The Red Army and the Great Terror: Stalin's Purge of the Soviet Military (Modern War Studies), by Peter Whitewood
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The Red Army and the Great Terror: Stalin's Purge of the Soviet Military (Modern War Studies), by Peter Whitewood
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On June 11, 1937, a closed military court ordered the execution of a group of the Soviet Union's most talented and experienced army officers, including Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevskii; all were charged with participating in a Nazi plot to overthrow the regime of Joseph Stalin. There followed a massive military purge, from the officer corps through the rank-and-file, that many consider a major factor in the Red Army's dismal performance in confronting the German invasion of June 1941. Why take such action on the eve of a major war? The most common theory has Stalin fabricating a "military conspiracy" to tighten his control over the Soviet state. In The Red Army and the Great Terror, Peter Whitewood advances an entirely new explanation for Stalin's actions—an explanation with the potential to unlock the mysteries that still surround the Great Terror, the surge of political repression in the late 1930s in which over one million Soviet people were imprisoned in labor camps and over 750,000 executed.Framing his study within the context of Soviet civil-military relations dating back to the 1917 revolution, Whitewood shows that Stalin sanctioned this attack on the Red Army not from a position of confidence and strength, but from one of weakness and misperception. Here we see how Stalin's views had been poisoned by the paranoid accusations of his secret police, who saw spies and supporters of the dead Tsar everywhere and who had long believed that the Red Army was vulnerable to infiltration by foreign intelligence agencies engaged in a conspiracy against the Soviet state. Recently opened Russian archives allow Whitewood to counter the accounts of Soviet defectors and conspiracy theories that have long underpinned conventional wisdom on the military purge. By broadening our view, The Red Army and the Great Terror demonstrates not only why Tukhachevskii and his associates were purged in 1937, but also why tens of thousands of other officers and soldiers were discharged and arrested at the same time. With its thorough reassessment of these events, the book sheds new light on the nature of power, state violence, and civil-military relations under the Stalinist regime.
The Red Army and the Great Terror: Stalin's Purge of the Soviet Military (Modern War Studies), by Peter Whitewood- Amazon Sales Rank: #286729 in eBooks
- Published on: 2015-10-25
- Released on: 2015-09-24
- Format: Kindle eBook
Review "Whitewood has a compelling and original thesis―that Stalin's purge of the military was not a well-planned, premeditated attack on an institution that he feared; rather he was finally convinced to do so after years of attacks on the political reliability of the army by the secret police, who saw spies and provocateurs everywhere within the ranks and command staff. This is completely original and challenges the conventional wisdom which largely has no good answer for why the purges occurred, but rests on the unsubstantiated premise that Stalin was simply consolidating power and rooting out possible sources of opposition."―Roger Reese, author of Red Commanders: A Social History of the Soviet Army Officer Corps, 1918–1991 "This is an excellent work of scholarship on the purges in Stalin's military, one that the field has needed for quite some time. Indeed, there is no other extant book in English on the military purges. I am impressed by the breadth and force of Whitewood’s argument, so much so that I think there will be little point in other scholars going over the same ground again. In addition, Whitewood’s writing is clear and elegant; his source base is thorough; and his argument is important and convincing. Overall, it's an impressive contribution."―David R. Stone, author of Hammer and Rifle: The Militarization of the Soviet Union, 1926–1933
About the Author Peter Whitewood is Lecturer in History and American Studies, at York St. John University in the United Kingdom.
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14 of 14 people found the following review helpful. Paranoia strikes deep! A fascinating investigation into the thinking of the top Soviet leadership in the 1930s. By Bayard B. Excellent and highly detailed account and analysis of the attitude of the leadership of the Soviet Union and the Communist Party leading up to the Great Terror of 1936 - 1938. You probably need to be familiar with the subject before reading this book. For example, read The Great Terror by Robert Conquest before reading this book (if you haven't already done so). Whitewood discusses the absolutely paranoid attitude and environment that permeated almost the entire top leadership. Stalin, Yagoda, Yezhov, et. Al. were convinced that Trotsky, the Right Deviationists, Left Opposition, and surviving Whites were infiltrating the Soviet Union and especially the army to mount an internal rebellion or an external invasion. A group of half a dozen people couldn't discuss among themselves Trotsky's criticism of Stalin without getting arrested for anti - Soviet activity and being accused of being part of a vast conspiracy. It was fascinating to read this book just to see the paranoid thinking that affected the country and the devastating effect it eventually had on the military in the summer of 1937.
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful. The causes of bloodletting By James D. Crabtree In 1941 Hitler invaded the USSR. One of the factors which led to the invasion was his belief that the Red Army was a gutted force due to the purges which took place less than five years before.Whitewood looks at the Red Army purges as not necessarily a random event or the reflex action of the paranoia at the time but as the logical result of events which went back to the Civil War era. The continuing use of former members of the Imperial Army as technical experts, the espionage directed against the USSR in the 1920s and the "trotskyite deviationists" in the Red Army all contributed to the bloodbath which would seriously hurt the leadership of the Red Army in the coming world war.There is one thing that is missing in regards to the story of the Purge in the Red Army and that is the scope and impact of the Red Terror on the PKKA's leadership. Something like 80% of the marshals of the USSR were eliminated, many of the division commanders, military district commanders, etc. Certainly the information is available elsewhere but as long as we are talking about the causes it seems that there should be something on the effects as well.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. Stalin and the Purge of the Soviet Armed Forces By A. A. Nofi A summary of Robert L. Miller's review on StrategyPage.Com'Peter Whitewood's well-researched book explores the origins of the suspicion that party officials had about career officers, the "military specialists" the Red Army had desperately needed in the wake of the October Revolution. Many of them were former tsarist army officers or simply guilty of having "bourgeois" origins, others were unrepentant Trotskyists.'From the start Whitewood dismisses as unreliable the accounts of dissidents and defectors. In particular Whitewood omits the testimony of Walter G. Krivitsky to the U.S. Congress in 1939 and to MI5 in 1940 that forged documents prepared by the Gestapo were passed on to the Kremlin. Krivitsky claimed Stalin used these forgeries to unleash the purge.'Whitewood sheds light on some of the mystery, but the deeper secrets of 1937 still elude us.'For the full review, see StrategyPage.Com
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