Stalin
It is true that single party states need enemies, but it is a whole other issue as to if they "invent" these enemies just because they are needed. Stalin possibly purged 20 million people in the USSR between 1924 and 1939, but these people were not simply created out of nowhere. Stalin carefully chose the people that he purged; they were all his potential, if not actual, enemies. To legitimize his party, and to keep his firm grasp on the power he had over the USSR, he had to get rid of any opposition possible. Therefore it seemed necessary that Stalin purge anyone with the slightest chance of threatening him, including political and military leaders, people with education, most of the Communist Party members, the White Russians, the Kulaks, and anyone who had anything to say against Stalin. Political and military leaders, such as Marshal Tukhachevsky, Bukharin, Kinoviev, and Kamenev, seemed to pose a real threat to Stalin, since they all exerted some influence over how the USSR was to be run. Marshal Tukhachevsky, who was the Commander-in-Chief of the Red Army, was tried and shot in June 1937. He was not an "invented" enemy of the state, since Tukhachevsky had some military power in which he could use against Stalin. Althoug
Stalin thought that he would have been risking his authority had he not taken action. h Stalin invented the charges Tukhachevsky was tried for, he did not altogether false identify him as opposition to him. The Kulaks were rich peasants, who resisted collectivization and policies that Stalin proposed because they wanted to keep their land and money. Since these nationalities either did not care for him or disliked him for his suspicion of them, and Stalin wanted to prevent any challenges, they were seen as real enemies to the Stalinist USSR. The intellectuals were certainly purged because they were the people who would have been the first to spring to action in a coalition against Stalin. These people were either sent to labor camps, or sent out to the West, being accused of collaboration with the Germans, and many died. The same conditions applied to both situations, and these people were seen as real dangers. It should be understood that Stalin killed those people with a reason in mind, however paranoid and unrealistic they are to historians now, that he needed to protect himself and communism from threatening opposition forces. As Stalin said, "All who are dangerous to the cause of revolution must be eliminated", and he truly felt that the people he purged were probable risks that were bound to lead to his loss of power if he did not deal with them. As seen above, Stalin was not creating enemies and scapegoats because his single party state needed them, but because he sincerely felt intimidated by the opposition he saw around him. For example, in 1932, Ryutin and other lesser Bolsheiks planned to overthrow Stalin. As for Bukharin, Kinoviev, and Kamenev, these men were prominent leaders who were of senior ranks in the party, and also old-timers, who could possibly point out that what Stalin claimed to be "Leninist" ideas and policies were unfounded and untrue. As for the rest of the people, people such as the minorities, Stalin saw these people as whole groups of people, preparing to get together to revolt against him at any point in time. The Whites were anti-communist and this presented a problem in Stalin's communist Russia, since they would persist in working for an overthrow of Stalin and his regime. By eliminating these Communist Party members, he could replace them with people who were loyal and owed their positions to Stalin, thereby ensuring that he would receive no opposition from those new members, although Stalin became suspicious of these members occasionally too.
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Acceptance Essays
