Did Nikita Khrushchev Survive Stalin's Purges of the Mid-1930 because Stalin Liked Khrushchev's Level of Brutality - Coursework Example

 Did Nikita Khrushchev Survive Stalin's Purges of the Mid-1930 because Stalin Liked Khrushchev's Level of Brutality? Plan of Investigation Method: My article will closely study the fascinating dual personality of Nikita Khrushchev, while focussing on the brutal aspect seen in him as seen during the great purges and his denouncing Stalin after the death of the dictator. This study will involve examining recent researches and old data from various books, scholarly articles, and other relevant information from various websites, that speak of Khrushchev’s role during the purges and his reformed nature after Stalin’s death. Scope: In Section B, I will begin by outlining the dual nature of Nikita Khrushchev that at one hand makes him a mass murderer, and on the other hand a reformist with progressive ideas. This will include the following main events in the life of Khrushchev: Khrushchev’s actions & behaviour in the mid-1930s: My article will trace the actions of Khrushchev’s as the head of the Moscow’s and later Ukraine’s communist politburo during the mid thirties, and will take a look at his role in assisting Stalin during the great purges during this time. It will use the sources collected to find out the exact nature of the actions/policies adopted by Khrushchev to uphold Stalin’s orders. It will also take a look at how Khrushchev killed Kulaks, ethnic minorities, and his and Stalin’s political opponents (ex. Deportation, public trials, etc) to show the brutal aspect to his nature, that Stalin liked so much. At the end it will provide the statistics of the victims killed from various reliable sources to show as how many of the leaders and party workers were exterminated during the purges. It will also take a look at the names of the various leaders, in the same position as Khrushchev who were purged, and will help us to understand why Khrushchev survived where others failed. Under this section I will also examine as to how Khrushchev maintained a good relationship with Stalin, and how this relationship helped him to survive the purges. In section C, I will examine the various sources upon which my investigation is based. Here I will concentrate on the autobiography of Nikita Khrushchev written by William Taubman in 2003. The other book is by Robert Conquest written in 1968, which takes an in-depth look at Stalin’s regime and the great purges that had taken place under him. These different perspectives would assist us to comprehend the extent of this Great Purge, both from Khrushchev’s views and also from the viewpoints of a third person, Robert Conquest. It would help us to understand as to why Khrushchev assisted Stalin at this time and would show us as to how he maintained good relationships with the dictator in order to avoid being murdered at that time. In section D I will try to analyse from the various sources used, as to: Did Khrushchev manage to survive Stalin's purges of the mid-1930s owing to the fact that the dictator liked his level of brutality? Summary of evidence Khrushchev’s role on the Great Purges of the 1930’s: This infamous purges or “The “Great Terror,” which began... in 1933...destroyed experienced party workers, who had been declared “nationalists” or “enemies of the people” (Shapoval, 16). It was also the time of the Red Army rule and increased vigilance by the secret police that kept a tab on almost all the citizens, at all times. The purge also led to widespread repression of the peasant classes; of the people who wished to stay neutral without having any political affiliations as such; on suspected "saboteurs", and even minimum suspicions on the part of the secret police led to imprisonments and executions (Figes, 2007, 227-315). Khrushchev at this time, being very close to Stalin, also took part in many of the purges aimed at his own friends and party colleagues in the Moscow oblast (Taubman, 2003, 99). Here Taubmen refers to the Moscow purges in which Khrushchev played a major role, where he tells us that, a total of 35 top Communist party leaders were killed out of the existing 38, in and around the city, while the remaining 3 leaders of the Moscow unit under Khrushchev, were shunted to other parts of the Soviet Union (Tompson, 57). Other figures that indicate purge survivors show us that, of the 146 Party Secretaries of various cities and districts outside the Moscow city, only 10 were spared, and Khrushchev whose signature was necessary to carry out these mass murders did not turn a finger to save his friends and colleagues. During the purges numerical quotas were handed out to the leaders, which dictated them to arrest a certain fixed number of people. In fact in 1937, we see that a fixed quota of 35000 of the so called ‘enemies’ were to be arrested of which a target of 5000 were set who were to be executed. In