Why was 1937 such a terrible year in Russian

history?
By Skye Renauld
The history of Russia is more often than not presented though the
lens of tragedy. In regard to 1937, almost no other lens provides as
accurate account of the events that unfolded that year in Soviet
Russia. 1937 is the year in which the Yezhovshchina, or Great Purge
as it came to be known, reached its zenith. Beginning with the now
infamous series of Moscow show trials, in which high-ranking
military officials were publically condemned as traitors, the social
cleansing operations of the Yezhovshchina resulted in the
imprisonment of over 760,000 people, of which over 380,000 were
scheduled to be shot.1 Although many of the figures surrounding this
period in Russian history are disputed, especially those concerning
imprisonment and execution, the discrepancies are far from enough
to warrant a change in reception.
Throughout this essay I will be looking at the most important
aspects of the Yezhovshchina, the events leading up to it, the
reasons for its implementation, and the devastating effects it had on
the people of Russia and the Russian communist party.
The notion of a purge was not unheard of in Soviet Russia. In fact,
purges were first used by Lenin during his rule and then again by
Stalin in the early 1930s. However, purges are thought to have only
been conducted in exceptional circumstances and, even then, were
used only for the purpose of cleansing the party. 2 What makes the
Yezhovshchina so significant then, is that the purge was not
conducted solely on party members, but on every segment of Soviet
society, resulting in the arrest, imprisonment, and executions of
hundreds of thousands of civilians deemed enemies of the state. 3
The mass repressions targeted any and everyone deemed to be a
socially harmful element including criminals, former convicts,
1Suny, Ronald, The Cambridge History of Russia, Vol. III (2006),
p212.
2Oppenheim, Samuel, Rehabilitation in the Post-Stalinist Soviet
Union, The Western Political Quarterly, Vol. 20, (1967), p 97.
3Ibid.

marginalized populations, farm workers, soviet officials, and even

peasants.4 Although almost no evidence exists, expaining the
motives for the social purge of the Yezhovshchina, many historians
would agree that the most likely motive was an increasing threat of
war with Germany and Japan, and a growing paranoia within the
Stalinist regime.5 Leaders within the Stalinist regime were convinced
that Russian operatives were working with foreign agents in order to
create a fifth-column force within Russia that would rise against
the government during an invasion by either Germany or Japan. 6
The cleansing of high-rank military and party officials, is widely
regarded as a strategic move on the part of Stalin to solidify his
regime by removing anyone suspected of opposing him, including
members of the old Bolsheviks who had supported Stalin from the
onset and were key components in the Communist Revolution. 7
The violent oppression of suspected opposition began with the
Moscow trials, the most significant of which being the second in the
series of trials. The second trial, conducted in January of 1937, saw
seventeen defendants, all members of the old Bolsheviks,
publically denounced as Trotskyites and accused of "treason
against the country, espionage, acts of diversion, wrecking activities
and the preparation of terrorist acts, i.e. of crimes covered by
Articles 58u, 588, 58*, and 5811 of the criminal code of the
R.S.F.S.R.".8
All seventeen defendants pleaded guilty to the charges laid against
them, although we now know that this was most likely due to
coercion and not genuine fault. Of the seventeen accused, thirteen
were publically executed and the remaining four were given long
prison sentences and sent to the gulags. Of those involved in the
Moscow show trials, the most significant of those accused were
Trotsky, Zinoviev, and Kamenev of the Left Opposition, and
Bukharin, Rykov, and Tomsky, of the Right Opposition, all of whom
were leaders and key party members during the Communist
Revolution. 9
Among those accused during the second trial were Piatakov, the
deputy commissar of heavy industry, K.B. Radek, editor of Izcvesiia,
4Suny, Ronald, History of Russia, p 213.
5Ibid, pp 212-214
6Ibid, p 213.
7Getty, J, The Road to Terror, (1999), p 447.
8Radin, Max, The Moscow Trials: A Legal View, Foreign Affairs, Vol.
16, (1937), pp 64-66.
9Oppenheim, Samuel, Rehabilitation, p 98.

