The Great Purge: History Matters (Short Animated Documentary)
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- Опубліковано 29 лип 2024
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This episode covers the Stalin's purges in the wake of Sergei Kirov's murder which swept the USSR over the course of 1936-1938 which saw loads of people either shot or sent to the Gulag. It's also a ridiculous 210-day focus.
Recommended Reading/ Sources:
The Stalinist Era by David L. Hoffman. This is a pretty new book and as far as broad overviews go it's certainly one of the best. Some things it can be a bit brief on (Gulags being one of them) but in terms of broad trends and politics it's extremely good.
Scorched Earth: Stalin's Reign of Terror by Jörg Baberowski. A very in-depth look into the purges and the motivations behind the terror. Does well to demonstrate how it also affected normal everyday people and not just the politicians at the top.
Also, anything by Sheila Fitzpatrick is also recommended (On Stalin's Team is a good one).
Secret police: we killed 70,000 traitors.
Stalin: but I only asked for 65,000.
Secret police: yes but we rounded them up.
Finally a worthy opponent to the grammar Nazis.
@@baneofbanes The Math Soviets
lol
Talk about overdoing quotas
Fuck you
Have your upvote
French Revolution: Chop, chop, chop!
Stalin: Shot, shot, shot!
0
Funni
"I'd leave your neck in a noose, in a trench, and shot!"
Yeah. You’re right. The Revolutionaries call that: freedom.
Oh my, would you look at the time, welp gotta do some purging.
“Which was much better” perfect delivery.
1:34
Always is with this guys
@@billmacdonald1837 Seriously, his absolute flat delivery no matter what he's recounting always makes me laugh
@mark houghton offcourse, dying is scary, death not so much
@mark houghton better dead than red
3 out of 5 Marshals,
13 out of 15 army commanders,
8 out of 9 admirals,
50 out of 57 corps commanders,
154 out of 186 division commanders,
All of the 16 army commissars,
25 out of 28 corps commissars.
No wonder Red Army put such an "impressive" display of skill during the beginning of the war with Germany. This is a heavy cost. (Well, maybe except commissars. They suck.)
Because they weren't a mobilised army and they were expecting germany to attack in 1942? In the first 6 weeks, despite not being mobilised nor being considered the world's greatest army, did a hundred times more damage to the Nazis then france.
@@livinglifeform7974 >communist emblemate on the profile
Yup, it's defending communism time!
@@antiglassesgang
>Anarchist ball as profile
Yep, it's being a buffoon time.
@@livinglifeform7974 > A literal meme ball on the profile instead of a symbol of more than 60 milion people killed
Seriously, go fuck yourself shithead
well, even without the purge, the soviets wouldn't have performed that well at the beggining of the war, the red army grew so quickly that they didnt have enough commanders, purge or not, it made the situation worse, but it's not the single factor that led to heavy soviet losses
"I got an urge (puts on shades) to purge!" ~ Stalin, 1936
MJR Schneider oh no its too late... this entire city must be purged.
To Gulag with you.
*Explosion*
YEEAAAAAAHHHH!
Death
"When Stalin killed everyone"
Me: Do you have the slightest idea how little that narrows it down?
Eyyy, Batman Beyond reference.
It narrows it down quite a lot actually. Not many remained after the purge. (this comment is a joke, I get the original post)
Yeah he kills
Stalin: No (has you shot)
@Stellvia Hoenheim oh the irony
Genrich Yagoda: *gets purged*
Nikolai Yezhov: *gets purged*
Lavrentiy Beria: *nervous sweating*
There is a theory that Beria "helped" Stalin to die because he knew that next great purge is coming and he will be next target .
@@tomasziskierka9557 And then he got purged.
@@dlxmarks We call it horror in USSR they called it tuesday
Still got purged, not by Stalin tho. No one expects the Zhukov Inquisition
Beria was georgian just like Stalin
Oh boy I sure love opposing Stalin in 1936!
You are now dead
Anybody hear a gunshot just now?
Omae wa mo shindeiru
Rafael who? Shot? Never heard of him.
