This episode was hard to write, mainly because of the ambiguity that this topic is still clouded in today. There are no convlusive answers as to why Stalin did what he did, and why he stopped doing what he was doing in 1938. This episode features some of the explanations of the purges and the Great Terror. This certainly is a remarkable piece of Soviet History, and one that would dramatically influence the performance of the Red Army in 1939 and beyond. Those who followed our World War Two series know that already in December '39, the direct consequences of the purges in '37 and '38 are gigantic. I would also like to note here that we would like the comment section to stick to factual debate. cheers, Joram *RULES OF CONDUCT* STAY CIVIL AND POLITE we will delete any comments with personal insults, or attacks. AVOID PARTISAN POLITICS AS FAR AS YOU CAN we reserve the right to cut off vitriolic debates. HATE SPEECH IN ANY DIRECTION will lead to a ban. RACISM, XENOPHOBIA, OR SLAMMING OF MINORITIES will lead to an immediate ban. PARTISAN REVISIONISM, ESPECIALLY HOLOCAUST AND HOLODOMOR DENIAL will lead to an immediate ban.
My professor has an interesting argument that the Spanish Civil War played a part in the purge. I'm going to shorten what he said. Stalin was afraid of a united Capitalist front to go against the Soviet Union. When the British and French didn't intervene in the Spanish Civil War on the side of the Spanish Republicans, as the Soviet did, Stalin was growing suspicious that if Germany's enemies didn't intervene to stop the Spanish Nationalists, they (the Allies) might be conspiring with Germany against Stalin.
@@armyjacky96 I've heard a similar argument concerning the Spanish civil war. After all, the civil war started as a rightist coup by a leading general against the government, which was supported by Italy and Germany. Exactly the kind of scenario Stalin feared happening
Time Ghost, What is your opinion about "the ice breaker" of Viktor Suvorov? I know he is considered controversial, but he has an unconventional opinion about Stalin and his role in WWII...
Stalin might have stopped killing his supposed enemies when he decided to adhere the Baltic states. Marxism/Commmunism, being a one party govt, and having one supreme ruler was the inly system the Russians and later the Soviets knew. These people would never understand what true freedom means until the fall of the system. Russia was ruled by an authoritarian system for centuries, so it was easier to just remove one ruler and get to business with another authoritarian ruler. Lenin, before his death warned the Party about Stalin, but the latter just eliminated them.
Russian joke from 1937: The 18# Congress of Soviets is held in Moscow, Stalin is in the middle of his speech. Stalin: Who sneezed in the conference room? - Nobody dares to answer. A group of NKVD officers storm the conference room and machine gun the first row of the Soviet delegates. Stalin: l will ask again. Who sneezed in the conference room? - Still, nobody dares to answer. The NKVD troops machine gun the second row. Stalin: l will ask one last time: who sneezed in the conference room? - An old, 70 year old cole miner steps forward in fear: it was me Josif Vissarionovič. Stalin smiles and says: Bless you, Nikolaj Nikolajevič! He resumes his speech...
@leo white Oh, yeah, such men are really monsters, and to a millenial who's infatuated with Marx, Karl that is, I'd say "I'm sure you could find better friends than *that*!", as in these guys are really bad news.
The way Indy starts raising his voice and speaks with more and more intensity near the end of these videos brings a chill to my spine each and every time.
I'm a big fan of how these videos always end on a deeply unsettling note about the horrors to come before Indy adjusts his tie and thanks the sponsors in a completely ordinary voice without cutting. Its both a nice dramatic touch and oddly reassuring.
In a segment in the excellent documentary film "Shostakovich Against Stalin," Veniamin Basner related an account told to him by the composer Dmitri Shostakovich during the Great Terror, where Shostakovich was being questioned by a inspector named Zakovsky at NKVD headquarters. At one point, Zakovsky asked Shostakovich: "Do you know Tukkachevsky?" "Yes, I know him," Shostakovich responded. Then Zakovsky asked: "And what about the plot to assassinate Comrade Stalin?" At that point, Shostakovich's blood ran cold; his voice was paralyzed and he was unable to speak, realizing that he was falling under the bloody wheel of Stalin's purge. Shostakovich was then instructed by Zakovsky (this incident occured on a Saturday) to go home and to come back on Monday for further questioning. As people were disappearing around him all the time, he felt this was the end. Saying goodbye to his wife and family, certain in the knowledge that he would never see them again, he arrived back at NKVD headquarters, and asked to see Zakovsky as he had been directed. The soldier on duty, going through the lists, informed Shostakovich that Investigator Zakovsky couldn't see him that day, that Shostakovich should go home, and that someone would let him know when Zakovsky would see him. Only later did Shostakovich find out that Zakovsky himself had been denounced and arrested the previous day. Thus, the life of one of the greatest composers of the twentieth century was saved from near-certain death, although it was hardly the end of the ordeals Shostakovich was to suffer under the Soviet regime.
I've been listening the last quartets of Shostakovich these days, and wow they are obscure and sad. From now on, I'll always think of those quartets as the soundtrack of the Purge.