and G. Sokolnikov, deputy commissar of light industry. 10 The

Moscow show trials, together with the growing threat of war, shifted
the moods of many Soviet citizens, who were now under the
impression that enemies threatened them form both within and
without Russia.11 However, trial and persecution of high-ranking
officials did not stop there.
In June of 1937, a secret trial, known as the Case of the Trotskyist
Anti-Soviet Military Organization, saw eight of the highest-ranking
officers within the Red Army accused of treason and espionage, and
subsequently executed. Those prosecuted include, Marshal M. N.
Tukhachevsky (deputy commissar of defense) and Generals S. I.
Kork (commandant of the Frunze Military Academy), I. E. Yakir
(commander of the Kiev Military District), and I. P. Uborevich
(commander of the Belorussian Military District). 12 The results of
the secret trial marked an important turning point as those
persecuted were never overtly regarded as oppositionists to Stalin
and had always sided with his line in regard to party disputes.13
Thus, prosecutions were not just for those suspected of disloyalty,
but were now placed on those suspected of potentially being
disloyal in the future.14 Over the two weeks following the secret trial,
980 senior Red Army commanders were arrested for crimes against
the state, many of whom were shot for their crimes.15 Although
rumored at the time, no evidence has even been uncovered proving
that these officers were involved in any sort of treason or plot
against Stalins regime.16 By the end of 1937, nearly 8 percent of the
total officer corps had been dismissed and never reinstated.17
Having removed any and all possible opposition within the ranks of
government and the military, Stalins attention soon turned towards
the Russian civilians and lower-ranking party members. In July of
1937, the then head of the NKVD, Nikolai Yezhov, issued the
operational order number 447 beginning the series of mass
repression that would ripple though every sphere of Soviet life,
spreading fear, paranoia, and death.18
10Goldman, Wendy, Inventing the Enemy: Denunciation and Terror
in Stalins Russia, (2011), Cambridge University Press, P 46.
11Ibid, p 47.
12Getty, J, The Road to Terror, (1999), p 444.
13Ibid, p 447.
14Getty, J, The Road to Terror, (1999), p 447
15Ibid, p450
16Ibid, P447.
17Ibid.
18Suny, Ronald, History of Russia, p 212

Primarily though the use of the civil police, then under control of the
political police, Stalins regime carried out campaigns of mass
repression, ethnic categorization, and deportation to reshape the
social-geographic and national-ethnic formation of Soviet Russia as
they saw fit.19
Disseminating from above, words and phrases such as Trotskyist,
wrecker, lickspittle, Fascist hireling, hidden enemy,
masking and unmasking, and famously enemy of the people,
became commonplace among the vocabularies of Soviet citizens in
1937 and were intentionally implemented to shape the political
discourse at the time.20
Party members were told to constantly be on the lookout for
possible enemies and were encouraged to report any actively the
thought to be suspicious or worrisome and not to worry about
having any definitive proof of wrongdoing. 21 Party organization
within the factories became centered on investigations into enemy
activity, encouraging party members to unmask fellow comrades,
announce the arrest of any relatives or associates, and to come
forward about any minor misdeeds they had committed. 22 Factories
fell into disarray as accusations and counteraccusations went back
and forth.23 Managers accused workers and workers managers. The
lower level factory employees regarded this newfound power over
their managers as a way to leverage their demands, calling into
question any managerial action that did not suit them.24
Mass participation on the part of the people only really began to
take form after the Central Committee plenum, held between the
22nd of February and the 7th of March 1937, in which the importance
of the little people was stressed as the key component in the
eradication of state enemies. 25
Given the intentionally vague nature regarding the classification of
enemy of the state, it became all too easy for any action, no
matter how benign, to be classified as suspicious. Not reporting any
19Ibid, p215.
20Goldman, Wendy, Inventing the Enemy, p 27
21Ibid, p48.
22Ibid, p31.
23Ibid, p48.
24Ibid.
25Ibid, p 64.

suspicious activity could be construed as suspicious in and of itself,

and could result in accusations of intentionally hiding enemy activity
and protecting enemies of the state. 26 Conversely, overzealous
unmasking could also be seen as a way of avoiding self-exposer
and thus, suspicious in nature. 27 Even the most remote of
connections to someone who had been arrested could constitute
grounds for suspicion.28 More often than not, entire families were
cleansed in order to insure that any possible threat was rooted
out.29 No one in the factories was safe from persecution, all levels of
the rank and file feared accusations and more often than not
members were reported for even the smallest of offences. The result
of this was an almost permanent start of fear, were every action had
to be scrutinized before being conducted, every thought had to be
checked before being made public, and every statement or action of
others had to be examined for fear that they just might be enemies
of the state. Soon enough, factory managers soon stated using
sabotage and wreaking by state enemies as a means to shift
blame for damaged factory equipment, unmet quotas, and to coverup workplace safety hazards.30
In many cases, security forces, not the judicial organs of the state,
carried out the arrests, investigations, trials, and executions. 31 Many
sentences were handed out on the basis of unsubstantiated claims,
exacerbated by the inability of the accused to defend themself. 32
Given the nature of the arrests, and the quasi-legal nature of the
extra-judicial system of investigation, the family and associates of
the detainee were unlikely to be given the actual reason for the
arrest, despite the pleas of distraught family members. 33 More often
than not, people would simply disappear, without any trace or
explanation. A grave, and morbidly hilarious example depicting the
unreasonably ridiculous nature of these arrests is given by Eugenia
Ginzburg who, upon begin arrested in 1937, met an old peasant lady
in prison who claimed to have been arrested for being a tractorist
i.e. for having used a tractor. 34 Soon enough, Ginzberg realized that
26Ibid, p 63.
27Ibid, P 60.
28Ibid, P 63.
29Getty, J, The Road to Terror, p 486.
30Goldman, Wendy, Inventing the Enemy, p 48.
31Wheatcroft, Stephen, Understanding Stalinism: A Reply, EuropeAsia Studies, Vol. 58, (2006), p 1144.
32Ibid.
33Ibid, p 76.
34Ibid.