You wouldn't dare to cross our leader
To give an idea of how pervasive, bizarre and horrifying the Great Purge was, two stories from documentaries about the composer Dmitri Shostokovitch:
He was so worried about the possibility of being arrested in the middle of the night, that for much of this time he slept in the stairwell outside his apartment, so that his family wouldn't be disturbed if he were arrested. (Source: UA-cam video documentary _Keeping Score: Shostakovich Symphony no. 5_)
In 1937, one day he was summoned to KGB headquarters [per the video from which I got this anecdote, the one telling the story called it the KGB, even though many posting here insist that it had to be the NKDV; I have posted elsewhere in these comments a link to the video from which the story comes; I refer readers to that video, and if you have a problem with his version of this story, please take it up with him, not with me] .He was questioned by an officer, who asked if Shostakovitch knew a particular person. When he answered yes, the officer asked "what do you know about his involvement in the plot to assassinate Comrade Stalin?" Shostakovitch was dumbstruck: of course, he knew nothing of such a plot, but he also knew that literally anything he said could be construed as his being complicit. The officer then said that Shostakovitch should go and think about it, then return in two days. When that day came, Shostakovitch said good-bye to his wife and children, believing it to be the last time he would ever see them. He arrived at the KGB [or NKVD, or WXYZ, or whatever...] office, only to find a soldier guarding the door, who asked "why are you here?" Shostakovitch said that he had an appointment, and gave the name of the officer. The soldier then went to check a roster, finally informing Shostakovitch "he is not here." Shostakovitch later found out that, in the intervening two days, the officer who had questioned him had himself been arrested! (Source: UA-cam video _Shostakovitch Versus Stalin: The War Symphonies_. Unfortunately, I can no longer find the version with English language subtitles on UA-cam, only in Spanish -- though the Russian host of the documentary still speaks English throughout. The anecdote I cited is told in Russian).
LOL
What a tense situation 😬 and scary.
Sounds like a bad monty python sketch lol
Imagine the conversation between the composer and the other KGB officer in the next day:
"sir, i have an appointment for interrogation..."
"i'm sorry sir, the officer has been arrested. you can find another next time if you want to."
"but he's the one who interrogated me!"
"well, then you lucky he didn't sent you to gulag or shot in the head. last time he interrogated someone, he beaten me for being doofus and Trotskyte."
The KGB didn't exist when the great purge happened.
Stalin after having millions of innocent people killed or sent to the gulags: I did it. I saved the world.
@@ratscoot curchill start a war with hitler? you have to be joking right?
Pingas 69 innocent? I don’t think so
@@absentmindedshirokuma8539 The uk declared war on Germany when they and the USSR invaded Poland. They didn't declared war on the USSR, neither when Stalin invaded Finland in 1939 and 1940 or when he annexated the Baltic states. When Hess fles to the UK for peace tanks in 1941 he was imprisoned for life.
@@ratscoot Churchill wasn't even the head of the state in 1939 you dumbo and the contract with Poland clearly states, that they will ONLY attack Germany if they attack Poland and not the USSR, probably because they couldn't handle both.
@Filzhut The Polish-British common defence pact stated oficially that Britain would aid" If Poland was "engaged in hostilities with a European Power". The Polish ambassador in London, Raczyński, contacted the British Foreign Office pointing out that clause of the agreement which concerned an "aggression by a European power" on Poland, should apply to the Soviet invasion. The Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax responded that the obligation of British Government towards Poland arising out of the Anglo-Polish Agreement, was restricted to Germany, according to the first clause of a secret protocol. Chrurchil wasn't prime minister in 1939 but the in House of Commons he sparred frequently with Charmberlain over his peace talks with Germany, demanding hard action since 1938.
"By a CERTAIN SOMEONE"
I love that line so much
Me too hahha fucking Stalin was the madman
@@AuroraBoost hahaha this comment also gave me the giggles
It's my favourite, I'm gonna use it at work
Just to let you all know next week's videos will be:
Wednesday - The Abdication Crisis of Edward VIII,
Sunday - The Hungarian Revolution of 1956
Hope you all enjoy.
