1.What is the significance of Kirov's murder? (This is what I went over in class.)
The significance of Kirov's murder has nothing to do with the actual murder, but the purges that soon came after. Kirov's murder made an opening for Stalin to get rid of the communist party members that he didn't trust. The purges were almost like a cleansing of the members for Stalin.
2. According to Stalin, who had Nikolayev been working for when he assassinated Kirov? Why is this significant?
According to Stalin Nikolayev had been working for a "Leningrad Opposition Center" when Kirov was assassinated, the opposition center supposidly had connections with the old Left Opposition like Trotsky. This is significant because after Stalin had said Nikolayev was told by this "Leningrad Opposition Center" he was able to question and make others question whether other party members were loyal. Since Nikolayev was able to kill Kirov it shows that the "opposition" could possibly be planning to have some sort of revolution, and since Nikolayev had specific information of Kirov, like his movements in the office, it shows that there could be men or party members that gave him that information so there were basically spies in the communist party. Due to Stalin thinking that there were "spies" it led him to get rid of them by convicting them, which basically was the Purges. The overall significance of the people Nikolayev had been working with is basically that Stalin now had a reason to kill members of the party.
3. What is a Trotskyite?
A Trotskyite is someone who is a counter-revolutionary, which is also what this group of people were called. Trotskyites were people who were for Trotsky's ideas and wanted to impliment them in the USSR, since Trotsky was in Norway they had to do it without them. They were also greatly against Stalin and the Bolsheviks.
4. There are three major "show trials." List them and a brief description of their significance.
a. The Trial of the Sixteen. Zinoviev, Kamenev, and fourteen others were trialed because they were accused of being involved in a conspiracy to overthrough the government organised by Trotsky. The significance is that all of the accused confessed to everything that they were accused of without any resistance, and only one was not found guilty. This shows that there might be something fishy going on because why would all of the accused confess to what was accused of them. Maybe they were forced to confess to these false accusations because they were tortured or were just trying to prove their loyalty to Stalin.
b. Another show trial is the "Trial of the Seventeen," where the accused were said to be working with Trotsky, setting up terrorist groups, and destroying industry. All of the supposid "criminals" were found guilty and were shot.
c. The third show trial was the "Trial of the Twenty-one," where Bukharin, Rykov, and nineteen alll confessed to being members of Trotskyist-Rightist bloc. They were accused of wrecking industry and helping foreign spies as well, but all were foud guilty and shot. There were no fights for innocence from the accused.
All thse show trials shows that they "Criminals" could have been forced to confess to these strange crimes and they had absurd confessions. This shows that the accused could have been tortured or told that they wouldn't be executed if they confessed, while others confessed to try to show last minute loyalty to Stalin. However, these acts of loyalty and confessions made thinking they wouldn't get shot turned out badly because they were found guilty and shot. It shows that there might've been some deeper meaning behind these trials because they didn't really make any sense with the absurd confessions and the amount of peeople being accused.
5. During the Great Terror, there were three stages to the purges, starting with members of the Communist party. What were the next two stages and what type of people were purged?
The second stage were purges against generals and marshalls in the Red Army, and then individual people were purged. For example, the most famous Russian marshal was Marshal Tuchachevsky and he was arrested and shot along with many other Red Army generals. By the end of 1939 all of the admirals, three of five Red Army Marshals, and about half the officers of hte armed forces were executed because they were accused of helping foreign spies. Also, citizens were purged because anyone, including children, were told to denounce anybody who criticized Stalin to the NKVD where they would be trialed and most likely shot, this led to about everyone trying to denounce everyone so they could take revenge on someone they didn't like and so that they wouldn't get denounced themselves.
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