this old lady had in fact been arrested for being a Trotskyist but
she had simply no idea or conception of what a Trotskyist even
was. This example, while tragic, reflects the status quo of the time
and the ridiculous level of paranoia present in the functioning of the
Stalinist regime.
Outside of the factories, in the more remote border areas of Russia,
deportations, imprisonments, and executions of ethnic minorities
were commonplace. Any marginal group deemed potentially
dangerous to Stalins regime was eliminated or forced to return to
their homelands which were more often than not still under control
of the U.S.S.R.35 These forced deportations of entire ethnic groups
were often justified as acts of self-defense. 36 The majority of ethnic
groups targeted during the Yezhovshchina, were the same groups
targeted by Stalin during the purges of the early 1930s. 37 Although
the mass repression of 1937 started as a means of cleansing socially
suspicious groups from the population, they soon developed into a
staunch campaign of ethic cleansing against anyone deems to be
associated with enemy nations.38
Ultimately, the Yezhovshchina and the Moscow show trials preceding
it, transformed the socio-political landscape of the U.S.S.R. from a
melting pot of revolutionist ideals and progress into a regressive
marginalization of thought saturated with paranoid tendencies and
an over-exertion of violent responses at every level of Soviet society.
Throughout the course of 1937 Stalin and Yezhov systematically
reshaped the upper echelons of the party, dismantled the power
structure of the Red Army, removed any possible opposition to the
Stalinist regime, turned the entire Soviet population against itself,
and imprisoned and executed hundreds of thousands of innocent
people deemed potential threats to the status quo. Thus, 1937 was
undoubtedly one of the worst years in Russian history.

35Geyer, Michael and Fitzpatrick, Sheila, Beyond Totalitarianism:

Stalinism and Nazism Compared, (2009), p 213.
36Ibid.
37Suny, Ronald, History of Russia, p 213.
38Ibid.

Bibliography
Journals:

Collective Knowledge of Public Events: The Soviet Era

from the Great Purge to Glasnost
Author(s): Howard Schuman and Amy D. Corning
Source: American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 105, No. 4
(Jan., 2000), pp. 913-956
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3003885

A New Look at the Soviet "New Look"

Author(s): Bertram D. Wolfe
Source: Foreign Affairs, Vol. 33, No. 2 (Jan., 1955), pp.
184-198
Published by: Council on Foreign Relations
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20031088

Rehabilitation in the Post-Stalinist Soviet Union

Author(s): Samuel A. Oppenheim Source: The Western

Political Quarterly, Vol. 20, No. 1 (Mar., 1967), pp. 97115 Published by: on behalf of the University of Utah
Western Political Science Association Stable URL:
http://www.jstor.org/stable/444804

Soviet Nationality Policy

Author(s): H. Seton-Watson
Source: Russian Review, Vol. 15, No. 1 (Jan., 1956), pp.
3-13
Published by: Wiley on behalf of The Editors and Board
of Trustees of the Russian Review
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/125778

The Moscow Trials: A Legal View

Author(s): Max Radin
Source: Foreign Affairs, Vol. 16, No. 1 (Oct., 1937), pp.
64-79
Published by: Council on Foreign Relations
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20028828

Understanding Stalinism: A Reply

Author(s): Stephen G. Wheatcroft
Source: Europe-Asia Studies, Vol. 58, No. 7 (Nov., 2006),
pp. 1141-1147
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20451292
Books

Suny, Ronald, The Cambridge History of Russia, Vol. III, (2006),

Cambridge University Press: London

Goldman, Wendy, Inventing the Enemy: Denunciation

and Terror in Stalins Russia, (2011), Cambridge
University Press,

Thurston, Robert, Life and Terror in Stalins Russia, (1996), Yale

University Press: London

Geyer, Michael, and Fitzpatrick, Sheila, Beyond Totalitarianism:

Stalinism and Nazism compared, (2009), Cambridge University Press:
New York

Getty, J, The Road to Terror, (1999), Yale University Press: London