The Great Purges of 1937 in the Russian Provinces

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Although studying the reports and statistical data regarding the effects that the Great Purge had on the citizens of the Soviet Union allows developing a rather profound understanding of the problem, scrutiny of some of the real-life cases will help shed light on the issue to an even greater extent. Particularly, the specified approach helps understand how the process affected common people, as well as what toll it had on their lives, and what challenges they had to deal with on a regular basis.

Herein lies the significance of Fitzpatrick’s study. The author provides a detailed overview of some of the situations that took place in the USSR at the time of Stalin’s reign. One could argue that the specified approach deprives the study of its objectivity and introduces the possibility of a human error into it. Indeed, the threat of representing the problem from a narrow-sided perspective and, thus, failing to explore the issue fully clearly exists in the identified scenario.

That being said, Fitzpatrick did an excellent job at analyzing the trials that took place in the USSR during the era of the Great Terror. For instance, the exploration of the effects that the attempts of Ukrainian media to shed light on the effects of Stalin’s policy, including the abhorrent treatment of Ukrainian kolkhozniki (farmers) and the deplorable phenomenon of prodrazverstka that resulted in the massive rise in the incidents of famine in the identified area, must be deemed as very compelling and detailed.

The endeavors at reducing the levels of resistance among reluctant farmers included reinforcing the influence of the Central Control Commission, as Fitzpatrick explained: “These crimes had come to the attention of the party’s Central Control Commission, which had instructed the Ukrainian state prosecutor to take actions.”¹ Thus, the propensity toward establishing total control over every single economic change that occurred within the state, as well as the individual economic growth of each far and household, seemed to be the primary focus of the Stalinist policy.

By describing the merciless ways of strangling the resistance among the residents of the USSR, primarily, kolkhozniki, i.e., the owners of farms, Fitzpatrick describes the plight of the specified members of the USSR population in a very distinct manner. As a result, the effects of the strategies used by the Soviet authorities look even more devastating and barbaric.

Keywords: Kolkhozniki, prodrazverstka, Central Control Commission, repression
Kolkhozniki: Kolkhozniki is a Russian farmer that is a part of the kolkhoz, i.e., a collective farm.
Prodrazverstka: The policy aimed at depriving farmers of their land, cattle, and other possessions, including the produced food, was known as prodrazverstka.
Repression: The phenomenon of subduing someone into obedience and depriving one of one’s irrefutable rights to make one follow the required mode of behavior is termed repression.

Bibliography

Fitzpatrick, Sheila. “How the Mice Buried the Cat: Scenes from the Great Purges of 1937 in the Russian Provinces.” The Russian Review 52, no. 3 (1993): 299-320.

Footnotes

Sheila Fitzpatrick, “How the Mice Buried the Cat: Scenes from the Great Purges of 1937 in the Russian Provinces,” The Russian Review 52, no. 3 (1993): 303.

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The Great Purges of 1937 in the Russian Provinces

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