“The Great Terror on the Local Level” by Hoffman

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In his article, Hoffman adds another dimension to the analysis of the effects that the Great Terror had on the citizens of the Soviet Union. The exploration of the workplace environment as the place where the inconsistencies between the proclaimed ideals of the USSR government and their implications could be seen especially clearly was conducted masterfully by Hoffman. For instance, the author stresses the multilevel hierarchy of the local executives and the official authorities, therefore, pointing to the fact that the process of identifying possible instances of dissident ideas and managing them in a manner as brutal and atrocious as a totalitarian regime could afford was managed very successfully.

Furthermore, the connections that the author makes between Stalin’s attempts to purge Trotskyites and the increasingly large number of cases of expelling people from their workplaces that could be observed at the time are very thought-provoking and quite telling as far as the effects of Stalin’s policies were concerned. Despite the fact that Trotsky lived in exile most of his life, the Trotskyism movement made Stalin’s regime unstable by questioning the legitimacy of some of its regulations. Therefore, the overall line of reasoning chosen by Hoffman seems very sensible and quite efficient when proving the insanity of Stalin’s domestic policy.

When explaining the reason for people to refrain from complaining about the violent measures used by the NKVD and the local authorities, Hoffman mentions the harsh methods of intimidating people into obedience; particularly, he addresses the fact that the lives of family members were jeopardized as well once one started making claims about the negative effects of the regime: “At one Moscow textile mill, all party members with relatives, friends, co-workers, or any other associates who had been arrested were themselves subject to questioning, expulsion from the party, and arrest.”¹

Therefore, Hoffman provides a very understandable albeit rather brief explanation of the psychological underpinnings of the unwillingness to fight that could be observed among the USSR residents on the statewide scale. Therefore, the observations made by the author gain a sudden sinister yet very unambiguous tone when he details the reasons for the members of Moscow factories to refrain from stating their discontent and fighting for their rights.

What makes Hoffman’s study especially important for embracing the effects of the Great Purge on the overall well-being of the USSR citizens is the connection between the social and economic issues that could be observed in the environment of the Great Purge. Therefore, the problem is explored extensively, with a detailed consideration of the external factors that may have defined the further development of the Great Terror, as well as the constraints that prevented people from voicing their concerns and protests.

Furthermore, Hoffman managed to address the concern that can be deemed as rather controversial and, therefore, very difficult to analyze. To be more specific, Hoffman tackled the issues associated with the instances of anti-Semitism in the environment of the USSR rather carefully yet at the same time directly, thus, pointing to the obvious problem that had been brewing in the USSR for a significant amount of time due to the politics promoted by Stalin. Indeed, as Hoffman explained,

Also noteworthy in party documents is the large proportion of Jewish names among those arrested – perhaps simply a reflection of the large percentage of party members and technical intelligentsia who were Jewish, but perhaps also an indication of anti-Semitism fueling the purges.²

Therefore, Hoffman’s paper shows quite clearly that there were strong indications of the tremendous flaws in Stalin’s policy. Regardless, the tendency for seeking out the people that could potentially jeopardize the Socialist regime could be tracked down in the policy of the Soviet authorities easily. Thus, the work should be valued for the extensive amount of evidence provided by its author to support the idea. By exploring the instances of the Great Terror in the environment of public companies, particularly factories and similar settings, Hoffman has shed a lot of light on the problem of persecution that could obviously be seen in the policy of the Soviet regime at the time.

Keywords: Great Purge, anti-Semitism, NKVD
Anti-Semitism: The policy that implied the persecution of Jewish people is defined as anti-Semitism.
NKVD: The People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs (Narodnyi Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del, or NKVD) was a Soviet executive body that pursued dissidents and used repressions against them.

Bibliography

Hoffman, David L.”The Great Terror on the Local Level: Purges in Moscow Factories.” In Stalinist Terror: New Perspectives, edited by J. Arch Getty and Roberta T. Manning, 163-167. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.

Footnotes

David L. Hoffman, “The Great Terror on the Local Level: Purges in Moscow Factories,” in Stalinist Terror: New Perspectives, ed. J. Arch Getty and Roberta T. Manning (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 164.
Ibid., 166.

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“The Great Terror on the Local Level” by Hoffman

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