The Great Purge stories thread

>Soviets almost accidentally killed a beloved war hero

Makes sense.

we don't know that anyone else did though
maybe Stalin just wanted to see if someone would stand up to him, ever think of that?

According to Court of the Red Tsar

Stalin was in constant tooth pain during his life, and they called in a new (jewish) dentist to treat him who had been educated in the West. The dentist was able to alleviate the pain, and in thanks stalin said he would give the dentist anything as a reward. The dentist said he wanted his wife released from a Gulag, and Stalin was true to his word.

Some thorn in the lions paw shit there

Not really Bukharin tried it over and over and it just made Stalin more sexually aroused.

Yeah, exactly. That's the fucking point. They're dead, so you can't go around claiming it worked "litearlly 100% of cases where it was tried."

It was probably "Score-settling", which was a big part of the purge. Stalin didn't approve THAT many executions personally, and as a result a lot of middle management would implicate rivals/grudges and see them arrested.

Budyonny probably pissed someone off at one point and that person organized his arrest. When Stalin got wind of it he remembered all those nights of jolly drinking he had with Budyonny and called it off

Just like my animes

...

Budyonny was war hero and Beria was exceptionally good as his job (terrorize the shit out of anybody except Stalin and his whitelist)

alpha as fuck

> Nestor Lakoba was survived by his wife, Sariya, who came from a wealthy Adjarian noble family, and their son.[11] She was arrested soon after his death and imprisoned in Tbilisi. The NKVD took her away every evening, beat her severely in order to have her sign a statement on "How Lakoba sold Abkhazia to Turkey", and dragged her back to her cell, bloody and unconscious, in the morning. Her reply each time was "I will not defame the memory of my husband". Their son Rauf, aged 14, was arrested, brought to the jail where his mother was held, threatened with death if she did not testify, and beaten in front of her. His wife's repeated refusal to confess angered the NKVD agents and she finally died in her cell after a night of torture.[14][15]

> Rauf Lakoba was sent to a labor camp for children whose parents had been convicted of political crimes. He and two friends there wrote to Beria asking to be sent home and continue with school. Beria summoned them and had them taken to the courtyard of an NKVD jail in Tbilisi, where they were shot, having been accused of taking part in a "counterrevolutionary group" engaged in "systematic agitation aimed at discrediting measures taken by the party and government"

>Beria summoned them and had them taken to the courtyard of an NKVD jail in Tbilisi, where they were shot

Bullshit. Beria at least would've raped them first

>In April 1934 Osip Mandelstam recited his "Stalin Epigram" to Pasternak. After listening, Pasternak told Mandelstam: "I didn't hear this, you didn't recite it to me, because, you know, very strange and terrible things are happening now: they've begun to pick people up. I'm afraid the walls have ears and perhaps even these benches on the boulevard here may be able to listen and tell tales. So let's make out that I heard nothing."

>On the night of 14 May 1934, Mandelstam was arrested at his home based on a warrant signed by NKVD boss Genrikh Yagoda. Devastated, Pasternak went immediately to the offices of Izvestia and begged Nikolai Bukharin to intercede on Mandelstam's behalf. Soon after his meeting with Bukharin, the telephone rang in Pasternak's Moscow apartment. A voice from The Kremlin said, "Comrade Stalin wishes to speak with you."

>According to Ivinskaya, Pasternak was struck dumb. "He was totally unprepared for such a conversation. But then he heard his voice, the voice of Stalin, coming over the line. The Leader addressed him in a rather bluff uncouth fashion, using the familiar thou form: 'Tell me, what are they saying in your literary circles about the arrest of Mandelstam?'" Flustered, Pasternak denied that there was any discussion or that there were any literary circles left in Soviet Russia. Stalin went on to ask him for his own opinion of Mandelstam. In an "eager fumbling manner" Pasternak explained that he and Mandelstam each had a completely different philosophy about poetry.

