398. Stalin: The Great Terror (Part 4)

Empire: World History

This episode examines the escalation of Stalin's Great Terror following the 1934 assassination of Sergei Kirov. It details how Stalin utiliz

Key takeaways

• The murder of Sergei Kirov provided the pretext for Stalin to launch widespread purges.
• Prosecutor Vyshynski utilized torture and forced confessions to secure convictions in the 'Trial of the 16, 17, and 21'.

Main topics

• The Great Terror
• Show Trials

Notable quotes

Give me the man and I will find the crime.

Conclusion

A chilling study of how extreme paranoia and political micromanagement

Transcript preview

Speaker 5 (0:00) This episode is brought to you by our friend Plaud, the world's number one AI note-taker brand. Now, when it comes to research, we all have our own methods, sitting for hours in the archive, reading the secondary works, capturing every detail, grilling top scholars. But often we have to lose material in order to remain engaged when doing an interview. We've all been there, sitting there with our notes, missing half the vital bits of conversation, and that no longer needed. happen ever again. Because now you just put Plaud on your collar and bingo, it records everything you say and transcribes it into sensible action points that you can refer to afterwards. I only picked up Plaud a few weeks ago and already it's changing the way that I work. With OnePress, the device transcribes those real conversations and turns them into clear actions. It Speaker 4 (0:53) also has a brilliant feature called Ask Speaker 5 (0:54) Plaud. which calls up details of hazy, long-gone conversations in seconds. Empire listeners can go to uk.plaud.ai forward slash empire. That's uk.plaud.ai forward slash empire and use the promo code empire to get 10 % off any Plaud device. Speaker 1 (1:25) From a murder in Leningrad in 1934 to the ruins of Stalingrad nine years later, this is the story of how Stalin turned terror into the central weapon of his rule. Sergei Kirov was a popular party boss and he was a possible rival to Stalin. Within months, he was shot dead in circumstances that were never properly investigated. Did Stalin order the killing or did he exploit it to unleash what we now know as the Great Terror? And after purging his army and ignoring repeated warnings of a German invasion, how did he use that same machinery of fear to stop the Soviet Union from collapsing? Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnand. Speaker 5 (2:09) And me, William Durable. Speaker 1 (2:11) Now, in this episode, we are going to be talking a little less about who Stalin was and a little more about what... he actually did with all of the power that he spent 30 years accumulating. Speaker 5 (2:24) It's a grim and dark episode. Now, in the last episode, which was also fairly grim and fairly dark, we left Trotsky dead in August 1940 with an ice pick in the back of his head. Oh, Speaker 1 (2:39) didn't we say it was an ice axe? Didn't we have this huge in-depth conversation? It is, in fact, an ice axe. Speaker 5 (2:45) Now, today we're going to lay the groundwork for Stalin's extraordinary rise to the top. But we may have to go back a little in time to sow the seeds of the story with yet another gruesome murder, which is how we like to roll on this particular pod. We are joined once again by our gruesome friend, Giles Milton. Joining Speaker 3 (3:09) us from Love from Burgundy. There's Speaker 5 (3:12) a Speaker 3 (3:12) build up, Giles. I've never been introduced like that before. Thanks, Willie. Speaker 2 (3:16) Can Speaker 1 (3:17) I say the fragrant and charming Giles Milton. Giles, most importantly, I mean, those of you who've been following the series has been our wonderful guide and he is the author of The Stalin Affair, The Impossible Alliance That Won the War. Can we start by just doing a pen sketch of Sergei Kirov and just how important Kirov was to the Bolshevik machine? Speaker 3 (3:37) He was an old fellow revolutionary, a great friend of Stalin. He'd been a supporter of the Bolsheviks from the very beginning, really. And it became apparent as Stalin was tightening his grasp on power that there was one potential rival, and that was Sergei Kirov. And I think that Stalin realized that Kirov represented a very real danger to his grip on power. and that it would be much easier to dispose of him, get rid of him. And so, as you said, he was to be murdered. The great mystery is, was Stalin actively implicated in his murder, or did other people see the way the wind was blowing and decided to take it into their own hands? We just don't know. It's a mystery that's gone on ever since it took place. And we don't know, but the consequences were to prove remarkable, grim and gruesome because this would unleash the great terror. Speaker 1 (4:31) Yeah, I mean, just before we get into the mechanisms of the murder as well, we should say that, you know, Stalin is a paranoid nut by this point. And Kirov is, you know, he's a better looking man. He's a more charismatic man. He speaks better. You like your men with the swept back hair. Speaker 5 (4:49) That's a 1913 sort of. Speaker 5 (4:54) tsunami of... You Speaker 1 (4:55) know, it's not a high bar, but I mean, is it true? There's that kind of pettiness that Stalin was worried about, you know, that he is better looking, he's more charismatic. I mean, you know, there is, if