Aw that's hot
Great video! But could you please put the sources/recommended reading in the description as you usually do? It lends a lot more legitimacy to the information you present, especially given we're dealing with 20th century politics.
Hmmmm yeos jeice clinse
Jokes aside, can you do a video over Sun Yat Suns work to reform China?
Thanks for the update ten minu I mean history matters
@@travelmaniak3127 thank
It should be noted that one of the men imprisoned in the Gulags by Stalin was one Andrei Tupolev, head of the Tupolev Design Bureau. While in the Gulags, he would design a few bomber aircraft that would be used against the Germans in the Second World War. Later on, he would be released from the Gulags, awarded the Order of Lenin, and would go on to design the infamous (or famous depending on your perspective) Cold War bomber designated the Tu-95; it's better known by its NATO codename: "Bear".
Yeash Stockholm syndrome much?
In Tukhachevsky's trial, his promotion of tank warfare using large independent mechanized formations was literally used as evidence against him. One of the judges was Budyonny, another Marshal of the Soviet Union. Budyonny was an old conservative cavalryman who ruled that Tukhachevsky's ideas on tanks were so absurd that his promotion of them could not be anything else than deliberate sabotage of the Red Army.
Didn't age too well.
Well, I mean, it's not like they spammed tanks in particular, they really just sent everything they had and expected number over quality and doctrines.
But they sure did learn firsthand how useful they were when the Nazis used them to invade them
A man in the USSR is sentenced to ten years in the gulag.
Upon his arrival, he is asked by another prisoner, “How did you get ten years?”
He responds, “I did nothing!”
The prisoner says to him, “Don’t lie to me Comrade! Everyone knows that nothing gets you five years!”
And 10 years is still a child's sentence anyway. Real political prisoners get a quarter (25 years) or longer.
"child's sentence"
He was convicted of two separate counts of nothing.
Lol
Man to KGB Officer, "Is the GULAG sentance really hard?"
KGB Officer, "Only the First 10 Years. Its easy later on."
Sergei Korolev also developed the kidney disease that later contributed to his untimely demise in the gulags as a result of this purge, so Stalin is also indirectly responsible for the failure of the later Soviet space program, as well.
Truly his myopia knew no bounds.
I don't think it's fair to say the Soviet space program failed. Maybe it didn't live up to its potential, but it certainly didn't fail. In fact, it was pretty successful.
I take your point, and certainly not everything about the program was a failure; it accomplished the goal of developing a reliable ICBM, which was the main purpose of its funding. I do think that intrepid cosmonauts such as Gagarin, Tereshkova and Leonov deserve to be as well known by all of mankind as Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins are.
On the other hand it must also be noted that despite the plans and the potential technology existing, the Soviet space program ultimately failed in its goal of a manned lunar expedition, and I believe the program was rudderless and without inspiration after the death of Korolev. The fact that they are still using the same technology 50 years later, and that the Chinese are likely to beat their successor Roscomos to the moon despite an over 50 year head start speaks volumes about the ultimate result of the exploration mission of the Soviet space program.
@@Dylan-hy2zj
Wasn't so much paranoid as power hungry. He positioned himself in a way to take over and purged people based more on loyalty and potential rivals. His paranoia was more a side effect do to the (honest) possibility of losing control.
The Call Up i don’t think it’s fair to say that Roskosmos had a 50-year head start:
1- in the 90’s space was not a priority
2- right now Roskosmos is just another corrupt structure of the corrupt russian government (i am russian)
Myopia is fixable by glasses. That man had no fix whatsoever. He, after many years, made Hitler genocide machine look like a child tool.
Someone: **Breaths**
Stalin: *Not on my watch!*
Go to Gulag!
Breathes
@@kecleonboi sO yOu HaVe ChoSeN dEaTh
Yeah not like he was right and there were in fact a lot of traitors in the USSR that if not purged would make them lose WW2.