>Stalin finally said, in a mocking tone of voice: "I see, you just aren't able to stick up for a comrade," and put down the receiver.

>Four months later, Mandelstam was sentenced to five years in correction camps. He arrived at the Vtoraya Rechka transit camp near Vladivostok in Russia's Far East and managed to get a note out to his wife asking for warm clothes; he never received them. He died from cold and hunger.

>According to Pasternak, during the 1937 show trial of General Iona Yakir and Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky, the Union of Soviet Writers requested all members to add their names to a statement supporting the death penalty for the defendants. They demanded Pasternak's signature as well, but he refused to give it. Vladimir Stavski, the chairman of the Union, was terrified that he would be punished for Pasternak's dissent. The leadership of the Union travelled to Pasternak's dacha at Peredelkino and severely threatened the writer, who refused to sign the statement and returned to his dacha. Hearing this, Zinaida Pasternak, who was pregnant, was terribly upset, accusing him of risking the destruction of their family. Pasternak went to bed. He and Zinaida expected to be arrested that evening. They later learned that an NKVD agent was hiding in the bushes outside their window and wrote down every word they said to each other.

>Soon after, Pasternak appealed directly to Stalin. He wrote about his family's strong Tolstoyan convictions, which he still held dear. He declared that his own life was at the Leader's disposal. He said that he could not stand as a self-appointed judge of life and death. Pasternak was certain that he would be instantly arrested, but he was not. Stalin is said to have crossed Pasternak's name off an execution list during the Great Purge. According to Pasternak, Stalin declared, "Do not touch this cloud dweller" (or, in another version, "Leave that holy fool alone!")

>According to the Ukrainian government
I'm not familiar with where they got their doctorate.

>He and two friends
>taking part in a "counterrevolutionary group"

>wrote to Beria asking [to be removed from] a labor camp for children whose parents had been convicted of political crimes
>engaged in "systematic agitation aimed at discrediting measures taken by the party and government"

The charges seem to be proved.

>t.Sebag Montefiore
>t.Orlando Figes
>t.bristish historians
>t.Khrushchev memoirs
Nice anecdotal fanfiction right here

Thing is Stalin didn't order Jagoda to kill supposed perpetrators of Kirov's death. The chief of NKWD himself turned into bloodthirsty maniac just to show Stalin how loyal he is. No wonder why Stalin get alibi to get rid of psycho leading internal services.

based Beria

The “virgin comply” vs the “chad hostage phone call”

>Bullshit. Beria at least would've raped them first
I thought Beria only raped little girls.

Jewish slander, Beria liked his rape victims of age

Whenever I meet a "Marxist" my initial thought is, "Is this the final horror you've decided to yoke your mind to, or will you someday manage to find a worse one?"

>/leftypol/ is defending this

Show me pics or some proofs br

ur fuken epic :O

This. Just yesterday Bill Gates' death squad came into my house, raped my daughter and then smashed my left hand with a hammer because I refused to upgrade to Windows 10

If you were from the Philippines or Thailand similar things could happen to your family.
Capitalism is about Labour division. You still can rape children if you can afford it.

>personal liberty
lol
Go to Haiti or Indonesia in the 1960s. Really great for personal liberty.

>ywn be this chad

>killing rich people is wrong
fuck off m8

>go to Indonesia in the 1960s
How?

Just mindlessly naming counties isn't a source mate.

>Guatamala!

Half the time the purge wasn’t even some masterplan, but frustated mid level comissars dishing out their enemies

That was only the first stage of the purges. After the middle management had killed all their enemies, the top management killed the rest of the middle management, and then Stalin had the top management killed as well.

Random regular people were killed throughout, of course.

bump

>Capitalism is about Labour division. You still can rape children if you can afford it.
Or you can be a protected group. like muslims in the UK or jews in the US

Neh. This is an inadequate summary of Fitzpatrick.

