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That's mostly because Stalin's purges came a lot after his consolidation of power so when the actual purges began, he had created a state bureaucratic and party structure around him and his favourites who supported him in his purges. That doesn't necessarily mean that his supporters weren't purged as well. In fact, those who supported him in purging others were also at some point purged as well (not in all cases, though).
Stalin's consolidation of power within the party started during Lenin's life. Stalin had two very important things on his side: an extremely cunning mind and an insomniac working attitude. He knew Lenin was the centre of power within the Bolshevik Party so he remained extremely close to him, made him into a saintly figure and himself as a student of Lenin while emphasising how others had disagreed with Lenin or had opposed him. By the time Lenin became weak after he was shot, Martov and other non-Bolshiveks were already out of the picture. The main Bolshiveks were Zinoviev, Kamenav, Bukharin, Stalin, and, above all, Trotsky. Trotsky never considered Lenin to be his mentor, instead considering him his contemporary and equal (Trotsky was not even with the Bolsheviks as late as 1917).
Lenin was not entirely happy with Trotsky's attitude, and Stalin played that. He became close to Lenin, while Trotsky remained at the battlefront against the whites and never visited Lenin after he got ill. Stalin, on the other hand, visited him regularly, gained his trust, became the general secretary of the party, and started getting his people into important positions (Voroshilov, Kaganovich, etc.). Stalin and Trotsky regularly clashed over who got what position, but it was usually Stalin who won against Trotsky.
By the time Lenin died, Stalin had the whole party apparatus in his control. That allowed him to consolidate power very quickly. Even people like Trotsky couldn't do much. And no one was purged in one single day. He empowered the Cheka and NKVD who helped him do the purges but the process could also be very slow sometimes. And he pitted one person against the other very regularly. For instance, he used Zinoviev and Kamenav against Trotsky to purge him from the politburo (1926), then from the party (1927) and then exiled him internally (1928) and deported him out of Russia (1929). But he wasn't murdered until 1940. He then used Bukharin to oust Zinoviev and Kamenav from the party (1926). And then used people like Yagoda to eliminate Bukharin and Yezhov and Beria to eliminate Yagoda. That was generally the process. By the time a lot of these famous communists, especially those from the revolution days were put to trial and murdered, they had already been out of power and party for years. They didn't have enough people to take a stand against Stalin. And their infighting and disagreements did not help.
It's not that Zinoviev and Kamenav always agreed with Stalin or Bukharin always supported Stalin. It's just that Stalin was very clever to use everyone's disagreements to his benefit.
Stalin wasn't all-powerful, though. He wasn't even the top 5 members of the party at the time of the revolution. It was Lenin, Sverdlov, Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenav, and then Stalin. Stalin's rise in the party was meteoric, both as a result of his luck (such as Sverdlov dying early) and his abilities.
I would highly recommend Stephen Kotkin's books on Stalin. His account of how Stalin takes power and manages to take out his opponents is very brilliant and detailed.
Very interesting comment, and thank you for the recommendation of Kotkin's book, I'll be sure to check that out. I do have a few semi-related comments/questions, though:
1. I was under the impression that Lenin grew more and more distrustful of Stalin right up until his death, with Lenin's testament being the clearest example of that. From what I've read, it seems to me that Stalin leveraging his post as General Secretary in an unexpected way, as well as controlling who had access to Lenin, were the most important reasons why Stalin was able to gain control of the CPSU after Lenin's death. It seems like you're suggesting that Lenin had a preference for Stalin, and that this was the most important reason. Maybe I've misunderstood you, but what would you say to this?
2. After WWII, Zhukov was ousted from his position as head of the army because Stalin feared Zhukov might try to topple him. Did Zhukov ever try to fight this and/or try to depose Stalin as this happened? I would imagine that Zhukov, knowing Stalin's inclination to kill anyone he view as a threat, must have been at least somewhat preoccupied by the prospect of suffering the same fate?
1. I do not think Lenin favoured Stalin over Trotsky and other leaders. Stalin had become very close to Lenin, and Stalin used that to his leverage. He even had his pictures with Lenin published. But by the time Lenin wrote the testament and asked for his removal, it had already been a while since Lenin had appeared in public. He could barely speak proper or complete sentences, and the only person except for his doctors and family to visit him was Stalin. Lenin was so close to Stalin that he even asked Stalin to bring him cyanide so he could kill himself.
But here's the thing about the testament. In the later years, the testament's content is made to look like it just criticised Stalin when it criticised nearly every other major leader, including Trotsky. Lenin was probably out of options by this time. And a lot of doubts were raised on the authenticity of this testament in the wake of its publishing. Again, it was too late by this time to turn careerist revolutionaries and party members propped up by Stalin to take a stand against Stalin.
