignment Example

This information was proved by the number of documents and annals as well. There are many notes that were made by Stalin personally. These documents testify that he ordered to kill more and more people. He marked the sentences with the red pencil (Kuromiya, 2007). Some names were marked by the additional notes, such as “kill more”. At the bottom of the pages there was a comment “Everyone should be shot”. The number of shot “enemies” was more than 3000 per day. It was proved that during the previously mentioned period 681692 people were sentenced to death, because of the political motives (Getty, 1993).

However, according to other sources, the number of victims was much higher. Counting the victims, we should also take into account those who died in prisons, correctional labor colonies and gulags and also those who were just shot due to the criminal offences. So, the number of the victims reached 1 million (Frierson C.and Vilenski, 2010). Moreover, in 1936 -1939 more than 1,2 million of communists were arrested that was a half of the communist party. Only 50 thousand of them got their liberty, the rest were shot or just died in prison.

Getty and Manning (1993) state: “during the Great Terror, the NKVD [Narodnyy Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del] investigated and commonly arrested party members who had been purged from the party. Once the NKVD had made a number of arrests, party members having any association with those arrested were called before the party committee for questioning. At one Moscow textile mile, all party members with relatives, friends, co-workers, or any other associates who had been arrested were themselves subject to questioning, expulsion from the party and arrest” (Getty and Manning 1993: 164).

The name “The Great Terror: was given to the events after the name of the book written by Conquest. The book is called “The Great Terror”. In the Soviet Union it was called “ezhovshina” after the last name of commissar Ezhov, who was arrested on April, 10, 1939. He was also shot on February 4, 1940. He was accused of the sympathy to Trotskyism, espionage and the preparation of the revolution. Getty and Manning describe: “he was a fairly colorless, mediocre individual who was raised up to the heights of party and state leadership by the will of Stalin, am ordinary product of creation and establishment by the will of Stalin, an ordinary product of the creation and establishment of totalitarian, coercive and bureaucratic system.

He was truly a servant of the regime of personal power who compensated for his low moral and political qualities by exhibiting selfless love for in, and devotion to the leader” (Getty and Manning 1993: 21). His henchmen had same destiny. It should be noticed that not all of the mass repressions organizers shared the destiny of their victims. Some of them made an excellent carrier. For example Beria, who was the organizer of the great terror in Georgia. He and his henchmen got the beneficial positions in the Party, NKVD, army and other branches (Davis, 1997).

There was an interesting episode in the terror campaign. One of the heads of NKVD, Feldman, beat one of the prisoners. As a result the man stayed in hospital for long. This case was under control and Feldman proved his actions and was not going to be sorry. He emphasized that he had a right to behave this way, because he had Beria’s directive. Feldman added that he would continue to act this