José Miguel Lema - My favorite quartet of his is the 8th. It feels for me in Shostakovich’s series of quartets to be the parallel of Beethoven Op. 131 in c# minor. The rhythmic motif of three successive eighth notes, which is repeated over and over again at the beginning of the 4th movement, is supposed to represent the knock at the door of the NKVD agents coming to take you away in the night. Please check out the UA-cam program of the film “Shostakovich Against Stalin,” the link to which I will post in the reply to this post.
ua-cam.com/video/irYM2VcBv4A/v-deo.html. Especially look at the film montage which accompanies the performance of the Scherzo of Symphony No. 8 at 44 min 10 sec into the documentary.
@@johnperez6069 Hey, I also love the 8th, I discovered it some weeks ago only, but I've listening to it daily :) I also think that have some similarities with Beethoven's last quartets, that feeling of introspection, old age and melancholy. I already see Shostakovich Against Stalin because of your first comment, thank you!
Indy's best tie yet. A spectacular number that combines well with the shirt, but let's be honest, the tie would be the star of the show in any setting. 5/5
Killing Tukachevsky probably cost Stalin at least a million men. Tukachevsky was a strategic genius, the guy who was trying to bring the Red Army into the modern era with his idea of mobile infantry and focus on tanks, killing and the killing most of the experienced people in the red army was one of the biggest self-inflicted wounds in the history by any country. This was a great episode Indy, more than 80 years later and we are still wondering why Stalin had done this, no one knows for sure. On the side note, I know this episode is heavy and the unknown that died in his purges deserves a voice, but I am sad that you didn't mention, my Hero of the soviet union, Konstantin Rokossovsky. The polish-born soviet general, who was arrested, tortured and imprisoned until the start of WW2 who would later replace the void left by Mikael Tukachevsky, and go on to play a key role in the Battle of Stalingrad and Battle of Kursk, and the key person who executes the stunning success like Operation Bagration.
Eh. Getting Thukachevski was bad, but on the other hand it wasn't like he was the most major creator of their new doctrine. In fact some attribute most of the actual work to a group arround an old Bolshevik general who of course got purged during the purges because his revolutionary credentials were too good. And then even though generals like Roskovsky were being released he sat out the war in Gulag making him mad salty he sat it out. And if anyone could make a military conspiracy Thucavhevsky probably had most trust and influence. So it's still a waste of a good offcier, but not THAT much of a waste. Also the real reason for poor Red Army performance was likely not even culling all the generals, but that trust between ranks was lost so nobody dared make any corrections to plans in fear of getting NKVD on their case. And that's not something leaving one man alive would have solved.
"Tukachevsky was a strategic genius" No. He wasn't. In all the battles he won, he had a huge numerical superiority and a poorly organized and armed enemy. When meeting with the not-so-strong Polish army, he was defeated primarily because of his tactical and strategic mistakes. And his "new doctrine" was neither new nor his.
@@MsKulom Okay, let's be fair to him with the Poland thing, he was forced to command that fight from MOSCOW. And in the field he had all sorts of commanders like Stalin that could and would do whatever they pleased due to their political standing. So he hardly had a great deal of control over what happened there. But on the other hand, yes, his reputation like some other Soviet commanders was kinda overblown later.
You bring up an excellent point. Stalin was there at ground level when an upstart Communist movement overturned the Tsar. He saw firsthand what a dissident could accomplish if a state was destabilized by a war. In all those people, he saw potential Lenins and Stalins.
That´s actually a good point. However, the Communists were a well-known organization in Russia at the time. They may have operated illegally, but it´s not like no one knew who they were. The Great Terror was more about hunting ghosts and phantoms than actual enemies. It probably did it´s job in scaring people enough to fall in line, but the cost in reduced economic, cultural and military capabilities most likely wasn´t worth it.
"Psychic vampire counter revolutionaries. They're invading our children's MINDS, folks. They want to rape and destroy. I don't like that they're puttings things in the water to screw with the revolution, to make frogs gay! I don't like it! It makes me mad, I'm a man, ARRRRRRGH!!1one"
Just noticed how the light bulbs in the case to the left are gradually going out as the series progresses. Almost like a countdown to World War 2. Neat.
I recall absolutely heartbreaking story of husband and wife having a hunch that armed man in black car will come for them at night soon (they always made their arrests in night) and husband calmly sitting at the kitchen and telling his wife to write a report on him to NKVD, thus sparing at least her from horrors of GULAG.
"The Way Back" with Ed Harris and Collin Farrel is about a guy who is sent to gulag camp and he is "betrayed" by his wife. His wife were tortured before she agreed to accused him for bullshit crimes against communism gouvermant.
The Russian people. - Exploited like cattle, cheap cannonfodder by the Tsars - Starved, forced cannonfodder, executed as traitors by the Soviet Union - Humilated on unbelievable levels and murdered by the Nazis And still people ask why the Russians are so paranoid and resilient to human suffering!
@@obelic71 I mean when I think about Russians and slavs essentially also, suffered all throughout history. Mongols, Tsardom, invasions and poverty, Soviet Union, starvation, Nazis, Stalin being paranoid and evil af, NKVD, the fall of the Soviet union and now again under emperor Putin xD . I mean I was wondering why russian novels are so dark and depressing, but when you see it this way, yeah pretty much explains it.
