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In 1996, during the second presidential election in Russia, Yeltsin became angry because of "shock therapy", and the people began to think of the good of the Soviet Union.
As a result, Zyuganov, the leader of the Russian Communist Party, won a high percentage of votes, and once left the incumbent President Boris Yeltsin.
Yeltsin
Just when the people were exclaiming that the Soviet Union would return again, the seven oligarchs who opposed Zyuganov came up with a strange trick in order to save Yeltsin's precarious approval ratings.
They control their media and continuously show old photos of the Great Purge to the Russian people.
This trick really worked wonders, and after two months of broadcasting, Zyuganov's approval rating plummeted.
The people came to their senses and would rather choose Yeltsin than vote for Zyuganov.
Zyuganov
This shows how deep the shadow of the Great Purge launched by Stalin has left on the Russian people.
What was the purge all about, and why did it scare the Russian people like this?
Today we will give you a detailed interpretation of the ins and outs of this movement.
Power struggles
In 1923, Lenin, the revolutionary mentor, passed away.
As a result of his assassination in 1918 by Menshevik reactionaries, Lenin was not in good health in his later years.
For three years, from 1921 to 1924, Lenin was semi-retired.
The power of the Central Committee of the CPSU was in the hands of Zinoviev, Kamenev and Stalin.
Lenin's successor, Trotsky, the father of the Red Army and the founder of the KGB, was unanimously ostracized by all three.
In fact, not only Trotsky, but even Lenin himself, in his later years, did not have a good relationship with these three men.
Trotsky
The difference between the two sides lies in the issue of bureaucracy.
During the revolution, these veterans of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union were also iron men who were "loyal to the country in those years".
However, with the victory of the revolution, cadres at all levels in high positions began to undergo a metamorphosis at a speed visible to the naked eye.
These revolutionaries, who once enthusiastically recommended Xuanyuan, slowly became "what is the matter of the Six Dynasties, just for the portal".
The concrete manifestation of this is the bureaucratic style of detachment from the masses of the people.
In view of the degeneration of the cadres, Lenin put forward the theory of continuing the revolution: Comrades, do not think that if the revolution succeeds, you can relax and slacken, and the guns of the revolutionaries should be turned against the enemy and against themselves.
Comrades certainly don't want to listen to this set of rhetoric. Isn't all the money distributed to the poor? You see I'm wearing this set! Who is the revolution? If you want to go back to the mountains, you can go by yourself, big brother, and we have to rush to Pudong to embrace the new society.
At that time, Trotsky was the only one in the upper echelons of the party who supported Lenin's theory of permanent revolution.
Lenin also had the intention of making Trotsky his successor.
But Lenin himself is a mud bodhisattva who crosses the river and cannot protect himself, how can he protect Trotsky!
After Lenin's death, although Trotsky held the Red Army and the KGB, his line was not "popular", and he was finally unanimously ostracized by the Big Three in the intra-party struggle.
Lenin and Trotsky
Trotsky was eventually kicked out of the Revolutionary Military Council and expelled in 1927 on charges of counter-revolution.
After Trotsky's departure, a rift soon appeared in the small gang of three of Stalin, Zinoviev and Kamenev.
The differences between the three mainly appeared on how to build socialism.
Stalin proposed a line of collectivization of agriculture and the suppression of all class enemies who opposed the collective farms.
Zinoviev, on the other hand, advocated the continuation of the New Economic Policy of the Lenin era and the fact that socialist construction should not be rushed.
Zinoviev
The situation after Lenin's death was similar to that of Sun Yat-sen at the same time.
After Sun Yat-sen's death, there were four people who were most likely to succeed him: Hu Hanmin, Wang Jingwei, Liao Zhongkai, and Chiang Kai-shek.
The first few are the founding fathers of the party, and the last one is a rising star.
Liao Zhongkai's corresponding role was Trotsky, who was the first to go out because he was a leftist and radical.
And Zinoviev and Kamenev correspond to the two "mouth cannons" of Wang Jingwei and Hu Hanmin.
Both of them have empty veterans and huge power, but their practical ability and political skills are very different, and in the end, they are both overtaken by rising stars.
Kamenev
Shortly after the fall of Trotsky, Kamenev and Zinoviev, two difficult brothers, were also dismissed by Stalin and kicked out of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU.
The reason why Stalin was able to get rid of these two people so easily was inseparable from Bukharin's support.