this respect, Khrushchev advocated the politburo that 2000 of the rich farmers (kulaks) from Moscow could be killed to fill up a part of the given quota of 5000. Within two weeks of getting the order Khrushchev wrote back to Stalin saying that a total of 41,305 comprising of various ‘enemies’ and other rich farmers (kulaks) have been arrested of which 5000 deserved death (Taubman, 2003, 100). Khrushchev, in 1923, himself had dallied for some time with Trotskyite (a strong opponent of Stalin), and under his mentor Kaganovich’s advice, confessed to Stalin. He was however reprieved and re-elected by the party politburo to the post of a party leader. He became a politburo member in 1938 and was given a full party membership in 1939. It was almost as if Stalin had taken a strong liking for this man, who unhesitatingly and almost eagerly, had sent most of his old friends and colleagues to their death chambers and labour camps, and had signed their death warranties without wavering even once The relationship between Stalin and Khrushchev in 1930’s An examination of various reports show that Khrushchev started attending Stalin’s meetings as early as 1932, and the two shared a warm relationship, and it has also been suggested that Stalin’s wife was quite impressed by Khrushchev, and even recommended his name to her husband (Taubman, 105–06). In fact Stalin’s wife Nadezhda Alliluyeva was his class mate and a co-party organiser at the Industrial academy which Khrushchev attended in Moscow during his tenure as the cell secretary during the thirties, and whom he referred to as his ‘lucky lottery ticket’ (Tompson, 33). So we find that at the beginning of the purges, Stalin and Khrushchev had already become close. Actions and administration of Khrushchev as the head of the Moscow and later Ukraine communist politburo during the 1930s and the policies that Khrushchev implemented and enacted: Khrushchev was given the post of the cell secretary of the politburo of Moscow in 1929, and it was here that he was entitled with the job of removing the ‘old guards’ or the senior political elders and party workers from the unit. During this time Khrushchev was busy purging this unit and “cell members were reprimanded, demoted or expelled, often on flimsy evidence” (Tompson, 32). Being a cell secretary Khrushchev was very much involved in issuing orders to remove all rightists from the group and also issuing orders pertaining to textbooks and instructing teachers to spread communism, amongst the young students. At this time Khrushchev was also tightening up labour policies which were later codified in to the labour laws of 1933, and proved to be a nightmare for all labourers. Stalin after coming to power wanted to turn Russia into an industrial power by collectivizing the peasant classes. He met with stiff resistance from the Ukrainian belt which wanted to preserve its own national identity. In retaliation he had initiated a man made famine during the 1932-33. During this time he along with Khrushchev implemented a policy that substantially increased the quota of grains e that the Ukrainian farmers had to turn over to the government. This at one blow killed almost 6-7 million Ukrainian people and broke the resistance once and for all. “Khrushchev played a very significant role in the man-maid famine in Ukraine in the period of 1930-33” (Dobriansky, 1960), owing to which he was made into a full party member in 1934. In fact here we find that Prof. Constantin Kononenko tell us that “Khrushchev cannot obliterate the historical fact that he was actually the perpetrator of the details of this man-made famine; that he, Khrushchev, was the one who carried out the basic policy of Stalin pursuant to which millions of human beings were deprived knowingly, premeditatedly, of the food which they themselves had raised. Khrushchev cannot disassociate himself from the blood and misery of this awful epoch in the history of Ukraine, in which he directly, actively, and knowingly participated as chief engineer of the policy announced by his then chief, Stalin” (Kononenko, 1960). After this ‘success’ Khrushchev was sent as the First Secretary to Ukraine in January 1938, where he carried on his killing, “In these purges he directly engaged in the murder of people like Kossior and others. Countless others met death as a result of Khrushchev's perpetration of these extensive purges” (Dobriansky, 1960). The purge in Ukraine which lasted the whole of the 1930s wiped out around 400,000 people. However this did not deter Khrushchev, who went on with his assigned work, and soon all, but one member, of the Ukrainian Communist politburo were arrested, and under Khrushchev’s leadership almost all of them were murdered (Taubman, 60, 118). While in Ukrain, as the first secretary of the Communist politburo, Khrushchev “was involved in the heinous massacre of about 9,500 Ukrainians in Vynnytsia” (Dobriansky, 1960). Again after the war Khrushchev