Stalin is having a speech and someone sneezed. "Who sneezed?" asked Stalin. Everyone's quiet. "Everyone in first row to gulag! Who sneezed?" Silience. "Second row to be shot! Who sneezed?" Some guy is raising hand terrified "Comrade Stalin, it was me." "Bless you!" Smiled Stalin.
A rather wholesome event from Stalin
This guy was in the third row.
If Stalin was atheist, who is gonna bless that poor guy?
@@user-mb9np6sh7u nazdravlje?
"He may have acted alone, but he also might have been put up to it by a CERTAIN SOMEONE". That actually made me laugh. Thanks!
Excellent work. I like the new change to the channel, as you aren't limited to only making 10 minute history videos. Maybe a video on the Night of the Long Knives?
Krazy Klimax same
Perhaps a video on the Night of the Long Knives might be a bit too short. One slide might cover it: Hitler with a sign "I don't like you" and a lot of people falling over (thud!) dead.
I am sorry but I don't like it. It feels more main stream now and the rapid narration even annoying in such a short vid.
@@tip0019 I don't know the details about it
@@hueylongdong347 In a nutshell, it's a nazi version of the great purge
he protecc
he attacc
and from the gulags
no one comes bacc
👏
@John Alejandro wait what's wrong with Marx? (I'm not into Communism but I never thought of him as evil)
@John Alejandro The problem is the reason for the killing, communist dictators killed with mismanagement or because of dissidents, which is very wrong, but killing millions just for their ethnicity is absolutly horrific. It's hard sometimes to make a "scale" of crimes but it must be done to judge fairly and racial killing is way worse than killing dissidents
@John Alejandro yeah but it wasn't really his fault that all those people died, he just had an idea (not a very good one but still) and he wrote it down
@John Alejandro pretty bad but that doesn't really make him one of the evilest people to ever live
"You know I really don't like Vodka that much"
*SILENCE TROTSKYITE*
*_Translation: Gulag_*
Yea, you know what, they deserve Gulag anyways (people who hate vodka)
@@sooryan_1018 muslims
@@kitkat47chrysalis95 oh no-
@@kitkat47chrysalis95 a sacrifice i am willing to take
Basically a civil war with only one side fighting.
Yes
After the Purges Stalin had to install bells or buzzers when he gave speeches so people would stop applauding for him. Everyone was too afraid to be the first person to stop, so they just stood clapping for a half hour until Stalin got tired of it, and had the alarm tell them to quit.
Ala Saddam Hussein
Absolute nonsense, do you have any kind of reliable source for this claim?
@@theimperialbattlemage3409 try reading The Gulag Archipelago by Solzhenitsyn, its featured there just how afraid everyone was to be the first one clapping that they just went on for 10+ minutes. The first one who did stop unsurprisingly was accused of being a traitor I think.
@@charlesc2095 The gulag archipelago is a work of fiction, not a work of historical fact. It's not an academic work and it doesn't have any backing for its claims other than hearsay and relying on its own authority. It has been subjected to a lot of criticism in more recent years, and Solzhenitsyn's wife herself admitted most of its contents were fictional
@@theimperialbattlemage3409 its facts that people would clap for minutes on end and that the first ones who stopped where jailed ur put in the gulag
Stalin in 1941: „where are my generals?“
Assistent: You let them be executed .
Stalin: off to the gulag you go
Stalin: Purges all doctors
Stalin: Gets stroke and has no doctors to help him and dies
Stalin: *Insert surprised Pikachu face with droopy mouth*
Normie
@Tetra
More like several million souls for one.
Khruschev: Which Doctor have you consulted??
Beria: Thats Open for Discussion
Malenkov: Well.. The Committee is deliberating.
Lazar Kaganovich: All the Best Doctors are Dead
@Иосиф Виссарионович Сталин Had to be someone with a communist banner on its account.
It's amazing how comical mass incarceration/killing can be made with cartoons like this.
Me: *Says nothing*
Stalin: go to Gulag
Me: *Exists*
Stalin: Off to the Gulag with you.