Bukharin was a young talent on whom Lenin had high hopes in his later years, and at one time wanted to make him a benchmark against bureaucracy.
After the fall of Zinoviev, Bukharin took over his post and became the head of the Comintern.
But his political views were the same as those of Kamenev, and he was also opposed to Stalin's policy of collectivization of agriculture.
Bukharin
At this point, we need to take a moment to describe where their differences lie.
When Soviet Russia was founded, in order to deal with the invasion of internal and external enemies, it adopted a policy called war communism.
At the heart of this policy is the surplus food collection system.
That is to say, the annual grain produced by the common people, except for the part necessary for the maintenance of basic subsistence, was collected by the Soviets.
In that case, the living standards of ordinary people are compressed to the limit, and they live on the line of life and death all year round.
As revolutionaries of the older generation, everyone was so worried about the miserable situation of the peasants at that time that no one wanted to do it again.
After the country was settled, the CPSU adopted Lenin's New Economic Policy to relieve pressure on the peasants.
Peasants only need to pay the statutory tax amount, and other grains can be distributed independently, and even some poor middle peasants can be directly exempted from taxes.
However, at that time, within the CPSU, on the issue of building socialism, there was a voice diametrically opposed to the NEP.
Lenin's close comrade-in-arms Trotsky proposed: This will not work, we must use the peasants as the primitive accumulation of socialism, and quickly build the Soviet Union into a socialist power.
Yes, the collective farm trick was first proposed by Trotsky.
He and Stalin, apart from being incompatible in terms of bureaucracy, are not fundamentally different in terms of statecraft, and can even be said to be highly identical.
Stalin
Bukharin fought with Stalin for another year over whether or not to collectivize agriculture.
In October 1928, Bukharin was finally defeated in this political struggle, and no one in the top echelons of the party dared to dictate Stalin's policies.
The merits are also brilliant, and the sins are also clear
In this year, the first five-year plan of the Soviet Union was launched.
During the First Five-Year Plan, the unprecedented crisis of the Great Depression occurred in the capitalist world, and all kinds of machinery and equipment in the West fell to the price of cabbage due to overproduction.
This coincided with the Soviet Union, which was at the beginning of industrialization at that time.
In 1931, the Soviet Union imported one-third of the world's total exports.
By 1932, the figure was as high as 50 percent.
In addition, during the First Five-Year Plan period, a large number of Western technicians were recruited to the Soviet Union with high salaries, including 100,000 people in the United States alone.
But this inevitably raises the question, the West does not recognize the Soviet currency, you can only trade with them in gold, so where does the gold come from?
It can only have a trade surplus! So what products did the Soviet Union have at that time that could be used to exchange foreign exchange in the international market?
You are an agricultural country, what else can you exchange for, it can only be grain. Where does the grain come from?
The results of the First Five-Year Plan have been brilliant.
In January 1933, when the First Five-Year Plan came to an end, the Soviet Union's industrial output had more than tripled compared to its pre-war period.
Among them, machinery manufacturing is 9 times that of the pre-war period, power generation is 7 times that of the pre-war period, and the industrial level has reached the level of the first in Europe and the second in the world in just a few years. It's not a miracle anymore, it's a miracle.
But the price behind this miracle is the white bones of the peasants!
As mentioned earlier, the Soviet Union took grain to the international market to buy industrial equipment.
But at that time, it was in the midst of the Great Depression, and there was overproduction of food and low prices.
If the price is not enough, it can only be made up by quantity, and the Soviet Union's grain collection and distribution to the peasants far exceeded expectations.
In addition, due to the booming industry, a large number of people have been displaced from the land and converted from agriculture to work, which means that there are fewer people who produce food and more people who eat.
Food pressure has further intensified, and the food ration in the hands of farmers has been compressed to the limit.
This means that their ability to resist risks is infinitely close to zero.
Once encountering natural and man-made disasters, they will immediately die in large areas.
In 1932 and 1933, when the First Five-Year Plan was announced, an unprecedented famine broke out in the Soviet Union.
Ukraine, known as the "breadbasket of Europe", has a death toll of 7.18 million.
Bloody horror
All sides are guilty, and the sin lies with Stalin alone.
The country has become like this, should you, as the supreme leader, be responsible for this?