2. Zhukov was no politician. He was a hot-headed military person through and through. He would never have been able to topple or attempt to topple someone like Stalin. When Zhukov was removed, he was given command in Odessa, far from the centre and away from his position, to orchestrate any sort of coup. Beria was too powerful at the time and regularly had Zhukov's carriages and other things raided. He even arrested some of his army men and had them tortured.
The thing about Zhukov is that when he was in power, he probably understood Stalin better than anyone else. He even predicted or knew about Stalin's moods simply by how he was smoking his pipe. So he knew when to speak and when to stay silent. Zhukov, however, was unlike others. Unlike Krushchev or Beria or others at the top, Zhukov never tried to flatter Stalin. He even used to criticise him, sometimes in public meetings. Zhukov, as far as I am aware, didn't really attempt to topple him.
This feels very focused on the lead-up rather than the purges themselves, could you comment more about the state of the USSR in 1936 in relation to the question?
Neither. You're going to want Stalin Volume 1: Paradoxes of Power, then Volume 2: Waiting for Hitler. Volume 3 is still being written.
Magnetic Mountain is only about the city of Magnitogorsk (and is an interesting read), not Stalin himself.
There's another way to look at this question.
The arrest of Robespierre took place on 9 Thermidor Year II, according to the French revolutionary calendar. This event became known to Marxists as "Thermidor".
And this is how Trotsky described a Russian Thermidor in the 1920s:
>Only a bureaucrat, a windbag, or a braggart could deny the possibility of Thermidor... \[Thermidor\] indicates the direct transfer of power into the hands of a different class, after which the revolutionary class cannot regain power except through an armed uprising.
For Marxists, Thermidor represents the beginning of the end of the French revolution. It was a by-word in the Marxist movement for a bureaucratic coup that would ultimately destroy a revolutionary process. The arrest of Robespierre represented the (literal) decapitation of the more radical wing of the revolutionary government, after the masses had become more passive and excluded from the revolutionary process.
After the Thermidor coup, power shifted more and more towards conservative elements in French society, until Bonaparte reconciled the new state with the old monarchy by crowning himself Emperor. This was followed by a monarchical restoration after Bonaparte's downfall.
So a "Thermidor" was not a good thing for a Bolshevik to pursue. It was a very, very bad thing. The Bolsheviks saw themselves as the more radical historical development of the most extreme revolutionary parts of the French tradition. As a matter of principle, a Thermidorean coup would represent an open betrayal of the revolution. As a matter of personal self-preservation, study of French revolutionary history suggested that a Russian Thermidor would ultimately lead to a downfall of the whole system. Robespierre's arrest was the worst possible model for Russian revolutionaries to follow.
Most Russian Bolsheviks who speculated about a Thermidor saw it coming from the right wing of the government: figures like Bukharin, who advocated for more market-based economic policies, and who might deliberately or unknowingly set the stage for a capitalist restoration. This was Trotsky's initial position. "A consistent right-wing policy, whatever the intentions of Bukharin, Rykov and Tomsky, is the policy of Thermidor," he wrote.
But Bukharin and co did not launch a coup against Stalin: they were defeated by him in 1928 and mostly killed in the mid-1930s. Their base of social support--the market-based elements of the Soviet economy--was too weak to support a full-on challenge to Stalin's faction. But Stalin's bureaucratic faction could, and ultimately did, wield enough economic and social power to wipe out their market-based rivals. Few realised this until it was too late.
Later, Trotsky would change his position. "Today it is impossible to overlook that in the Soviet revolution also a shift to the right took place a long time ago, a shift entirely analogous to Thermidor, although much slower in tempo, and more masked in form," he would write. Thermidor had already happened, but without the overthrow of the central leadership. The consolidation of Stalin's bureaucracy had had the "Thermidor" effect of conservatising the revolutionary process. For Trotsky, Stalin's seizure of power was itself the Russian equivalent of Robespierre's downfall: it represented the defeat of the revolutionary masses, and the triumph of a conservative bureaucracy. Trotsky would never quite accept the full conclusion of this analogy, though: that the rise of Stalin represented, in his own words, the "transfer of power into the hands of a different class".
Jay Bergman has an interesting book covering a lot of this material. It's called *The French Revolution in Russian and Soviet Politics, Political Thought, and Culture*. There's also this article, [Trotsky and Thermidor](https://www.historicalmaterialism.org/trotsky-and-thermidor/) by David S. Law, going over some of the same ground.
