After Kirov's assassination, the Soviet "purge" expanded into the "Great Purge," in which 5 million people were implicated and 1.3 million sentenced, including 682,000 shots; 119 of the 139 members of the Central Committee were executed; and more than half of the delegates to the 17th Congress of the CPSU in 1934 were arrested, and two-thirds of them executed.
The last Politburo members of the Party Central Committee at the time of Lenin's lifetime had 7 Politburo members, and in addition to Lenin's death, Stalin put the other 5 (Kamenev, Trotsky, Zinoviev, Lykov, Tomsky) to death, leaving him alone; Of the 31 Politburo members elected between 1919 and 1935, 20 were executed, and some jokingly claimed that "the party created by Lenin was wiped out by Stalin," who politically succeeded in removing all obvious and potential stumbling blocks.
The highest echelons of the Soviet army also suffered a serious loss of talent as a result of the Great Purge, and in June 1937, eight senior Red Army generals, including the Soviet Union's leading military strategist Tukhachevsky, were all executed. Some 15,000 servicemen and associated personnel were also shot, and 68 of the 85 members of the National Defense Council were executed, seriously undermining the combat effectiveness of the Soviet army and fueling Hitler's aggressive ambitions. There was also a large number of famous intellectuals who were brutally suppressed, including tank designer Zaslavsky, inventor of recoilless guns Kurchevsky, aircraft designer Tupolev and others.
As a result, Soviet industrial and agricultural production plummeted, and in 1939 there were as many as a million prisoners in the Gulag, forced to work as hard labor, dig coal in mines, cut wood in woodlands, and work on the sites of large construction projects. Thousands of prisoners died of starvation and hard labor, and under the "joint sitting" system, prisoners received enough food only if the entire group met the daily work target. One prisoner later wrote: "The hungrier you are, the worse the workmanship." The worse the workmanship, the more there is no food, and this vicious circle does not leave people a way to live at all. ”
In the case of Kirov's assassination, Kamenev and Zinoviev were accused of being behind it, and in the summer of 1936, a public trial of the two men began on charges of establishing a terrorist organization, assassinating Kirov, and trying to get rid of Stalin.
There are certain risks in holding a public trial, firstly, there is no conclusive evidence of the charges against the two men, and secondly, whether the conviction can be made depends on whether the defendant denies guilt. If the defendant does not plead guilty and the evidence is insufficient, it is difficult for the government to convict them. A secret trial may have been the best option, but Stalin wanted to discredit his political opponents and never turn over. Therefore, he must find ways to ruin the people's good feelings for the two and turn them from revolutionary heroes into evil villains who secretly sabotage socialist construction.
Before the public trial, the Internal Affairs Committee of the People's Republic of the USSR assured Kamenev and Zinoviev that if they were charged and framed other revolutionary elders, such as Bukharin, Tomsky, Karl Ladek, etc., their lives and those of their families would be saved.
After months of secret preparation, the public trial was held at the Supreme Court, presiding over by Vyshinsky. Vyshinsky was well aware that the purpose of the trial was to stir up popular hatred of the accused, and in court he angrily denounced Zinoviev and Kamenev as imperialist lackeys who betrayed the people and droegs of society. These accusations were widely circulated, and the praise of the workers was won by the identification of evil traitors, and telegrams were sent from all over the Soviet Union demanding the immediate execution of these social scum.
There was no suspense in the outcome of the trial, and Zinoviev, Kamenev and 14 other defendants confessed to their crimes and framed each other. On 24 August, the fifth day after hearing the accused's testimony, the court sentenced the 16 to death, which was carried out the following day. Zinoviev and Kamenev became the first members of the Central Committee to be executed, and the chief inquisitor, Vyshinsky, continued his career as the chief prosecutor of the Soviet Union at the world-famous Nuremberg Trials, and in Stalin's later years as the Soviet foreign minister.
In January 1937, Lenin's close comrade-in-arms Karl Ladek and 16 others appeared in the bench on charges of terror and sabotage. Thirteen were sentenced to death and executed immediately, while the rest were imprisoned in labor camps where they also died quickly. Radek was not sentenced to death because he promised to frame others, an act of falsely accusing others of stealing his life and paving the way for a larger trial two years later. However, Radek did not live until then, and he was killed in the labor camp by assassins sent by the Internal Affairs Committee of the People's Republic of China.
By 1937, the Soviet people were in danger, and many believed that there were really spies and conspirators among them, and it was necessary to be constantly vigilant and find spies. Some people deliberately falsely accuse others, either out of selfish intentions or for promotion. Because the opponent or boss is sued, they are very likely to take their place and rise step by step. Anyone suspected of being a kulak, a reactionary, or a foreigner would be in danger of their lives, and people would involuntarily be drawn into the vortex of the Great Purge.
For a while, everything that happened in the USSR had rules to follow, there were no so-called "accidents". There was a fire, the machines of the factory broke down, the tractors on the collective farm broke down ... Similar accidents are always picked up and blamed. Once arrested, their fate was at the mercy of forces outside the law: prosecutors, the People's Internal Affairs Committee of the USSR, all wielded the power of life and death. When a new criminal law was enacted in 1934, the families of criminals were also subject to punishment, so when Kamenev was executed, his wife and children were executed soon after, and Zinoviev's family was not spared.
In March 1938, against the so-called "Trotsky clique," Nikolai Bukharin, former Chairman of the Comintern, Alexei Lykov, former Council of People's Commissars, and Christian Lakovsky, a total of 21 people stood in the dock. These people were important figures in the Politburo of the CPSU, and the elders of the Bolshevik Party who had not been eradicated in the last two public trials were swept away. They were accused of belonging to the "Trotskyist camp", and the heinous crimes they committed included assassinating Kirov, intending to assassinate Stalin, Lenin, Molotov, etc., sabotaging the economic production of the Soviet Union, providing intelligence to Western countries, etc., and 18 people were sentenced to death.