The crowd was raging, and Stalin had to give an explanation. In order to ease the mood of the masses, Stalin decided on a general amnesty.
In 1934, when the 17th Congress of the CPSU was held, all the political opponents who had been defeated by Stalin were invited back, except for Trotsky.
But even so, it is difficult to dispel the anger of the comrades.
7 million lives! Not so many people died in the civil war in Soviet Russia.
At the time of the election of the General Secretary of the Central Committee, the comrades expressed their dissatisfaction with Stalin by secret ballot.
When the votes were counted, Stalin received a whopping 292 votes against it.
And the person with the fewest negative votes is called Kirov, with only three.
According to the rules, Kirov was supposed to succeed Stalin as General Secretary of the Central Committee.
Kirov was a loyal follower and successor of Stalin, as well as a supporter of the policy of collectivization of agriculture, but he was somewhat more benevolent than Stalin.
During his tenure at the helm of Leningrad, in the face of the Holodomor, Kirov also opened warehouses to release grain under pressure.
Kirov
At that time, the Soviet Union had become Stalin's word, and Kirov's election was by no means a bad choice of the opposition, but a consensus within Stalin's faction.
For one thing, Kirov's political views overlapped with Stalin's, and his ascension to power would have no effect on comrades within the faction.
Second, he was more moderate than Stalin. Let him do it, not only to implement the old policy, but also to allow the people to take a breath.
At this time, as long as Kirov nods, Stalin will immediately become history.
But Kirov didn't, he refused. Kaganovich, who presided over the meeting, also dismounted and declared the ballot invalid.
The "prince" that a person's heart desires, a "prince" who can be replaced at any time. Which emperor can endure?
Such a "prince", in addition to ascending the throne, can only die.
Stalin
On December 1, Kirov was assassinated after leaving Moscow and returning to Leningrad.
As for the murderers, the Soviet Union officially said that it was the Trotsky group.
But I really can't understand what is the point of the Trotsky clique killing Kirov? Wouldn't it be more convenient to kill Stalin if they wanted to kill him?
Kirov, died of childishness. How can a power struggle talk about so many feelings?
After Kirov's death, Stalin used this as an excuse to launch an unprecedented purge campaign.
Unlike the previous high-level infighting, the collectivization of agriculture was opposed by the whole society, and the struggle could not be confined to the Kremlin, but a social movement was necessary to eradicate the opposition at all levels.
Besides, just a year ago, Hitler came to power in the west, Germany was frantically expanding its armaments, and Stalin had to cut through the mess quickly.
Hitler
The first to suffer were Zinoviev and Kamenev, who had just returned.
The two men were tried in Moscow as suspects in Kirov's murder and then sentenced to 10 years in prison without clear evidence, and their supporters were arrested and tried.
In addition, Stalin sent secret letters to the party organizations at all levels, demanding to dig deep into the enemy.
All of a sudden, the entire Soviet Union fell into an ideological frenzy.
Socialist countries all started with ideology, and although ideology is infinitely powerful, it is also an extremely uncontrollable thing. Because the truth is often only in the hands of a few people at the top, what do the party members at the bottom know about communism?
Their so-called revolutionary fervor is nothing more than a mass fanaticism.
This kind of fanaticism can easily be flickered and instigated, and it can only be suppressed by the rationality of the upper echelons.
Once the upper echelons deliberately do not suppress or even add fuel to the fire, it will immediately be a force of energy that destroys the world and destroys the world.
When Stalin pressed this button of destruction, the entire Soviet Union became uncontrollable.
Even Stalin himself could not control the direction of the purge.
He only has the power to open and stop, but how to wash it, who to wash, he said it doesn't count.
So in this purge, even many of his cronies around him were coerced and sacrificed by mass fanaticism.
Stalin could not save them, because Stalin could not refute this fanaticism, he could not tell the masses that you were wrong, that I just wanted to eradicate dissidents, and that the comrades had to tear him apart.
The purge lasted for four years, and a total of 600,000 party members and cadres at all levels and ordinary civilians died.
At the end of 1938, considering that the social capacity had reached its limit and that it would be counterproductive to continue with it, Stalin decisively called a halt.
Subsequently, Stalin pushed out Yezhov, the "head of the brocade guard", to take the blame.
The leader is always right, it's just that the subordinates are not effective!
As for whether Stalin was right or wrong, then the benevolent will see the benevolent, and the wise will see the wise!
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