@@merrittanimation7721 Me: *Doesn't exist*
Stalin: ...... *Got to Gulag*
Me: I cough and i stop clapping....
Papa Stalin:GO TO GULAG
Me: Crosses my legs
Stalin: GULAG
Me: saying papa Stalin is great
Papa Stalin: look at the time, its time for you to go to Gulag
Stalin using different hats is absolutely the best thing I have ever seen (yes even better than the horses)
A deerstalker for taking charge of the investigation personally.
Stalin to Konstantin Rokossovsky: "You sir are now purged. Death sentence"
Operation Barbossa: *Happens*
Stalin:"For the love of Communism, save us Marshall Rokossovysky."
Rokossovsky: "So does this mean my death sentence is revoked?"
Stalin: "Nope"
Rokossovsky: "Bruh."
Except it was?
No one said "bruh" back then. Only retarded millennials and gen z-ers say that.
Nice job taking a joke literally
@@oilersridersbluejays Oh my fucking god it's a goddamn boomer.
PLEASE LEAVE THE INTERNET AND GO GRILL.
Except it was and even more-he was made "Marshal of the Soviet Union" and got a minister position in communist Poland after 1945 (because he's a native Pole)
"I hereby sentence you to death"
_sigh of relieve_
"In the Gulag"
*"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO"*
The Great Purge was a great purge
Kim Jong-un so great we won’t need another one
The Great Purge
The Great Purge 2(not necessary)
Best Purge
Says the guy too poor to take a plane.
The North Korean people aren't starving. Kim ate too many of them.
@@stephenferry3017 lmao
Stephen Ferry good diss “says the guy too poor to take a plane “ please send your poop directly to Afghanistan from this point forward .
2:20
I NEVER noticed that gun on the far right! I love these little details this channel hides!
Some say Leon Trotsky changed his name to James Bisonnette and fled to the west.
Every time the word "shot" came up in this video, it reminded me of a scene in the movie "Wrongfully Accused" with Leslie Nielsen. The scene takes place on a prison bus and one of the things it parodies is an in-flight safety instruction demonstration. The phrase "You will be shot" is said a couple of times and is accompanied by finger guns.
It reminds me of
*You are accused of anti Soviet behaviour, the court finds you guilty and sentences you to be shot*
0:09
"By a certain someone..."
*vodka sweat intensifies*
I'm frankly impressed you managed to capture Zinoviev's hair so effectively.
Still feeling the consequences of the Purge. I live in Moscow, near two former shooting ranges where collectively over 30,000 people were shot during the Great Purge
Consequences?
Bonjour, i am sorry for your experience. The conséquences you are feeling are called the epigenetics of trauma. These conséquences will affect up to your next 5 générations. I truly am sorry for you.
I thought they were shot behind the ear in the basement of the Lubyanka?
@@kemarisite Thats only on Sundays and holidays otherwise we gotta industrialize this massacre.
@@thesuddendemise7735 You need to pump those numbers.
1:19 love that the judge is just Stalin wearing a powered wig!
Imagine living during that time and all of a sudden the words "new objective: survive" just appeared
Take a shot everytime he says shot.. Oh look at that, I've drank too much
My man about to have the same blood/alcohol content as an average Russian
At least with the purge in the US was not as deadly.
I just realized the Great Purge was just the USSR’s Red Scare.
I love the Purge clock and "It was time for a purge. A Great Purge, if you will".
"Some were taken to the gulag, which was much better".
I absolutely love this youtube channel. The animations, information and humor is wonderful. Quick and gets the point across, all around awesome.
0:55 I like how the "judge" is just Stalin with a wig on lol
0:38 when is the Purge Clock gonna be available
* Someone coughs *
Stalin: Well, well, well... Looks like we got ourselves a troublemaker here...
I really like the content, as it really does a great job making history interesting for those who aren't as passionate about it.
Also, do you think you could cover the Russo-Finnish war or the Six Day War?
Oh yeah, I'm sure he's in a big hurry to do the Six-Day War.
“1934, and a man named Sergei Kirov was having a great day.” Wait for it...
