It might be expected that the purges would stop once Stalin's complete mastery over the Party had been established, but they did not; in fact, they increased in intensity. Repeating his constant assertion that the Soviet Union was in a state of siege, Stalin called for still greater vigilance against the enemies within who were in league with the Soviet Union's foreign enemies. Between 1936 and 1939, a progressive terrorizing of the Soviet Union occurred affecting the whole population. Its scale merited the title, given to it by historians, of'the Great Terror', which took its most dramatic form in the public show trials of Stalin's former Bolshevik colleagues (see page 41). The one-time heroes of the 1917 Revolution were imprisoned or executed as enemies of the state.
The descriptions applied to the accused during the purges bore little relation to political reality. 'Right', 'Left' and 'Centre' opposition blocs were identified and the groupings invariably had the catch-all term 'Trotskyite' tagged on to them, but such words were convenient prosecution labels rather than definitions of a genuine political opposition. They were intended to isolate those in the CPSU and the Soviet state whom Stalin wished to destroy.
Stalin's 'Great Terror' programme breaks down conveniently into three sections, which are:
• the purge of the Party
• the purge of the armed services
• the purge of the people.
World History