under Stalin’s orders annihilated the “bourgeois nationalist forces in Ukraine, [and] was heavily engaged in the liquidation of many individuals and groups connected with the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). He also inflicted damages, physical and personal, upon the populace which supported contingents of this army” (Dobriansky, 1960). These mass murders which occurred only in the Russian occupied Ukraine, took place during Khrushchev’s regime after Stalin’s constitutional rule was forced here in 1937 and Khrushchev was elected as the party secretary of the Ukrainian unit in 1938. In a later investigation jointly made by the Ukrainian government and German government after the war, a total count of graves and bodied excavated were made public. Between May 1943 to October 1943, there were excavated around 9,439 bodies and 95 mass graves in just 3 of the sites investigated in the Vynnytsia areas, known in Khrushchev’s regime as the "restricted military zones," (Pavlovych, 1960). Documented reports show that the “orchards and grounds of Vynnytsia, Pidlisna St. No. 1 had 39 graves, 5,644 bodies; Orthodox Cemetery area - 42 graves, 2,405 bodies; Gorky Park and NKVD Bldg. (Park of Rest and Culture for NKVD) - 14 graves, 1,390 bodies. Totals - 95 graves, 9,439 bodies. Identified: - total 676. Peasants - 338; non-collectives - 112, clerks - 98, Specialists, Professionals - 36, teachers - 4, Military - 16. Including 169 women. Autopsies showed: 1. Burial of victims in layers, over 3-5 years intervals. 2. Some buried alive. 3. Some bound with cords. 4. Execution by small caliber pistol, medulla area” (The People Vs. Khrushchev, 1960). These actions, though ordered by Stalin, were carried out by Khrushchev, which earned him the title of ‘Butcher of Ukraine’ (Wesson, 190, 1978). It was these very records of mass murders which no other politburo leader could reach, made Khrushchev extremely popular to Stalin and helped him to survive the purge. “When Stalin was already embarked on his great purge of thousands of people. Khrushchev was on his side and was his very close collaborator and helper in that annihilation. This shows that Stalin had very great faith in Khrushchev, and the fact that in that great purge Khrushchev was not touched definitely indicates this...Even his predecessor, Postyshev, could not accomplish what Khrushchev was able to accomplish after him” (Kostiuk , 1960). Each time he needed to prove himself worthy of a promotion, he did so by brutally exterminating people, and Stalin impressed by these acts of mass murders, gave regular rewards to Khrushchev who climbed high in the political rungs in a very short span. The methods that Khrushchev used to carry out Stalin’s orders such as deportation & public trial and how dealt with Kulaks, ethnic minorities, and his and Stalin’s political opponents: Khrushchev’s declaration in 1936 shows the extent of his devotion for Stalin, “Everyone who rejoices in the successes achieved in our country, the victories of our party led by the great Stalin, will find only one word suitable for the mercenary, fascist dogs of the Trotskyite- Zinovievite gang. That word is execution” (Taubman, 98). He was one of the radicals who believed in completely removing the detractors from the party (Tompson, 53-56). Many of the detractors were sent to the Gulag labour camps. Here one survivor Mr. Prychodko recounts his days at a camp “I was in slave labor camps in Ivdel, about 600 miles northeast of Sverdlov...In the entire complex there were 350,000 slaves. In the particular camp in which I was interned, there were around 3,000 slave laborers. The rate of death was approximately 15 per day while I was there” (Prychodko, 1960). Another popular policy to exterminate leaders believed to have links (imaginary or real) to the opposition groups, were by conducting mock trials. In 1937, we find that in a mock trial, Karl Radek and 16 more leaders of the Communist Party were charged for treason. Of these 13 were sentenced to death, while Radek along with two other party members were sentenced to 10 years imprisonment. In 1938 leaders like Alexei Rykov, Christian Rakovsky, Nikolai Krestinsky, Nickolai Bukharin and Alexei Rykov, were sentenced for treason under these mock trials, and either killed or deported to extremely remote areas in the USSR or transported to labour camps. These were all high ranking leaders in the communist party and many of them occupied the same rank as that of Khrushchev. Many of these leaders were severely tortured, and false confessions were obtained after severe mental repressions, after which most were killed, and the remaining sent to the infamous Gulag labour camps (Conquest, 1968). In his secret speech Khrushchev also mentioned some of the leaders’ names murdered with orders from Stalin, “Zinoviev, Kamenev and Rykov. Stalin meted out humiliation and persecution to those officers and members of the Politburo who