@@firstnamelastname-uw6vq And that is also the reason lots of foreign countries are afraid of "Russia" They can't be made to suffer they invented suffering and enduring it
@@obelic71 yes, I'm russian myself. Last 120 years of our history is a complete clusterfuck with very brief moments of ease, and people wonder why russians are so grim and rude.
If history were a Greek Tragedy, Moscow would have been conquered while the leaderless Red Army sent an endless stream of reports of failure and Stalin would have been captured and executed by the ally he should never have trusted. Then in a separate play (unity of location is a thing) Hitler would have been in Berlin when it got the destroyed by a weapon designed by a German Jew he'd driven away. Unfortunately, among the perfections of God is not found a perfect sense of irony.
Last summer I visited the last Gulag that can be visited in Russian, Perm-36, near the Russian city of Perm. The fact that it is in the middle of nowhere already gives a gloomy sight. Because of Russian nationalism is might close down...
The soviets ended the GULAG system because it was too expensive to operate. All those prison camps cost more to operate than they could generate through slave labor.
I would suggest You to look up Danzig Baldaev " Drawings from the gulag " to get a graphic picture of what was going on inside the GULAG system. Baldaev was guard who worked for many years in those camps.
He really should have seen it comming given that he was hardly the first of the Stalin's AXE MEN who would go under the same AXE they wielded as soon as Stalin wanted to let matters cool down. The only one that escaped Stalin was Beria, and only because Stalin died before he got tired of him... only for Khruschev and Zukov/Military to AXE him with a pretty much similar trumped up charges on which his predecessors went. This is not saying Beria was clean, oooh no. But the things he was in the end judged for read more like someone decided to convict him for EVERYTHING in Soviet book of crimes.
Блажо Ђуровић That was a generally accepted point of view until Beria’s rose garden was dug up in the ‘90s and they found where he buried the women and girls he killed.
Likewise Eisenstein. The opening credit of Alexander Nevsky is actually very subversive. 'Russia, recovering from the Mongol onslaught face a new enemy" = "USSR, recovering from the Great Terror, face a new enemy"
I'm glad you mentioned that some ethnic minorities were among the groups especially targeted during the terror. You already talked a bit about it in episode 009 of the WW2 series 'Stalin's Murderous Adventures', but it's always good to mention it more, as not many people seem to know about it. The ordinary victims of the purges, in general, are overshadowed by the high-ranked Party members and Red Army officers and persecuting people because of their ethnicity is wrongly thought to be one of the things differentiating the Nazis from the Soviets.
Lar M and cultural revolution. The deaths of Stalin and Mao were the best things to happen to those politburos and the States in general-all things considered.
Your two series on the world wars have been full of details that were new to me, and thanks for that. Between Two Wars, however, has told me of whole events I never knew about. It's been a great education.
Proabably not. Germany would have to fight Britain and France again. It's not like they'll just be kicked off the continent. Hitler is clearly just trying to make Germany an equal power again.
A question was once asked as too who was the best German general in ww2. And I have to say that without a doubt it was Comrade Stalin. For no enemy of the Soviet Union had achieved such devastating results against the soviet military and it's people.
Poland killed 17 thousand Wehrmacht soldiers in 36 days (472 people a day). France and allies killed 50,000 Axis soldiers in 43 days (1,163 people a day). The USSR killed 383 thousand Axis soldiers (1984 people per day) in 193 days (1941). The allies after the opening of the second front killed 340 thousand German soldiers in 216 days (1944), which gives 1,574 people a day. Moreover, the Allies had numerical, technical and material superiority over the enemy, in contrast to the Red Army in 1941.
Just to be clear Stalin like Hitler and Churchill was a deeply flawed human being. The USSR's victory in the war is largely because he started to listen to his generals rather than remove them. If Hitler had done that the war could have been longer if Churchill had it could have been shorter !
Firstly, Stalin was not incompetent in military matters (compared the non-professionals) - this is just a myth. Secondly, the leader of the nation (subjective factor) cannot have much influence on the course of the global war (objective).
@@Mentol_ If Hitler had a top spy in the Soviet Government he could not have picked a better man than Stalin. He blundered and blundered even Hitler after the Red Army killings thought him mad! That is why Trotsky was murdered and Tukhachevsky. They would have halved the USSR's casualtys. Trotsky would have prevented the Working Class callapse in Germany and Hitler and WW2!
Another excellent and interesting and necessary video. Thank you for all the time and effort that the Time Ghost Army devotes to all the videos that they produce!!
Latvian guy Sadly, it’s true. There was a short period when the officials seemed to begin reversing their attitude; but now we have kgb people at the top - and they see themselves descendants of Stalin’s nkvd, not its victims.
Nobody but us Germans and the Italians has really come clean as to what they did in WW2. Japan has yet to acknowledge Unit 731 and the crimes they committed in Manchuria and the Russians still praise Stalin like he was a fucking hero. It's all very disgusting.
