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
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)
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.
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.
i wish that was me
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”.
Zhou Enlai’s comeback is legendary, and with a good reason! As for the hopefully true Khrushchev-owning, we had https://hexbear.net/post/273068
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.