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That's mostly because Stalin's purges came a lot after his consolidation of power so when the actual purges began, he had created a state bureaucratic and party structure around him and his favourites who supported him in his purges. That doesn't necessarily mean that his supporters weren't purged as well. In fact, those who supported him in purging others were also at some point purged as well (not in all cases, though). Stalin's consolidation of power within the party started during Lenin's life. Stalin had two very important things on his side: an extremely cunning mind and an insomniac working attitude. He knew Lenin was the centre of power within the Bolshevik Party so he remained extremely close to him, made him into a saintly figure and himself as a student of Lenin while emphasising how others had disagreed with Lenin or had opposed him. By the time Lenin became weak after he was shot, Martov and other non-Bolshiveks were already out of the picture. The main Bolshiveks were Zinoviev, Kamenav, Bukharin, Stalin, and, above all, Trotsky. Trotsky never considered Lenin to be his mentor, instead considering him his contemporary and equal (Trotsky was not even with the Bolsheviks as late as 1917). Lenin was not entirely happy with Trotsky's attitude, and Stalin played that. He became close to Lenin, while Trotsky remained at the battlefront against the whites and never visited Lenin after he got ill. Stalin, on the other hand, visited him regularly, gained his trust, became the general secretary of the party, and started getting his people into important positions (Voroshilov, Kaganovich, etc.). Stalin and Trotsky regularly clashed over who got what position, but it was usually Stalin who won against Trotsky. By the time Lenin died, Stalin had the whole party apparatus in his control. That allowed him to consolidate power very quickly. Even people like Trotsky couldn't do much. And no one was purged in one single day. He empowered the Cheka and NKVD who helped him do the purges but the process could also be very slow sometimes. And he pitted one person against the other very regularly. For instance, he used Zinoviev and Kamenav against Trotsky to purge him from the politburo (1926), then from the party (1927) and then exiled him internally (1928) and deported him out of Russia (1929). But he wasn't murdered until 1940. He then used Bukharin to oust Zinoviev and Kamenav from the party (1926). And then used people like Yagoda to eliminate Bukharin and Yezhov and Beria to eliminate Yagoda. That was generally the process. By the time a lot of these famous communists, especially those from the revolution days were put to trial and murdered, they had already been out of power and party for years. They didn't have enough people to take a stand against Stalin. And their infighting and disagreements did not help. It's not that Zinoviev and Kamenav always agreed with Stalin or Bukharin always supported Stalin. It's just that Stalin was very clever to use everyone's disagreements to his benefit. Stalin wasn't all-powerful, though. He wasn't even the top 5 members of the party at the time of the revolution. It was Lenin, Sverdlov, Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenav, and then Stalin. Stalin's rise in the party was meteoric, both as a result of his luck (such as Sverdlov dying early) and his abilities. I would highly recommend Stephen Kotkin's books on Stalin. His account of how Stalin takes power and manages to take out his opponents is very brilliant and detailed.
Very interesting comment, and thank you for the recommendation of Kotkin's book, I'll be sure to check that out. I do have a few semi-related comments/questions, though: 1. I was under the impression that Lenin grew more and more distrustful of Stalin right up until his death, with Lenin's testament being the clearest example of that. From what I've read, it seems to me that Stalin leveraging his post as General Secretary in an unexpected way, as well as controlling who had access to Lenin, were the most important reasons why Stalin was able to gain control of the CPSU after Lenin's death. It seems like you're suggesting that Lenin had a preference for Stalin, and that this was the most important reason. Maybe I've misunderstood you, but what would you say to this? 2. After WWII, Zhukov was ousted from his position as head of the army because Stalin feared Zhukov might try to topple him. Did Zhukov ever try to fight this and/or try to depose Stalin as this happened? I would imagine that Zhukov, knowing Stalin's inclination to kill anyone he view as a threat, must have been at least somewhat preoccupied by the prospect of suffering the same fate?
