Abstract
The Great Purges that swept the USSR in 1936-8 fundamentally transformed the Stalinist regime. The causes, mechanisms and consequences of this upheaval still remain imperfectly understood. Here we shall seek to elucidate some aspects of the purge process as they impinged on centre-local relations in the USSR. We shall look briefly at the way in which the purge was conducted and then focus on the XVIII party congress of 1939. This provides a comparison with our study of the XVII party congress in 1934 (Chapter 3). In neither congress can it be said that any real debate occurred on substantive policy matters. However, by examining the statements of delegates we can get some indication of the impact which the terror had on centre-local relations, and on the extent to which terror inhibited the expression of critical opinion. We can also get a better picture of what were the enduring features of centre-local relations in the Stalin era, and the way in which these relations were influenced by the regime’s growing reliance on repression and terror.
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Notes
J. Arch Getty and O.V. Naumov, The Road to Terror: Stalin and the Self-Destruction of the Bolsheviks, 1932-1939 (New Haven, London, 1999), p. 316.
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© 2002 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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Rees, E.A. (2002). The Great Purges and the XVIII Party Congress of 1939. In: Rees, E.A. (eds) Centre-Local Relations in the Stalinist State, 1928–1941. Studies in Russian and East European History and Society. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403932822_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403932822_9
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