what was the impact of Stalin's "reign of terror "
Answers
Answer:
Stalin's Reign of Terror signifies a dark period in Soviet History. While the numbers detailing just how many people died are often approximate - there is no doubt that hundreds of thousands of people perished as a result (whether direct or indirect) of his policies. Because many of Stalin's victims were killed due to their political leanings, historians have a difficult time classifying this period of history as a series of genocidal events. According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's website:
[G]enocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
Answer:
In effect, the "Great Purge" was Stalin's attempt to exercise personal control over the entire Soviet Union. The purge had three prongs: "cleansing" the Communist Party, The Red Army, and Peasantry.
Stalin was terrified of anyone competing with him for power and so naturally purged from the party and the military anyone he thought might be in a position to challenge him, or give assistance to others in that cause.
He quite consciously made war on the peasants as there was considerable resistance to his rural collectivization programs. Lenin had given the peasants land which Stalin took from them as he believed that independent farmers could serve as a base of potential opposition.
He almost destroyed the nation; and his purge of the army directly led to the early Soviet defeats in WW II.