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. Although Stalin invented the charges Tukhachevsky was tried for, he did not altogether false identify him as opposition to him. 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. Stalin thought that he would have been risking his authority had he not taken action.
             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. This is a reasonable threat since it was for the intellectuals like Stalin and the...