I was wondering if the Kirov Ballet was named after him. Yep.
Thank you so much for including the sources to your videos! Many other history and other educational UA-cam channels tend to not include any notes or bibliographies in their description boxes.
Y'know i always wonder how much better the Soviets could've done if the purge didn't happen.
Crowding the Red Army on the frontier in June 1941 really wasn't a great move. A less - purged officer corps might have avoided it.
@@arnold3768 there were plans for an invasion but none were put into motion as of yet
@@arnold3768 There were no plans for an "invasion of Europe", and there no physical possibility of such an invasion, at least (optimistically) until 1943, more probably 1950. The Soviet army was an absolute shambles, and honestly couldn't even have invaded Finland. And, not only did Germany know it, Germany counted on it!
The story you are telling is the nazi version where, as usual, the nazis were only invading all of Europe in self defense.
(Fighting terrorism in the Danzig corridor! GWOT is old as Moses.)
Also, IIRC Hitler didn't beat Stalin.
If the Mensheviks had won this wouldn't have happened. Too bad Lenin, Stalin, and Trotsky won.
@@bozo5632 Are you kidding? Read 'The Chief Culprit' Viktor Suvorov - former GRU Naval Institute Press 2008. He details meticiously the reds were moving tanks, finalizing advance air strips and large troop transport right up to the night of 21st June - Stalin planned to hit Hitler mid-July which is why he kept downplaying a German attack. What other reason is their for the mass encirclements west of Minsk in the first 3 weeks of the war. Stalin was hoping Hitler would give an ultimatum - a real warning. His details are truly encyclopedic
I love how when he talks about people being tried he has Stalin wearing a wig
Whoa, didn’t catch that.
If the purge didn't happen, the invasion of USSR by Nazi Germany was easy to counter and the loss of civilian lives could have been saved.
Nikita Khrushchev.
Detective Stalin holding the “I got this” literally made me lol
JUST LOOK AT THE TIME! Also, Stalin in a Sherlock Holmes hat is just classic, amazing humor.
Wow it reminds me of Animal Farm when Napoleon puts a bunch if piggies to trial, accusing them of working with Snowball even though Snowball was already exiled.
Indeed, but what's funny is America did the exact same thing in the second red scare. Communism and Capitalism are fucked.
It SHOULD remind you of Animal Farm, since Animal Farm is a satire of the Soviet Union, focused largely on Stalin's rule (having been published in 1945)
Socialist or not, you can't deny Stalin was absolutely horrible.
@So'mn
Yeah they refuse to acknowledge that Stalin was just as bad as Hitler.
Communists say that only Hitler was bad.
And thats the sad thing here...
They don't learn from history.
I once did believe Stalin's acts were understandable and were for the Good of the USSR. I obviously don't since Stalin was absolutely deplorable in his acts. The only good thing he did was Industrialize the everloving shit out of Russia.
Communism allowed Stalin to do that. Thats the problem here
@@abdirahmanidris290Capitalist governments such as the USA also allowed military coups and installed dictators such as pol pot who murdered millions of people that’s the problem here
That mustache though.
*chef’s kiss*
"Certain Someone". LOVE IT!
I'm proud of what this channel has become, keep it up. It really helps me at history ( of course ) and I only get 9,10 and sometimes 8 because of this amazing channel. You helped me a lot man, for that I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart :D
Yes, it's surprising how effective these little segments can be as primers. Obviously one can say only so much in 3 minutes, but they're very efficient.
I died when Stalin was the judge but didn't really even try to hide that he was still, well, Stalin. He only had the wig on! XD
I need a moment to process how such a serious topic could be delivered in such an entertaining and funny way.
The delivery of this video in particular is on point.
That damned certain someone
Don't you mean *our* purge
Our comment!
@@chronikhiles He is supposed to share those likes!
Smh 😂
oh well to late *shot
1:38
I genuinely can't tell whether you are being sarcastic or not 😂
1:38 Here is a little joke which was told to me by a polish man:
When Stalin was walking through a crowd that was cheering him a little boy approached him and asked for an autograph.
