Matvei Bronstein: Theorical physicist. Pioneer of quantum gravity. Arrested, accused of fictional “terroristic” activity and shot in 1938
Lev Shubnikov: Experimental physicist. Accused on false charges. Executed
Adrian Piotrovsky: Russian dramaturge. Accused on false charges of treason. Executed.
Nikolai Bukharin: Leader of the Communist revolution. Member of the Politburo. Falsely accused of treason. Executed.
General Alexander Egorov: Marshal of the Soviet Union. Commander of the Red Army Southern Front. Member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. Arrested, accused on false charges, executed.
General Mikhail Tukhachevsky Supreme Marshal of the Soviet Union. Nicknamed the Red Napoleon. Arrested, accused on fake charges. Executed.
Grigory Zinoviev: Chairman of the Communist International Movement. Member of the Soviet Politburo. Accused of treason and executed.
Even the secret police themselves were not safe:
Genrikh Yagoda : Right-hand of Joseph Stalin. Head of the NKD Secret Police. He spied on everyone in Russia and jailed thousands of innocents. Yagoda was arrested and executed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genrikh_Yagoda
Nikolai Yezhov : Appointed head of the NKD Secret Police after the death of Yagoda. Arrested on fake charges, executed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Yezhov
Everybody was absolutely terrified during this period. At least 600 000 people were killed and over 100 000 people were deported to Gulags in Siberia.
Today, Russian schools no longer teach what Joseph Stalin did.
Many young russians actually believe that Stalin was a great patriot.
This is part of an effort by Vladimir Putin to rehabilitate him:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jul/10/vladimir-putin-russia-rehabilitating-stalin-soviet-past https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2025/05/21/stalin-is-making-a-comeback-in-russia-heres-why-a89155
Nicknamed the Red Napoleon
Fun fact, he was really called that, but not because his military talents but because he was typed as candidate for leading a military coup. His purging was just a matter of time.
Also called that for fucking up the liberation of Poland. But that’s my opinion.
Yeah it was ironic on many levels, but then corn man came and straight up lied to make it unironic to use it as a cudgel that Stalin purged their best general while in reality Tukhachevsky was just a powder keg. The purge was more aimed at unloyal and incompetent than just the tsarist remnants as for example Boris Shaposhnikov, who was one of the highest ranking tsarist officers that supported revolution was not only not purged but even promoted to chief of general staff and later to marshal.
The people left over after the purges are, if anything, an indictment of Stalin, and the idea that it was a matter of incompetence is made a joke by the people left. Kliment Voroshilov spent all of ww2 fucking up entire theaters of war, and Semyon Budyonny was still arguing for the use of actual fucking cavalry by the end of ww2 (And his testimony, used as proof that Tukhachevsky was incompetent, was that Tukhachevsky’s call for a tank corps were either incompetence or sabotage because they couldn’t stack up to men on horseback).
Horse girl energy in a tankie’s world (war) (2)
Kliment Voroshilov spent all of ww2 fucking up entire theaters of war
TBH, he ended up being head organizer of partisan movement, which was his real talent, given that he spent the Civil War essentially fighting a guerilla war against Whites.
Semyon Budyonny was still arguing for the use of actual fucking cavalry
His main argument was the weakness of Soviet logistics, which catastrophically fucked over all of Soviet Mechanized Corps in 1941, and the Red Army had to recreate its cavalry units, which were significantly downscaled just before the war.
fighting a guerilla war against whites
i wish that was me
The people left over after the purges are, if anything, an indictment of Stalin
I stand by it. The sheer number of malcontents, incompetents and actively malicious actors left over after the purges show that stalin was either incompetent at target selection or the appointment of NKVD heads
As one communist leader supposedly said, when Khrushchev asked him about Stalin’s greatest mistake: “Not getting rid of you!”
The only such quote of which I am aware (Not saying yours is fake btw, I just haven’t ever heard it) is Zhou Enlai responding to Khrushchev pointing out that Zhou Enlai’s family was comprised of wealthy functionaries while Khruschev was solidly proletariat by saying “And we are both traitors to our class”.
Or perhaps he was working with limited means, including human means and trying to work within them without leaving the newly born country defenseless or in such chaos as to be easy pickings.
So he had this rock and a hard place choice of if he purges too far things might break down, even worse people perhaps might get in in the rush to plug holes and not purging far enough because of that.
With the benefit of hindsight its easy to say and correct that he didn’t go far enough and mistakes were made but it’s also understandable given the fraught circumstances he was in a very perilous situation and I’m not sure how many of us if any in the same situation with the same knowledge, the same fears of the external/internal threats could do better. His information doubtless wasn’t perfect and that was a problem.
One person with a time machine and collection of memoirs and retrospectives written up through the 90s delivered to Stalin could probably have averted Kruschev and the revisionism, rot, and weakness that took hold of the CCCP and prevented its collapse but its all very speculative as we don’t have that ability.
stalin used to ride around with a mac-11 and he would pull up to random groups of people and yell things like “grove street for life!!!” and “break yoself foo!!!” before opening fire
It’s so funny to me that liberals will believe that this guy was just killing millions of people at random and nobody tried to stop him. Nobody spoke out about it. It wasn’t documented anywhere else at the time of it happening. it just happened and nobody talked about it until he was dead and gone
Lmao, citations needed, the guardian.
34·1 month agoNKD
Ah yes, the People’s Commissariat of Affairs.
ⓘ 𝘛𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘶𝘴𝘦𝘳 𝘪𝘴 𝘴𝘶𝘴𝘱𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘰𝘧 𝘣𝘦𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢 𝘤𝘢𝘵. 𝘗𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘦 𝘳𝘦𝘱𝘰𝘳𝘵 𝘢𝘯𝘺 𝘴𝘶𝘴𝘱𝘪𝘤𝘪𝘰𝘶𝘴 𝘣𝘦𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘪𝘰𝘳.
How do you think they arranged the old bolshevik polycules
About the great purge and i might show my lib ass here but i can easily believe that top level Red Army and party officials like Tukhachevsky and Bukharin were definitely purged for the right reasons but im having trouble believe that the same could be true for everyone including random poets and writers
Neither the beginning of, the course of, nor the end of the Terror show the hand of a master planner.
— Robert W. Thurston, Life and Terror in Stalin’s Russia, 1934–1941, page 135.
Similarly, the fact that the police action of 1937 continued for so long, in company with equally self‐contradictory political acts, makes it unlikely that we are dealing here with a victorious punitive expedition being carried through by the praetortian guard of an all powerful dictator.
— Rittersporn, Gabor., Stalinist Simplifications and Soviet Complications, 1933–1953, page 113.
The terror was a series of group efforts (though these groups changed frequently) rather than a matter of one person intimidating everybody else. […] If we set aside the notion of a ‘grand Stalin plan’ to ‘kill everyone’ (the evidence for which, aside from our knowing the end and reading backward is quite weak) it is possible to understand the politics of the 1930s as an evolving political history in which self‐interested folks and groups jockeyed for position.
— Getty & Naumov, The Road to Terror (New Haven, Conn.), pgs. Xiv & 330.
Given that local authorities decided how many would be pressed, who would live and who wouldn’t, it is difficult to agree that everything was planned and administered from Moscow.
— Getty, J. Arch., ‘Excesses are not Permitted’, Russian Review vol. 61, pg. 133.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