fell from favour [and] in 1937 and 1938, 98 out of the 139 members of the Central Committee were shot on Stalin's orders...” (BBC Home, 1956: Khrushchev lashes out at Stalin). In 1937, after Khrushchev became the general secretary of the Ukrainian committee, under his orders leaders like, “Kossior and Zatonsky were executed; Petrovsky was sent to a concentration camp” (Kostiuk, 1960). There was also large scale persecution against the kulaks who were the rich peasants of Russia. Here Robert Conquest tells us that in the Kiev jail during the period 1929-30 there were reports of shooting 70-120 men in a single night, and in a total estimate Conquest tells us that under the Stalin- Khrushchev purge regime in ukriane, “the total peasant dead as a result of the dekulakization and famine [was] about 14.5 million” (Conquest, 1986). Of this those who died in camps consisted of 3.5 million while the number of kulaks dead by 1937 was 11.5 million (Conquest, 1986). Even after the war the purge in Ukraine did not stop and “in 1944 ...Khrushchev and his subordinates started the mass deportation of the Ukrainian population which previously was under German occupation. Especially persecutions against the members of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army were begun. When he could not liquidate from the very beginning the Ukrainian liberation movement and the UPA, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, the Ukrainian population at large was very severely persecuted and, on many occasions, parts of it were murdered” (Lebed, 1960). There were also regular operations that involved ‘cleansing’ of the ethnic minorities (like the Poles, Ukrainians, Romanians, Chechens, Greeks, Latvians), after terming these people as ‘dangerous’ and ‘spies’ of Japan and Germany, and they were deported to Siberia and other parts of central Asia, where reported a 43% of the deported population died, en-route and also due to diseases and mal nutrition (Conquest, 1968). Evaluation of the two main sources Taubman, W. Khrushchev: The Man and His Era. New York: W.W. Norton & Co.2003. This book is important in the sense that it helps us to examine Khrushchev from very close quarters. It tells us in great details as to how Khrushchev became the closest aide of Stalin for 20 years, and helped him to arrest and murder thousands of party workers and communists leaders, during the great purges. He remained faithful to this dictator and idolised him till his very death, yet he was the one who broke open the facade that shielded the murderous nature of this highly eulogised dictator. This book helps us to understand Nikita Khrushchev, as a person who did what he was ordered to by Stalin in order to survive, and later dared to break out of the dictator’s spell and defy him, to lead the country towards a better future. Conquest, R. The great terror: Stalin's purge of the thirties. New York: Macmillan. 1968. This book gives us a fascinating insight into Stalin’s regime, and the great purge that had taken place under his orders. This book is extremely important in the context of this study, as it helps us to understand the extent of this purge that had killed, displaced, and tortured thousands of innocent ethnic minorities, kulaks (rich peasants), members of the communist party, leaders of the opposition, and almost anyone, whom Stalin feared would challenge his leadership. It helps us to analyse the brutal nature of the whole occurrence and gives us a staggering account of how many were killed, tortured or sent to the gulag camps. Analysis “Do you know just who I am? I started to work as soon as I began to walk. Until I was 15, tended young calves, I tended sheep and then I tended a landowner’s cattle. Then I worked at a factory...and now I am the Prime Minister of the great Soviet state” (Khrushchev-1959, cited in Tompson, 1). This very line shows us the heights that Khrushchev had attained from his very humble peasant origin. He had indeed climbed high within the political ranks by the dint of sheer hard work, and also by forging the right connections with various top political leaders, like Lazar Kaganovich (Taubman, 66-68). It was during his role as the chief of Moscow affairs (1931-38), that Khrushchev came close to Stalin, and became his trusted aide in the terrible and murderous purges of the 1930s. From the various studies made into this subject it becomes very clear that Khrushchev had been a close associate and a strong supporter of Stalin during the infamous purges of the 1930s. Khrushchev was indeed extremely brutal, and it was for this very reason that Stalin supported him, even with the knowledge that in the early days (1920s) as a young man, Khrushchev had joined the opponent group for short time period. Other leaders within the communist party, with much lesser signs of a similar ‘sin’ had been executed by the dictator. Khrushchev’s lack of sentimentality and unwavering attitude in sending