Stalin lifted the boy, turned him around and gave him a hard kick on his butt so he fell face down on the ground.
When the boy looked at him shocked Stalin says: Be happy, I could've shot you.
An alternative punchline might be "Are you an orphan? I love them so much I've made millions of them."
It would've been a much better joke if the boy was the one who said "at least he didn't shoot me".
2:06 fucking killed me lmao
You people should know one simple fact. The so called great purge, was so famous even inside the USSR, especially, after Chrushchev speech about "the cult of personality", solely because it was targeting the highest echelons of the soviet state. In other words, those, who could scream the loudest (others, for instance, the whole of russian peasantry didn't have such a voice and perished quietly). The communist party members, bureaucrats, high-ranking officers and so on. It is in no way, the most horrible, or the most massive, or the most influential act of terror against Russia and russians (as well as all the other nationalities) by the communist regime. Even long before Stalin came to power, the blade of their terror was swinging across my long-suffering motherland. First they came for their political opponents i.e. monarchists, liberals, soft socialists, as well as all of the so-called oppressors of the old regime (aristocracy, clergy, burgers, business owners). Then they came for intelligentsia. Then they destroyed russian peasantry first by outright killing (including using chemical weapons during the rebellions in central russia), and then via collectivization and starvation of the peasantry (contrary to the famous "holodomor" myth, those starving weren't only ukrainians, but a whole lot of russians from kuban, volga as well as a lot of other regions). Then they started to prosecute those who weren't leftist enough, or weren't poor enough, or were just competent in their professions and were a target of envy and smear and slander (check the famous court cases against engineers or medics). Only after all of these (and I haven't counted even a half of it) did the great purge happened. Only after millions and millions of people killed, starved, tortured to death did the dragon started to bite its own tail. The communist regime was the worst thing happened to my poor country. Not even Hitler's invasion brought so much suffering and calamity. Do not go red, kids. Better dead, than red. They are monsters.
Yeah, those peasants were so happy under the previous, imperial regime. Taken full care of, receiving proper medical care and education.
Communists did a lot of good things for the poor majority of Russia, but like you said, you wouldn't know it from the tales of the Russian Empire, because they were told by those who could speak the loudest: the merchants and noblemen minority.
Obviously, today the reds are outdated, and we have moved to the next, slightly less worse thing.
You should do a video specifically about Trostsky's assassination
This seems like a mistake in this video - he wasn't shot in prison.
"Stalin has fallen unconscious, call doctor!"
"Yes, if only we hadn't gotten rid of all those really excellent doctors."
-Paraphrasing _The Death of Stalin_
"All the best doctors are in the gulag. Or dead."
I absolutely love your channel, information is clear and interesting. Also your sense of humor and graphic design is awesome! 2:19 - I can see that gun coming from behind >_> :D
Soviet citizens: EXIST
Stalin: HOW ABOUT NO
Polish Operation of the NKVD in 1937-1938. Almost 140.000 sentenced, over 110.000 executed just for being Polish or "Polish" as some of the executed were not ethnically Polish but had some relation with Polish culture or Polish-sounding name.
0:11 - "he also may have been put up to it by a CERTAIN SOMEONE" 🤣 It gets me every time! Also love the hilarious sign captions the characters hold; reminds me of Wile E. Coyote! I use these videos for my history class, and the students get a kick out of them! Thanks!
The focus was not only on Ukrainians or Polish, but on Belarusians as well. "Night of shot poets", 30 October 1937, they killed more than 100 Belarusian poets, writers and artists (Ukrainians have a similar disastrous event in their history around the same time).
For once I don't think I really learned anything new, but a very fine quick overview of the purges.
Great work as always.
I love your channel. Wonderful history. I love the animation and signs you use
"BY A CERTAIN SOMEONE"🤣🤣🤣
1:14 I immediately thought that this Yezhov guy was gonna get shot eventually. I was right.
the great terror you say?
robespierre: did someone call me?
The population of the USSR at the time was around 200 million. That works out to around 0.5%.