It`s the state propaganda of todays Russia that wants depict Soviet Unions actions during WW2 as pure, justfied and holy although in reality the Soviets did at least the same amount of horrible things as nazis.
@Troy Staunton Not only money. Also political gains. Russia justifies both internal and foreign policy on ideology which glorifies the Soviet part in WW2.
Fun Fact: Nikolai Yezhov, who was head of the NKVD during the height of the great purge and personally engaged in torture and killing of his victims, lamented the stagnate pools of blood in the execution/torture chambers. Seeing a problem that needed a solution, he directed that these rooms be built with a sloping floor of his own design so the blood and gore could be hosed down after executions. How's that for trailblazing a "LEAN" concept to enhance efficiency? The concept of Karma being a real bitch comes into play as Yezhov falls into disfavor in 1939 and in 1940 is tried, convicted and sentenced to death. He was dragged out of his cell, kicking, screaming and crying and thrown into one of his own designed execution chambers where an NKVD officer blew his brains out. A most fitting and telling end to one of Stalin's many monsters.
I have watched all of the inter war episodes you guys have made… it is a shame that we have reached the end! Thank you guys for making history fun and enjoyable!
I love the subtle set changes for each episode..for this one, the 'speak no evil' piece is tipped, and the mein kampf book has disappeared from under the skull. The beverage has changed to vodka.
When we consider the reasons for the Great Terror carried out by Stalin one possible contributing reason was that the Russian Revolution happened during World War 1 and maybe Stalin worried that something similar could happen in the potential/inevitable coming war. Excellent video once again.
I noticed one of the three skeletons sitting on the desk behind Indy has fallen over. I suppose it too was purged by the NKWD who left its bones to rot next to that old school lamp. ;-)
I recommend the movie Stalin with Rovert Duvall. With the way he acts I believe it is probably a very accurate portrayal of Stalins personality. At the end Viria, or whatever his name was said let him suffer when Stalin was on his deathbed. Stalin opens his eye to look at him and he gets on his knees and kisses his hand really fast.
Have you watched the film "Feast of Belshazzar. Night with Stalin" in 1989.? It is about 1935-36 before the start of repression. Perhaps there are no English subtitles on it.
@08:23 Stalin's not always clear in his directives, and his people have to guess at what is meaning is. I'm not sure but I think I heard something along similar lines in the documentary Nazis A Lesson From History. Hitler gave very vague directions and then would set different departments in competition with one another. This made his administration remarkably chaotic and inefficient. I wonder if that's a trait you find amongst other dictators as well.
@@Ba-gb4br Also it fit in with Hitler's concept of survival of the fittest. He believed if you put two or three people in competition the strongest will prevail.
@@unbearable9770 Nazism and Bolshevism were both perversions of Darwinism. The third great perversion of Darwinism that powerfully influenced the 20th century and today was the social Darwinism than found its ultimate expression in Ayn Rand: capitalism as survival of the fittest, in which the poor and unfortunate have proved themselves inferior and should be allowed to starve for the benefit of the more productive.
@@juanpaz5124 I agree, That would have probably defeated the Soviets. Hitler and others underestimated the Soviet Union because of the Soviets humiliating defeat by Finland. But it really was the Russian winter(Germany's lack of preparedness for it) that lost it. Hitler only wanted to take the western area of the Soviet Union, which was 90% accomplished.
> His purged almost cost him to lose the war. Poland killed 17 thousand Wehrmacht soldiers in 36 days (472 people a day). France and allies killed 50,000 Axis soldiers in 43 days (1,163 people a day). The USSR killed 383 thousand Axis soldiers (1984 people per day) in 193 days (1941). The allies after the opening of the second front killed 340 thousand German soldiers in 216 days (1944), which gives 1,574 people a day. Moreover, the Allies had numerical, technical and material superiority over the enemy, in contrast to the Red Army in 1941. > Hitler and others underestimated the Soviet Union The winter war did not affect the preparation of the Barbarossa operation. This was an attempt to deprive England of her last hope of victory in the war. Thus, Soviet policy was not influenced by Hitler’s decision to start a war in the east. > Soviets humiliating defeat by Finland. USSR won winter war. > But it really was the Russian winter that lost it. nice propaganda.
@M M B yeah Vietnam is going through a pretty positive economic miracle right now, despite the pandemic. Pretty impressive I'd say. USA on the other hand is definitely struggling right now. It has been hit the hardest and because of its failure to hold down the virus, it is now going through a economic crisis, coupled with a climate crisis (hurricanes are a bitch), racial crisis, and unemployment. Not sure how the US is going to pull out of this one, it never has faced this many crises all at the same time and at once. The ignorance of the American population will probably be its downfall. Nobody in the US took the virus seriously until it was too late, and even now there are many that are too stubborn and selfish to even wear masks in public despite it being enforced into law. What a damn mess. But hey, if the US does pull out of it and recover fast enough to res secure its global throne before China takes hold of it, then that will be one hell of a surprise.
@M M B Yes I sincerely hope the US will eventually sort its shit out, I fear the Chinese are growing more and more powerful both economically and militarily.