1. I do not think Lenin favoured Stalin over Trotsky and other leaders. Stalin had become very close to Lenin, and Stalin used that to his leverage. He even had his pictures with Lenin published. But by the time Lenin wrote the testament and asked for his removal, it had already been a while since Lenin had appeared in public. He could barely speak proper or complete sentences, and the only person except for his doctors and family to visit him was Stalin. Lenin was so close to Stalin that he even asked Stalin to bring him cyanide so he could kill himself. But here's the thing about the testament. In the later years, the testament's content is made to look like it just criticised Stalin when it criticised nearly every other major leader, including Trotsky. Lenin was probably out of options by this time. And a lot of doubts were raised on the authenticity of this testament in the wake of its publishing. Again, it was too late by this time to turn careerist revolutionaries and party members propped up by Stalin to take a stand against Stalin. 2. Zhukov was no politician. He was a hot-headed military person through and through. He would never have been able to topple or attempt to topple someone like Stalin. When Zhukov was removed, he was given command in Odessa, far from the centre and away from his position, to orchestrate any sort of coup. Beria was too powerful at the time and regularly had Zhukov's carriages and other things raided. He even arrested some of his army men and had them tortured. The thing about Zhukov is that when he was in power, he probably understood Stalin better than anyone else. He even predicted or knew about Stalin's moods simply by how he was smoking his pipe. So he knew when to speak and when to stay silent. Zhukov, however, was unlike others. Unlike Krushchev or Beria or others at the top, Zhukov never tried to flatter Stalin. He even used to criticise him, sometimes in public meetings. Zhukov, as far as I am aware, didn't really attempt to topple him.
This feels very focused on the lead-up rather than the purges themselves, could you comment more about the state of the USSR in 1936 in relation to the question?
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Which book: Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization or Stalin: Waiting for Hitler
Neither. You're going to want Stalin Volume 1: Paradoxes of Power, then Volume 2: Waiting for Hitler. Volume 3 is still being written. Magnetic Mountain is only about the city of Magnitogorsk (and is an interesting read), not Stalin himself.
There's another way to look at this question. The arrest of Robespierre took place on 9 Thermidor Year II, according to the French revolutionary calendar. This event became known to Marxists as "Thermidor". And this is how Trotsky described a Russian Thermidor in the 1920s: >Only a bureaucrat, a windbag, or a braggart could deny the possibility of Thermidor... \[Thermidor\] indicates the direct transfer of power into the hands of a different class, after which the revolutionary class cannot regain power except through an armed uprising. For Marxists, Thermidor represents the beginning of the end of the French revolution. It was a by-word in the Marxist movement for a bureaucratic coup that would ultimately destroy a revolutionary process. The arrest of Robespierre represented the (literal) decapitation of the more radical wing of the revolutionary government, after the masses had become more passive and excluded from the revolutionary process. After the Thermidor coup, power shifted more and more towards conservative elements in French society, until Bonaparte reconciled the new state with the old monarchy by crowning himself Emperor. This was followed by a monarchical restoration after Bonaparte's downfall. So a "Thermidor" was not a good thing for a Bolshevik to pursue. It was a very, very bad thing. The Bolsheviks saw themselves as the more radical historical development of the most extreme revolutionary parts of the French tradition. As a matter of principle, a Thermidorean coup would represent an open betrayal of the revolution. As a matter of personal self-preservation, study of French revolutionary history suggested that a Russian Thermidor would ultimately lead to a downfall of the whole system. Robespierre's arrest was the worst possible model for Russian revolutionaries to follow. Most Russian Bolsheviks who speculated about a Thermidor saw it coming from the right wing of the government: figures like Bukharin, who advocated for more market-based economic policies, and who might deliberately or unknowingly set the stage for a capitalist restoration. This was Trotsky's initial position. "A consistent right-wing policy, whatever the intentions of Bukharin, Rykov and Tomsky, is the policy of Thermidor," he wrote. But Bukharin and co did not launch a coup against Stalin: they were defeated by him in 1928 and mostly killed in the mid-1930s. Their base of social support--the market-based elements of the Soviet economy--was too weak to support a full-on challenge to Stalin's faction. But Stalin's bureaucratic faction could, and ultimately did, wield enough economic and social power to wipe out their market-based rivals. Few realised this until it was too late. Later, Trotsky would change his position. "Today it is impossible to overlook that in the Soviet revolution also a shift to the right took place a long time ago, a shift entirely analogous to Thermidor, although much slower in tempo, and more masked in form," he would write. Thermidor had already happened, but without the overthrow of the central leadership. The consolidation of Stalin's bureaucracy had had the "Thermidor" effect of conservatising the revolutionary process. For Trotsky, Stalin's seizure of power was itself the Russian equivalent of Robespierre's downfall: it represented the defeat of the revolutionary masses, and the triumph of a conservative bureaucracy. Trotsky would never quite accept the full conclusion of this analogy, though: that the rise of Stalin represented, in his own words, the "transfer of power into the hands of a different class". Jay Bergman has an interesting book covering a lot of this material. It's called *The French Revolution in Russian and Soviet Politics, Political Thought, and Culture*. There's also this article, [Trotsky and Thermidor](https://www.historicalmaterialism.org/trotsky-and-thermidor/) by David S. Law, going over some of the same ground.
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