For comparison, that would be proportionate to executing everyone in Wyoming, Vermont, Alaska, and still needing to get started on North Dakota.
👀
The great purge wasn't by far the biggest Stalinist mass murder, but it is the most well known because it was public and among it's victims were famous and privileged party and military leaders.
Great job! Fast and informative.
That had to be the best introduction ever for an history video
Simply Barbaric.
Stalin after the purge: “hyuck, I’ll do it again”
Wait did he?
This was a surprisingly good summary of this topic. Great job!
I especially like you mentioned that the ethnic minorities were specifically targeted, it's an often overlooked side of Stalinist terror. The only thing I would add is that Poles were already targeted before the USSR's expansion in '39, during the so-called "Polish Operation" of the NKVD, started by the Order № 00485 issued on August 11, 1937. Ethnic Koreans were also targeted, although they were victims of forceful resettlement rather than killing or sending to the Gulag. Of course, terrible conditions during those deportations also caused many to die.
This is mostly beyond the scope of the topic of this video, but similar mass deportations later awaited others; from Poles and Germans again, to the basically entirety of Crimean Tatar, Chechen and Ingush peoples.
There were Chinese too who were taken because they innocently, drawn to the autumnal beauty of Russia wandered past the Manchurian frontier. Never seen that Polish cleansing operation - many thanks.
You can add Kalmyks to the list.
Only now their numbers is close to that at the beggining of 20th century.
Same with the Latvians and Ukrainians as well over 16,000 Latvians where shot while the Ukrainians had a death toll of 100,000
But why minorities specifically. What threat did Stalin see in them
@@enderreaper1482 The 20th century was so hot on "racial superiority"
1:39 One of those sent to the Gulag was Sergei Korolev, the Russian rocket genius. Only he wasn’t recognized as a rocket genius until later, when Von Braun &co defected to the USA. Then Korolev was rehabilitated and put to work, kicking off the Space Race. Unfortunately, his health had been fatally weakened by his mistreatment, and he died before the Soviets could land a man on the moon.
But given the great secrecy surrounding his very existence, the USA didn’t actually discover that the Soviet moon shot had sputtered to a stop until they had already landed a man on the moon.
I love the angry self portrait of stalin the court😂
Hollywood: Releases the Purge Movies.
Stalin: I am not impressed.
Ah yes the famous "Everyone dies in five years" plan.
My great grandfather was one of the Ukrainians thrown in the "gulag", but he escaped through England and here I am today.
One bizarre historical tangent to this process was that purged / disgraced / imprisoned / executed people who formerly had appeared in photos or in publications had to be "erased"...so photos were retouched so that they were no longer visible, or their photos were cut out of books or magazines in libraries, or if that wasn't easy to do, their images were blacked out in some way. There are multiple examples of this that can be found.
Imagine if there were no purges and the USSR still had many of its talented commanders at the beginning of the Second World War
Isn’t Sergei the guy who was in the pic-
*BANG*
One of the Red Armys most decorated and celebrated war heroes Konstantin Rokkosovksy was himself purged and put in the hands of the NKVD where he was tortured. When Germany invaded in 1941 he like many other officers where reinstated and later he went on to plan and execute Operation Uranus where the german 6th Army was encircled and trapped in Stalingrad.
Soviets can be dumb sometimes
So the Soviet authorities reinstated someone who had been falsely purged and that individual ended up being hugely successful and instrumental in the war effort? Hardly a point against them.
@@theimperialbattlemage3409 he died in 1968.
@@Narekz What's your point? The vast majority of people who were purged weren't executed lol, they were sentenced to prison. Rokosovskky was one of those people that was freed as a result of Beria's investigations and amnesties after Yezhov's arrest.
@@theimperialbattlemage3409 I just wanted to give a side fact . I was literally off topic. What I meant is that he wasn't sent back afterwards
Stalin: It's always time for a Purge.
Trotsky was one of the leaders of the Bolshevik coup. He was quite famous among Soviet people.
Petitioned to have the characters from history matters as leader portraits in hoi4