his close friends and colleagues to be mercilessly executed seemed to have appealed to the dictator, and thus allowed Khrushchev to survive the purge. So it would be really difficult to say whether Khrushchev, being a shrewd person, showed the brutal side to his nature in order to save himself from sure death. That, acting as per the dictator’s orders did indeed put Khrushchev in the former’s good books and saved him from being executed, is quite evident. However, whether Khrushchev followed the orders willingly and eagerly as portrayed by the man himself or whether he had mental reservations about the whole affair is indeed a matter of surmise and conjecture, never revealed as long as Stalin was alive. This willingness to follow Stalin’s orders blindly, may also have risen initially from a feeling of deep respect that Khrushchev may have felt towards the leader who was his idol, and as Tompson tells us that Khruschev being a self made person like all self made people “he deeply believed in the system which had fostered his rise” (Tompson, 1997, 1). It may have also arisen from a sense of deep fear (though Khrushchev never acknowledged his fear) that he if did not follow the orders blindly he and his entire family would also have been exterminated by Stalin. It was only after the death of Stalin that khruschev regained his courage to denounce the dictator in the ‘secret speech’. Speaking of the purges, Khrushchev in his secret speech says “It is here that Stalin showed in a whole series of cases his intolerance, his brutality, and his abuse of power ... not only against actual enemies, but also against individuals who had not committed any crimes against the party or the Soviet Government...” (YouTube, Nikita Khrushchev’s secret speech 1956, De-Stalinization). This speech at that time led to much mixed responses, however, almost 40 years later after the fragmentation of USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev praised Khrushchev’s courage in standing up to reveal the true nature of Stalin, thus showing that Khrushchev had indeed been “a moral man after all” (Taubman, 282). Conclusion From the above studies it is clear that Khrushchev under Stalin’s directions had indeed been extremely brutal during the period of purge, sending many of his close comrades and old friends and many other innocent people to their deaths, without doing anything to save them. It was this brutal nature that attracted Stalin towards Khrushchev, making him his most trusted associate during the years of the great purge. However, here it should be also mentioned that Khrushchev did not have any other alternatives. In his youth he had made the grave mistake of siding with Stalin’s opponents for a brief time period, and if Khrushchev had even once failed to carry out Stalin’s orders, that would have amounted to signing his own death warrant. So Khrushchev’s brutality, that Stalin liked, actually saved the former’s life during the purges, could possibly be the act of an ambitious and desperate man, ready to put his moral and ethical thoughts aside, in order to save himself. Works Cited BBC Home, 1956: Khrushchev lashes out at Stalin. [Internet News Article]. Accessed at http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/february/25/newsid_2703000/2703581.stm Conquest, R. (1968). The great terror: Stalin's purge of the thirties. New York: Macmillan. Conquest, R. (1986). The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine. Chapter 16- The Death Roll, University of Alberta Press, accessed at, http://www.ditext.com/conquest/16.html Dobriansky, L., Pavlovych, P., Prychodko, N., Kononenko, C., Kostiuk, G., and Lebed, M. (1960). Crimes of Khrushchev Against the Ukrainian People. The Ukrainian Weekly, No. 179, Vol. LXVII, accessed at http://www.ukrweekly.com/old/archive/1960/1796003.shtml Figes, O.2007. The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russia. New York: Metropolitan Books. Reagan, R., Balitzer, A., and Bonetto, G. 1983.A time for choosing: the speeches of Ronald Reagan, 1961-1982. Chicago: Regnery Gateway in cooperation with Americans for the Reagan Agenda. Shapoval, I. 2000. The Ukrainian Years, 1894–1949. In “Nikita Khrushchev” by William Taubman, Sergei Khrushchev, and Abbott Gleason, Translated by David Gehrenbeck, Eileen Kane, and Alla Bashenko. London: The Yale University Press. Taubman, W. 2003. Khrushchev: The Man and His Era. New York: W.W. Norton & Co. The People Vs. Khrushchev, 1960. The Ukrainian Weekly, No. 179, Vol. LXVII, Accessed at http://www.ukrweekly.com/old/archive/1960/1796002.shtml Tompson, W.1997. Khrushchev: A Political Life. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Wesson, R. 1978. Lenin's legacy: the story of the CPSU. California: Hoover Press. Video Source YouTube, Nikita Khrushchev’s secret speech 1956, De-Stalinization. 2nd August 2010. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSLLoBMISrE&feature=related Read More