> Well acquainted with the typical Stalinist bureaucratic precursors to eventual dismissal and arrest, Yezhov recognized Beria's increasing influence with Stalin as a sign that his downfall was imminent; and he plunged headlong into alcoholism and despair. Already a heavy drinker, in the last weeks of his service, he reportedly was disconsolate, slovenly, and drunk nearly all of his waking hours, rarely bothering to show up to work. As anticipated, Stalin and Vyacheslav Molotov, in a report dated November 11, sharply criticised the work and methods of the NKVD during Yezhov's tenure as chief, thus creating the bureaucratic pretense necessary to remove him from power.

> On November 14, another of Yezhov’s protégés, the Ukrainian NKVD chief Alexander Ivanovich Uspensky, disappeared after being warned by Yezhov that he was in trouble. Stalin suspected that Yezhov was involved in the disappearance, and told Beria, not Yezhov, that Uspensky must be caught (he was arrested on April 14, 1939).[21] Yezhov had told his wife Yevgenia on September 18 that he wanted a divorce, and she had begun writing increasingly despairing letters to Stalin, none of which were answered.[22] She was particularly vulnerable because of her many lovers, and people close to her were being arrested for months. On November 19, 1938, Yevgenia committed suicide by taking an overdose of sleeping pills

>when his sixteen-year-old daughter was brought into the room and raped in front of him.

I have a weird fetish for this when it's from Soviets

> I want the video link for research purposes

>telling Beria who Beria can and can't rape

That's a rapin'

>he reportedly was disconsolate, slovenly, and drunk nearly all of his waking hours, rarely bothering to show up to work

How did they know it was abnormal, it describes the average Russian male pretty well

Now thats badass.

Exactly my thought.

he was brave but brainlet

Even if we were to go to the trouble to explain the actualities of the sources you're criticising, you'd just vault over it and say 'well that's their (wrong) opinion'.

Has it ever occured that a reasonably trustworthy source might be the man who was a fucking leader of the USSR and knew Stalin personally?

pic related

>hey Stalin if you kill me then i've win

>a labor camp for children
wtf was wrong with the soviet union

Communism.

Communists need to be pre-emptively killed before they can do this shit.

During WW2 6 million jews lost their lives. The Nazis put 12 million into gas chambers before the end. Never forget the 60 million Jewish souls that were lost.

...

> The second account comes from Frinovsky's confession, obtained before his execution, in which he claims Yezhov ordered him to "remove Slutsky without noise." Accordingly, Frinovsky invited Slutsky to his office for a conference, and while they were talking another deputy slipped into the room and covered Slutsky's nose with a chloroform mask. Once Slutsky passed out, a second deputy, who was hiding in an adjacent office, entered the room and "injected poison into the muscle of his right arm." Frinovsky summoned a doctor who confirmed that Slutsky had died of a heart attack. None of the witnesses to this crime survived the Great Purge.

>> On November 14, another of Yezhov’s protégés, the Ukrainian NKVD chief Alexander Ivanovich Uspensky, disappeared after being warned by Yezhov that he was in trouble. Stalin suspected that Yezhov was involved in the disappearance, and told Beria, not Yezhov, that Uspensky must be caught (he was arrested on April 14, 1939).
Yezhov getting BTFO over and over both intentionally and purposely by his own lackeys is the funniest part of the Purges

The most fucked up part of the purges (to me) is just how fucking indiscriminate they were.

Like, the Nazis at least (mostly) had a logical process for murdering people; gypsy/jew/commie etc.

The Bolsheviks were just murdering each other for anything and everything. Like one day you're a high level Party dude in Minsk and the next day your family is being tortured in front of you

i dont understand the manic need to have personal signatures couldnt they just forge it and send the person packing east the way they did anyway

Communism or Capitalism doesn't matter here, those are just russians method

Not unique to communism.

bump

I don't understand how the party functionaries lived during Stalin. The constant need to fear for one's life and for the lives of one's friends. The constant possibility of being targeted without an apparrent reason. What kind of a life is that? Why and how did that even happen?