In the biography of William Stephenson, "A Man Called Intrepid", there is a reference to the military purge being engineered by a novel disinformation campaign created by Reinhold Heydrich specifically to decapitate the Red Army. (Stephenson himself is a Canadian businessman who is regarded as the creator of the modern 'integrated intelligence' system, the idea that intelligence can not only be used as an information gathering tool but also can be used as a weapon.)
My high school history teacher told us that there were forged documents found by Czechoslovakian counter intelligence in CS (planted by Germany). Believeing them to be genuine CS government passed them on to Soviets.
It is a common error to think all evil leaders are stupid or "just sick". Often they are very smart but use their talents to do weird things (it seems weird or stupid to us that is).
Due to relations between Russia and Finland, the matter of Finnish victims of the purge is not often discussed, even though people of Finnish ethnicity were disproportionally targeted. According to non-fiction writer Jukka Rislakki about half of all Soviet citizens who stood trial were executed, while more than 80% of all Finns, Estonians and Poles who stood trial were executed. In the mass graves of Krasnyi bor, Sandarmoh and Levashovo are buried tens of thousands of Finns, Ingrian Finns and American Finns. Muistakaa.
I think that Stalin was so paranoid he was scared of his life, even to the point he could be thinking that *they* (his enemies) are going to start a civil war against him
I actually think this is a rather good argument as to why Stalin carried out the purge. Getting rid of all the potential troublemakers before something major happens. Stalin did seem to have tried it already a few years before, but he didn't seem to have had the power back then. Further I would like to point out that the massacre of Red army officers wasn't as bad as some people think. It was bad, don't get me wrong, but it was not the only reason the Red Army would preform so abysmally in 1941. The 1930's Red Army seems to have been a poorly trained mess, regardless of the purges. It wasn't that well funded either, nor that well equipped. Sure, they build a lot of tanks and bi-planes, but so many other equipment was lacking. Trucks, radio's etc, the not glamorous stuff. Further the peace time and war mobilisation strengths where being increased during the purges and plenty of young officers where actually entering the army while others being purged or shot by the NKVD. The problem was that a lot of teachers where also shot, thus reducing standards. Standards that don't seem to have been that high before the purges. Finally the Red Army seems to also have been seriously short of junior officers as well, regardless of the large influx. However, the standard WW2 field manual and the Deep Battle doctrine where established by 1936, before Tukhachevsky was arrested and shot. Neither do these seem to have been disputed much. The Red army seems to have continued the Deep Battle doctrine, they just where completely incapable of preforming it in the field. That wasn't really different before the purges. The problem seems to have been not so much a lack of doctrine or competent officers because of the purges, but a combination of poor training of both soldiers and officers, poor equipment and a lot of shortages, poor planning in terms of army size and growth, general shortage of officers and a command structure incapable of actually carrying out the pre-war plans. I get the feeling that a lot of post WW2 Soviet commanders decided to blame Stalin for their failures and ignore the systematic failures the Red Army was suffering from. Almost as if they where doing the same thing the German generals did by blaming Hitler for everything. But Indy, I suspect you are doing some research about something big that might start off in June. Have you read Alexander Hill, The Red Army and the Second World war? I got a lot of information from that book and I would recommend it. It is recent and quite information packed. Personally I found it a bit frustrating to read the war coverage part because it is jammed with all kinds of supplementary information around the fighting. It makes reeding just a chapter a bit of a grind. For the WW2 coverage however that might actually be somewhat beneficial because it creates some additional circumstances. The first few chapters however make quite a strong argument about a lot of pre WW2 issues inside the Red Army, on top of which came the purge. Further at least the hard cover has a usable index for some specific searching. That might also help.
One group that was almost completely exterminated were former Finnish Red Guard officers who'd made a career in the Red Army. Men like Alenksanteri Vasten, Verneri Lehtimäki and Aleks Tuorila had experience of fighting in the snowy conditions of Karelia and Finland. Come the winter war, that experience could have served the soviets well.
Indeed. An example of how desperate the Red Army was while looking for any finnish officers left would be the case of Toivo Vähä, who was pulled from Death Row to work for the so-called Finnish People's Army.
One thing this topic makes me think of, was that Stalin was surrounded by fellow revolutionaries. If they were his allies why would he be so worried? But they did know how to fight in a civil war.
Why would he fear fellow revolutiinaries?... But they did know how to fight in a civil war. "but?" - how do the two sentences connect? 'makes me' (present tense); 'was that' (past tense).
I watched this at the beginning of the day but I've come back to it and the end. While I've studied some history I haven't into this part of it in depth. I feel there's I only have one word for it, chilling.
this somewhat reminds me of the Inquisition in the 1500's , records from the Lisbon Holy Tribunal show that only 4% of complaints and/or suspected cases went to trial, most were neighbors oggling the next door property
Purges and terrors like this have always been a risk in large societies with powerful governments. Wherever great power exists, the temptation to abuse it has existed. 1500 years before the Inquisition, Rome had the purges of Tiberius/Sejanus, Caligula, and Nero, which went about the same way.
