070308 SE Seminar (2012W)

The seminar deals with that period in Soviet history when mass-repression was at its highest, in the years 1936-38. Various theories and arguments have been offered to “explain” why Stalin and his Politburo unleashed several campaigns of arrest against different groups in the population in what unique in modern history: the state terror was conducted in peacetime and thus targeted native citizens and not those on conquered territory. In presenting the latest insights into the Terror, it will be shown that the waves of repression were part of a complex phenomenon. Firstly, Stalin eliminated leading cadres in ministries, local government, the Party, the Red Army and the secret police NKVD. Secondly, “traditional enemies” were, once again, victims: clergy, religious believers, members of the old upper and middle classes and ex-officials of the Tsarist regime. Thirdly, groups down the social scale held to be notoriously hostile to “Soviet power” were arrested: peasants, criminals and other social outcasts. Fourthly, ethnic groups often subject to periodic repression in the past were decimated, notably Poles, Germans and Latvians.
The seminar will also address the reasons for the mass-arrests: Was the international situation in 1937 decisive? Was the Terror an attempt to rid Soviet society of persons seen as not being “part of the State of workers and peasants”? To what degree can Stalin’s personality and that of his closest colleagues contribute to our understanding of the reasons for the mass violence on the part of the State? And finally, how and why did Stalin’s Politburo scale down the repression in November 1938