Union of Soviet Socialist Republics: Conservatism and Purges

The mid-1930s saw a conservative trend in official attitudes toward culture: family life was emphasized again, and divorces and abortions were made difficult to obtain; great men and events in pre-1917 Russian history were extolled in literature (e.g., in works by Aleksey N. Tolstoy) and in films (especially those of Sergei Eisenstein); and experimentation in education gave way to a return to structure and discipline. In 1936 the Stalin constitution was issued, and it included many features of Western democracies, which, however, were more window-dressing than true indications of the distribution of power in the Soviet system.

The CPSU continued to control the government and run the country, and Stalin, as the Wisest of the Wise, was firmly in control of the party. Following the murder (1934) of Sergei M. Kirov, one of Stalin's closest associates, and the announcement of the discovery of an alleged plot against Stalin's regime headed by the exiled Trotsky, there began a series of purges that culminated in the great purge from 1936 to 1938. The armed forces, the CPSU, and the government in general were purged of all allegedly dissident persons; the victims were generally sentenced to death or to long terms of hard labor. Much of the purge was carried out in secret, and only a few cases were tried in public “show trials.” Among the many thousand victims of the purges were such prominent CPSU leaders as Grigori E. Zinoviev, Lev B. Kamenev, Karl Radek, Nikolai Bukharin, and Aleksey I. Rykov and military figures like Marshal Mikhail N. Tukhachevsky. Independent influence in society was thus ended, and monolithic unity under Stalin was achieved by 1939.

Sections in this article:

• Introduction
• Dissolution of the Union
• Glasnost and Perestroika
• The Gorbachev Era
• Détente Ends
• The Era of Détente
• Foreign Relations under Brezhnev
• Domestic Policy under Brezhnev
• The Brezhnev Era
• The Cuban Missile Crisis
• Foreign Relations under Khrushchev
• Domestic Policy under Khrushchev
• The Khrushchev Era
• The Cold War
• World War II
• Pre–World War II Foreign Relations
• Conservatism and Purges
• The First Five-Year Plan
• The Stalin Era
• Early Years
• Bibliography

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