he's still here, because he never says he wants the job. You've Speaker 5 (5:09) got to choose your favourite Stalin pin-up. You thought that Stalin was a looker last Speaker 3 (5:15) time, but now you're going off with his rival. One needs a bit of paranoia. Speaker 1 (5:18) Young Stalin, young Stalin. Speaker 3 (5:20) He represented a threat, to Stalin, that's for sure. He was extremely popular. And I think one thing that's absolutely fascinating about the launch of the Great Terror is that Stalin had watched in fascination the Reichstag fire, which had happened just a few months earlier. Many people will remember that the Reichstag in Berlin was set on fire. A communist named Marinus van der Lubbe was arrested and all the blame was piled onto him. and the communists. And Hitler used this to ban freedom of speech, to ban all the civil liberties, and to really take control of Germany at that point. And I think Stalin, it was in fact one of Stalin's closest comrades, Anastas Mikhailov. His son actually said that Stalin had watched the Reichstag fire with the greatest interest. In what sense? Charles, I mean, it seemed he wasn't television coverage of this. He was following it on the newsreels, following it in the newspapers, and clearly thought this idea of hoaxing a conspiracy is a brilliant way to seize power, to seize even more power. We'll never know if this was the case, but it was certainly, you know, we have it on pretty good authority from someone in Stalin's inner circle that he saw the Reichstag fire as a model that he could use. to really secure his total grip on power in the Soviet Union. Charles, Speaker 5 (6:42) what was the method of the shooting? What was the circumstances? Was he sort of followed home and shot? What was the... method used? Speaker 3 (6:49) It's very, very murky. He was shot by a failed junior functionary in the Bolshevik party named Leonid Nikolayev, who burst into his office or in the corridors outside his office and shot him in the neck. And Leonid was immediately pronounced guilty and was executed. But there are numerous accounts that suggest otherwise. We just don't know. But what we do know is that everyone who was in Kirov's circle ended up dying in very mysterious circumstances very shortly afterwards. Including even the kind of van drivers, Speaker 5 (7:24) apparently. These Speaker 1 (7:25) are the people who transported Nikolaev. So the reason we can't know whether Nikolaev received direct orders from Stalin is the van drivers were arrested and mysteriously died in odd circumstances. Anyone who chatted to him as he was... being transported. There's this whole sort of chain reaction of death. So anyone who saw even Nikolaev is erased from the copybook. So that's why we don't know. We don't know whether it's a direct order or not. And Speaker 5 (7:51) is this read, Giles, at the time as the beginning of a purge? Does everyone know what's going on or is it successfully covered up? No, Speaker 3 (8:00) at the time, no one knew what was coming. But clearly, from Stalin's point of view, this was the ideal moment to purge all those who had supported Trotsky, of course, all those who were criticizing his management of the Soviet Union, which, of course, was causing absolute chaos, starvation in the countryside, the collectivization, the liquidation of the kulaks, the rich peasants. This was causing total economic catastrophe in the Soviet Union. And Stalin had plenty of critics. And I think he saw this death of Kirov as the ideal opportunity to pounce and to round up and execute anyone who might criticise him or stand in the way of his rule. And Speaker 1 (8:47) he starts with big names. I mean, it's not that, you know, he sort of starts small and works his way up. I mean, he goes straight for Grigory Zinoviev, who was one of Lenin's closest allies and one of the most powerful figures. in the Bolshevik party after the 1917 revolution. And Lev Kamenev, who, you know, again, another sort of stalwart, one of the fathers of the revolution. Can you tell us, I mean, what happened? How were they rounded up and how were they put on trial, these show trials that started? Speaker 3 (9:16) Yes, just to give the context, there are going to be three major show trials. One is called Trial of the 16. The next one is called the Trial of the 17. And then there's a Trial of the 21. And these are key people, key old bulls. figures who've really been with Stalin from the very beginning. They were the ones that spearheaded the revolution. But beyond that, of course, the terror is going to spread massively right across the Soviet Union and is going to implicate and, in fact, end in the deaths of perhaps up to 1.2 million people are going to be killed in the terror. But you're right to say the trial of the 16, the first trial of Zinoviev and Kamenev, these were two of the great supporters of the revolution. They could not be closer to the centre of power. And you've got to remember what's... Remarkable about these trials. Not only is Stalin rounding up some of his closest friends, you know, and supporters, but these people all live within the compound of the Kremlin. So, you know, they are maybe a few hundred meters from Stalin's where Stalin lives. And he's now arresting them. And they're going to be charged principally with the murder of Kirov. They're going to be charged with planned assassination of Stalin and