Subversion in the Red Army and the Military Purge of 1937–1938 -Conclusion
This article has shown that the perceived espionage threat that peaked in mid-1937 was the driving force behind the military purge. Since its creation in 1918 the Red Army was a perceived target of internal and external subversion, from military specialists, Whites, foreign agents and Trotskyists. As far as the regime was concerned, alleged coup attempts had been foiled in 1927 and 1930 but Stalin had hesitated on both occasions. In 1927 he had not fully shared Menzhinskii’s pessimism over the oppositionist danger to the army, and during operation vesna in 1930 he had not sanctioned Tukhachevskii’s arrest. Military specialists, as outsiders, had formed the bulk of the arrests in 1930. However, suspicions surrounding the Red Army lingered and neither of the supposed ‘plots’ would be forgotten. Political tensions then increased after the assassination of Kirov.
With the arrests of the Zinov’ev– Kamenev Counter-revolutionary Bloc and the concurrent arrests of Trotskyists in the army in 1936, attention turned towards the military. Ezhov’s promotion as head of the NKVD focused this attention more sharply. However, the Trotskyist threat was never enough to bring mass arrests into the army. Trotskyists were too few in number and of too low rank. But as the prominence of the foreign threat grew during 1936 and 1937 this gave the opportunity for the already identified Trotskyist ‘conspiracy’ to gain an international dimension.
The rumours of a ‘Soviet Bonaparte’ in the 1920s, of betrayal within the military elite, contributed to undermining trust in the Red Army. But in the 1930s the connection was to Germany rather than the exiled Whites. Such rumours, spread by the political police in the 1920s, contributed to undermining trust in the Red Army elite in the long run. Irrespective of the particular link, they sustained an image of a disloyal High Command. However, it was the threat to the army from foreign agents which was the key factor in 1937. By April the Red Army was perceived as compromised by foreign agents. When Ezhov extracted ‘evidence’ against Tukhachevskii from several arrested military and NKVD officers which detailed a ‘plot’ in the upper ranks, Stalin could no longer hesitate. He could not fight a war with an army infiltrated by spies and with a conspiracy in the military elite. It was now too risky not to act against the Red Army, even at a time of approaching conflict (and perhaps precisely because of this). Thus, the threat of espionage to the Red Army in 1937 is the most likely reason why Stalin finally changed course and sanctioned the arrest of Tukhachevskii and the other officers and ordered a purge of the Red Army.
To understand the military purge it is necessary to understand how it was perceived. From the formation of the Red Army in 1918, the political police tended to inflate the threats to the military, while PUR and Voroshilov downplayed these. Stalin hesitated and resisted a major crackdown until 1937. The 20 years before the military purge saw a battle between those proposing different appraisals of threat. By the mid-1930s Ezhov was beginning to push for a deeper investigation into the army while Voroshilov continued to defend its reliability.
As soon as Stalin signalled that he agreed with Ezhov about the need to investigate the military at the February– March Plenum, Voroshilov scrambled to change his line and worked to discover hidden ‘enemies’ in the ranks. However, even though there was no immediate purge at this point, without Voroshilov’s previous defence of its reliability the military was increasingly open to incrimination. Some historians have argued that Ezhov followed Stalin’s orders very closely and that he had little independence of action. This article argues that Ezhov was one of the first senior party figures to begin pushing for an investigation into the Red Army in 1936 and that Stalin did not take any serious action until May 1937. Indeed, Stalin delayed a firm response even after the February– March Plenum. It is possible that Ezhov was following Stalin’s direct orders to the letter and that the General Secretary had instructed him to proceed with caution. However, it is perhaps more likely that Ezhov was trying to uncover ‘evidence’ of a conspiracy in the military in order to convince Stalin that serious action needed to be taken. Both Stalin and Ezhov had different priorities. Ezhov was primarily concerned with the ‘exposure’ of ‘enemies’, whereas Stalin needed to preserve the security of the Soviet Union, but this also required preserving the stability of the military. Thus, Stalin may have waited to see what Ezhov discovered and gave him freedom to pursue his investigation, and as shown, by 1937 the ‘evidence’ of subversion in the army provided by the political police finally compelled Stalin to act.60
Thus, Stalin did not sanction a purge of the military because it was too powerful an institution which could potentially challenge his power. This is too difficult to reconcile with the danger posed to the Soviet Union’s security from such a loss of vital experience. Stalin purged the military due to its perceived vulnerability to subversion, a trait that had a long history and nearly 20 years of ‘evidence’ of infiltration in support. This long history of subversion was vital in not only adding credibility to the much wider spy threat which erupted inside the army in April– May 1937, but it was this final subversive threat which finally compelled Stalin to act against an army long affected by internal and external threats, and a military elite long surrounded by rumours of betrayal.
York St John University
Army subversion in the Civil War and the 1920s
The arrest of the ‘Trotskyist Military Centre’
Army subversion in the Civil War and the 1920s
The arrest of the ‘Trotskyist Military Centre’
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59Yakir even visited Gamarnik the day before his arrest, see RGVA, f. 9, op. 29, d. 313, l. 1.
60For the view that Ezhov was carefully directed by Stalin, see Jansen and Petrov (2002) and Khaustov and Samuelson (2009). For an alternative argument that Ezhov had more independence from Stalin see Getty and aumov (2008).
EUROPE-ASIA STUDIES
Vol. 67, No. 1, January 2015, 102–122
ISSN 0966-8136 print; ISSN 1465-3427 online/15/100102–21 q 2015 University of Glasgow
Papers published under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY)
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