Stalin my boi you must choose a path Path 1: Get right with god and be a priest and preach the good word Path 2: Be a monster and murder millions Stalin:👀👀👀
One of the best Timeghost episodes. This was a truly bizarre episode in Russian, Soviet, or any history. Here was the USSR, faced with a rabid, hostile, and threatening German enemy, surrounded by countries that it views as inherently hostile by virtue of being capitalist. And yet they gut their armed forces by executing or imprisoning virtually the entire military leadership. In many contexts Stalin sometimes appears rational, albeit malevolent. But here, he appears irrational. There is no evidence of any bonapartist tendencies in the Soviet Army and by all accounts it did not threaten Stalin's power over the regime and country. I very much appreciate that Timeghost did not try to whitewash this strange happening as some You Tube (and other) historians have tried to do. Excellent work, folks; makes me happy to be a Specialist in the TGA.
@@PejmanMan Many have argued that his actions in Ukraine met the definition of genocide. He also carried out smaller genocides against minority groups like the Cossacks and Tatars, and practiced ethnic cleansing on probably the greatest scale in human history both before and after WW2. He deported so many Balts to Siberia and replaced them with ethnic Russians that ethnic Russians actually became a majority in Estonia, where they had been a tiny minority before 1940.
@@PejmanMan Stalin did infact persecute certain ethnic groups like Crimean Tatars, Chechen and in 1937-38 purgers all people who were ethnically from neighbouring countries like Finns, Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Poles also Germans. Also the artificially created famines in Ukraine to smother Ukrainian nationalism. If thats not genocide than I dont no what is
@@hendriktonisson2915 Well Russians made up a bulk of the victims, and Stalin was not Russian, so it can be called a genocide - or not. Its a tricky subject because the catalyst was not the race of people.
Two things come to mind. First, a quote from Charles C Sharp's Soviet Order of Battle in WWII, Vol. 1: "He [Marshal Budyenny] summed up the purge succinctly when he reassured one of his staff: ' - don't worry, they're only killing the smart ones.' " Second, I remember reading in one of the histories that soon after the start of Barbarossa disaster, Stalin went to his dacha and awaited arrest. When the officials showed up, it wasn't to arrest him but to ask him what they should do which implies the utterly complete success of the purge with regards leaving anyone who would even think of deposing him.
The Russian Orthodox Church was nearly exterminated by Stalin. It had been the object of severe persecution from the beginning of the Communist era. But the persecution reached its zenith during Stalin's Terror when, according to Richard Pipes "Communism a History," 168,000 clergy, were arrested, with 106,000 being executed. Almost all of the others ended up in the Gulags where they were subjected to especially brutal treatment even by the standards of the time. The total number of persons murdered for their religious faith is not known with estimates varying. But even the most conservative estimates rank in the many millions and some place the number at over ten million. Most were members of the ROC for which Stalin harbored a deep personal hatred. By 1941 on the eve of the Hitler's invasion there were less than 150 churches and only one monastery still open in the entire USSR. Every single bishop save one, who had attended the 1917 Sobor died either by execution or in prison. Today these millions of "New Martyrs" are commemorated on 25 January (7 February new calendar) by the Orthodox Church.
Napoleon Bonaparte, Empereur des Français you’re trolling too. That, or this is the first time I’ve heard an atheist claim that religious people want to exterminate them. Honestly, I hope it’s the latter, cause that’s hilarious
The Soviet Union early on eliminated the "bourgeois" definition of crimes that had dominated the justice system since Tsarist times. From the early 1920's forward , the law defined a crime as "any socially dangerous act or omission which threatens the foundations of the Soviet structure and that system of law which has been established by the Workers’ and Peasants’ Government for the period of transition to a Communist structure." (The Criminal Code of the RSFSR, 1922. June 1, 1922, Art. 6..) This introduced a certain level of "I know a crime when I see it" mentality. Within a short time period, the identification of criminal behavior had become a movable feast. Orthodox Marxist/Leninist ideology on one day became heresy the next, making those considered heroes of the Soviet Union "enemies of the state" overnight. Even when the Soviet Code started to define crimes with more particularity at a later date, it still permitted prosecution for "socially dangerous" acts - not defined as crimes - by analogy "to those articles of the code which provide for those crimes most similar to it in kind." (Criminal Code, Article 16.) One need not be overly cynical to see how Stalin and his inner circle could manipulate such fuzzy definitions to make criminals out of political enemies and then purge them. It gives new meaning to what Lavrenty Beria said, "Show me the man, and I'll find you the crime." Was Stalin paranoid? Maybe. But he also had another motive for his purges. He, like most other Soviet leaders over the years, had an overpowering - even byzantine - urge to consolidate power. Loyalty to the person of the leader became the sole metric for determining who sat in the inner circle. It affected everyone. People were expected to denounce co-workers, fellow students, neighbors, and etc. as enemies. The failure to denounce someone (later determined to be an enemy) constituted a "socially dangerous ... omission" that would also subject one to criminal punishment. Spouses were punished for simply being the spouse of someone thusly denounced. Not only did this induce a general feeling of paranoia, it put lies into the mouths of people who knew they were lies, and expected them to repeat them and like them. How any social system like that could last for 70 years is a pure mystery.
