Why did Stalin carry out the ‘Purges’ Essay Example

his rivals, which would have contributed to his reasons for the purges.They enabled Stalin to remove the Red Army's Commander-in-Chief, Marshall Tukhachevsky, who he saw as a possible threat to him, seven other Generals of the army were also arrested and shot, and all the Admirals along with half the Red Army's other officers were either executed or put in prison, providing Stalin with total obedience from the military.Another reason could be Stalin's paranoia, some writers suggest that he was suffering a persecution complex and believed that everyone was plotting to have him overthrown.Other possible reasons are that there was a snowball effect, once the purges had begun it had become difficult to put a stop to them, or that they provided him with a way to excuse failures of his Five Year Plans; a failure to meet an output target would not be down to a fault with the plans or that the targets set were too high, but were instead due to sabotage within the industry.

A final reason for the purges could have been that he wanted to induce a fear within the people and by putting the senior figures of the party on trial he was able to show them that no-one was capable of opposing him. The people were encouraged to inform on their neighbours and children were encouraged to inform on their parents of any anti-government sentiment they may know off, as a result of this in 1935, in the cities Moscow and Leningrad, over one million people were executed for crimes or disloyalty to Stalin.