Example: Southamerica
>women were always brutally raped; sometimes using trained dogs; or placing hungry rats inside them

Part of it was that mass arrests were mandated. At least some cities had arrest quotas that had to be exceeded every month or you vanished.
In the military at least people got in that situation automatically. The constant arrests meant that random lieutenants might be given whole divisions overnight, at which point they could reasonably expect to be Siberia'd too. Really, any position above sergeant was pretty risky.

Far from it

So why did the purges stop around 1948-1949?

>1948-1949
what the fuck are you talking about? the great putge "stopped" by early 1939 when Beria took over the NKVD, there was other smaller purges in late 1940s and early 1950s (Leningrad affair, doctors plot)

Beria was a fucking psycho

you know that Beria killed Lakoba by poisoning him during a dinner? Lakoba didn't even want to dinner with him because they had a history of despising each other, Beria made his wife phone Lakoba to tell him she made a dinner for him, so Lakoba went

Terror isn't as terrifying if it isn't indiscriminate, if there are clear rules you know that you can follow, you might spend your time thinking about other things (like why do we keep this Stalin guy around)

these are politburo members: the highest office you can get in the soviet union:

Kaganovih's brother was purged
Molotov's wife was purged
Ordzhonikidze's brother was purged and he commited suiced later
Kalinin's wife was purged

3 out of 5 marshals were purged

almost 2/3 of the central commitee were purged
the NKVD itself was purged
No one was above the purge, literally noone except Stalin

Interesting, but why did talented intelligent people like Poskrebyshev want to rise in the ranks of an institution where you might be randomly whacked for no reason?

At least for the show trials, you need to make it so the person submits to you beforehand. If you just forged the signature they'd go in court and deny signing anything. Granted a few signed the confessions under duress, and then redacted them in court, but by the next day they were "persuaded" to confess to being guilty again.

There you go, 2 our of 5 of the marshals weren't purged, and 1/3 of the central committee wasn't purged. It might've been indiscriminate but it doesn't stop ambitious people from trying to 'play it' for their own benefit, whether to stay or alive, or for power, or both.

As for Poskrebyshev and others, I really can't say. I don't know enough about all of them personally. What he could he have done, resigned? Could that be construed as suspicious? Probably, resigning and trying to get away from it could be just as dangerous as keeping power

Its not like there was an alternative institution to rise up in.

>not even flaying them alive first
Beria was some weak shit

Get the fuck off of my board you tankie piece of shit. Go post somewhere about how DPRK is secretly a paradise. In fact, just fucking move there andf let me know how it is with the internet they're allowed to have there.
Or just eat a bullet, removing yourself from the voting and gene pool simultaneously.
t. Berniebot turned Tankie.

> On May 15, 1939, Antonina Pirozhkova was awakened by four NKVD agents pounding upon the door of their Moscow apartment. Although surprised, she agreed to accompany them to Babel's dacha in Peredelkino. Babel was then placed under arrest. According to Pirozhkova: "In the car, one of the men sat in back with Babel and me while the other one sat in front with the driver. 'The worst part of this is that my mother won't be getting my letters', and then he was silent for a long time. I could not say a single word. Babel asked the secret policeman sitting next to him, 'So I guess you don't get too much sleep, do you?' And he even laughed. As we approached Moscow, I said to Babel, 'I'll be waiting for you, it will be as if you've gone to Odessa... only there won't be any letters....' He answered, 'I ask you to see that the child not be made miserable.' "But I don't know what my destiny will be." At this point, the man sitting beside Babel said to me, "We have no claims whatsoever against you." We drove to the Lubyanka Prison and through the gates. The car stopped before the massive, closed door where two sentries stood guard. Babel kissed me hard and said, "Someday we'll see each other..." And without looking back, he got out of the car and went through that door