It didn't, though. The post-Stalin Soviet Union was a nasty bit of business but the mass denunciations and purges on the scale of the Great Purge were never repeated.
@@brucetucker4847 The mass purges were never repeated after Stalin's death. However, plenty of purges occurred both before and after the purge of 1937-38. Purges continually occurred even before Stalin rose to power.
Some historians believe that the German intelligence services planted "evidence" that started the Red army purge. Unfortunately for the Germans, they didn't kill quite enough of the Soviet generals (and at the time lesser ranks.)
NKVD stands for Narodny Komissariat Vnutrenikh Del - Peoples' Commissariat of Internal Affairs. Before the war, ministries in USSR were called commissariats. It is not "secret police" it is ministry of internal affairs - agency, which oversees police, border guards etc. Secret police agency was called Main Directorate of State Security (Glavnoe upravlenie gosudarstvennoy bezopasnosti, Главное управление государственной безопасности), which was the part of NKVD.
I always love to see how things in games like Hearts of Iron 4 match up to historical events in videos such as these. Great end with the comment on how Hitler and German high command felt about the purges and the Soviet performance in the Winter War, too!
@@paulrobertson4058 It's a great grand strategy game that simulates the worlds nations from 1936 to 1953. I liked the original HOI game in its political decision making, the types of units. But the map in HOI4 is great as well as the fact that you can design your own divisions (infantry, motorized, mechanized, armor) as well as design the ships of your navy . However the game focuses only on military strategy at the expense of economics. The prior game (Victoria) which covered 1836 to 1935 was heavily focussed on economic development and social issues as well as military. The most recent patches add more realism. But you can only get so much. Real world is far far more complex.
this series can be summed up as a beautifully presented prologue to a tragedy that in itself is the sequel to an earlier beautifully presented tragedy.
I can understand the fear of German collaboration within your movement when the leader of your movement (Lenin) was sent to you by Germany. Are you missing Nicky yet?
3:35 - this is a good illustration as years earlier both of these officers fought the Poles with Stalin at Lvov as the rest of the Red Army was routed waiting for them to show up at Warsaw. These two Marshals are the only senior Army leaders, not in the Pacific district, to survive the purge and its not overstatement to say they instigated the Red Army Purge, probably on Stalin’s secret request.
And many Americans still belive the image of "good Uncle Joe" because the Roosevelt`s goverment made great effort to portray Stalin like that to the US public in the state propaganda.
Amazing set! From the larger than life color studies on the walls, to the tiny hear-no/see-no/speak-no skeletons (speak-no is social distancing I see). One light burning instead of three, the skull, "lady justice"... Clues?
No episode about the legionnaires in Romania? This would have been the perfect opportunity to be fair, seeing that Captain Codreanu was assassinated in 1938.
This episode was hard to write, mainly because of the ambiguity that this topic is still clouded in today. There are no convlusive answers as to why Stalin did what he did, and why he stopped doing what he was doing in 1938. This episode features some of the explanations of the purges and the Great Terror. This certainly is a remarkable piece of Soviet History, and one that would dramatically influence the performance of the Red Army in 1939 and beyond. Those who followed our World War Two series know that already in December '39, the direct consequences of the purges in '37 and '38 are gigantic. I would also like to note here that we would like the comment section to stick to factual debate.
cheers, Joram
*RULES OF CONDUCT*
STAY CIVIL AND POLITE we will delete any comments with personal insults, or attacks.
AVOID PARTISAN POLITICS AS FAR AS YOU CAN we reserve the right to cut off vitriolic debates.
HATE SPEECH IN ANY DIRECTION will lead to a ban.
RACISM, XENOPHOBIA, OR SLAMMING OF MINORITIES will lead to an immediate ban.
PARTISAN REVISIONISM, ESPECIALLY HOLOCAUST AND HOLODOMOR DENIAL will lead to an immediate ban.
I loveeeed your series. I watched it all, learned a lot. Very grateful!!!
My professor has an interesting argument that the Spanish Civil War played a part in the purge. I'm going to shorten what he said. Stalin was afraid of a united Capitalist front to go against the Soviet Union. When the British and French didn't intervene in the Spanish Civil War on the side of the Spanish Republicans, as the Soviet did, Stalin was growing suspicious that if Germany's enemies didn't intervene to stop the Spanish Nationalists, they (the Allies) might be conspiring with Germany against Stalin.
@@armyjacky96 I've heard a similar argument concerning the Spanish civil war. After all, the civil war started as a rightist coup by a leading general against the government, which was supported by Italy and Germany. Exactly the kind of scenario Stalin feared happening
Time Ghost, What is your opinion about "the ice breaker" of Viktor Suvorov? I know he is considered controversial, but he has an unconventional opinion about Stalin and his role in WWII...
Stalin might have stopped killing his supposed enemies when he decided to adhere the Baltic states. Marxism/Commmunism, being a one party govt, and having one supreme ruler was the inly system the Russians and later the Soviets knew. These people would never understand what true freedom means until the fall of the system. Russia was ruled by an authoritarian system for centuries, so it was easier to just remove one ruler and get to business with another authoritarian ruler. Lenin, before his death warned the Party about Stalin, but the latter just eliminated them.
Russian joke from 1937:
The 18# Congress of Soviets is held in Moscow, Stalin is in the middle of his speech.
Stalin: Who sneezed in the conference room?
- Nobody dares to answer. A group of NKVD officers storm the conference room and machine gun the first row of the Soviet delegates.
Stalin: l will ask again. Who sneezed in the conference room?
- Still, nobody dares to answer. The NKVD troops machine gun the second row.
Stalin: l will ask one last time: who sneezed in the conference room?
- An old, 70 year old cole miner steps forward in fear: it was me Josif Vissarionovič.
Stalin smiles and says: Bless you, Nikolaj Nikolajevič!
He resumes his speech...
Comrade Stalin once said: ''Black Humor is like food... Not everyone gets it...''
fantastic
sick... i get rammstein vibes from that !
That's a good one!
@leo white Oh, yeah, such men are really monsters, and to a millenial who's infatuated with Marx, Karl that is, I'd say "I'm sure you could find better friends than *that*!", as in these guys are really bad news.
13:08 Stalin: “The Trotskyists are putting chemicals in the water that turn the freaking Yezhov GAY!!!”
great story for a PC game lol
A grievous crime indeed.
Carmelo87 man... I want to fight a bald psychic now
hahaha
Alexei Jonezh
The way Indy starts raising his voice and speaks with more and more intensity near the end of these videos brings a chill to my spine each and every time.
It actually annoys me more and more. There's no need to go theatrical. The message speaks for itself.
I'm a big fan of how these videos always end on a deeply unsettling note about the horrors to come before Indy adjusts his tie and thanks the sponsors in a completely ordinary voice without cutting. Its both a nice dramatic touch and oddly reassuring.
I like it.
A chill ? WTF...
That's because you favor emotionally charged rhetoric over actual history
In a segment in the excellent documentary film "Shostakovich Against Stalin," Veniamin Basner related an account told to him by the composer Dmitri Shostakovich during the Great Terror, where Shostakovich was being questioned by a inspector named Zakovsky at NKVD headquarters. At one point, Zakovsky asked Shostakovich: "Do you know Tukkachevsky?" "Yes, I know him," Shostakovich responded. Then Zakovsky asked: "And what about the plot to assassinate Comrade Stalin?" At that point, Shostakovich's blood ran cold; his voice was paralyzed and he was unable to speak, realizing that he was falling under the bloody wheel of Stalin's purge. Shostakovich was then instructed by Zakovsky (this incident occured on a Saturday) to go home and to come back on Monday for further questioning. As people were disappearing around him all the time, he felt this was the end. Saying goodbye to his wife and family, certain in the knowledge that he would never see them again, he arrived back at NKVD headquarters, and asked to see Zakovsky as he had been directed. The soldier on duty, going through the lists, informed Shostakovich that Investigator Zakovsky couldn't see him that day, that Shostakovich should go home, and that someone would let him know when Zakovsky would see him. Only later did Shostakovich find out that Zakovsky himself had been denounced and arrested the previous day. Thus, the life of one of the greatest composers of the twentieth century was saved from near-certain death, although it was hardly the end of the ordeals Shostakovich was to suffer under the Soviet regime.
I've been listening the last quartets of Shostakovich these days, and wow they are obscure and sad. From now on, I'll always think of those quartets as the soundtrack of the Purge.
José Miguel Lema - My favorite quartet of his is the 8th. It feels for me in Shostakovich’s series of quartets to be the parallel of Beethoven Op. 131 in c# minor. The rhythmic motif of three successive eighth notes, which is repeated over and over again at the beginning of the 4th movement, is supposed to represent the knock at the door of the NKVD agents coming to take you away in the night. Please check out the UA-cam program of the film “Shostakovich Against Stalin,” the link to which I will post in the reply to this post.
ua-cam.com/video/irYM2VcBv4A/v-deo.html. Especially look at the film montage which accompanies the performance of the Scherzo of Symphony No. 8 at 44 min 10 sec into the documentary.
@@johnperez6069 Hey, I also love the 8th, I discovered it some weeks ago only, but I've listening to it daily :) I also think that have some similarities with Beethoven's last quartets, that feeling of introspection, old age and melancholy. I already see Shostakovich Against Stalin because of your first comment, thank you!
No, Stalin loved talented composers, Shostakovich was safe.
Indy's best tie yet. A spectacular number that combines well with the shirt, but let's be honest, the tie would be the star of the show in any setting. 5/5
That tie gives +1 to Inland Empire
Can you please explain?
Apparently I've gone either blind or stupid XD
@@MrNicoJac Such a glorious tie is above explaining
It's driving me crazy. It's an art nouveau pattern that I've seen before but I just can't place it. It's really driving me crazy!
@Virus Host : With Mendeleev's autograph.
Killing Tukachevsky probably cost Stalin at least a million men. Tukachevsky was a strategic genius, the guy who was trying to bring the Red Army into the modern era with his idea of mobile infantry and focus on tanks, killing and the killing most of the experienced people in the red army was one of the biggest self-inflicted wounds in the history by any country. This was a great episode Indy, more than 80 years later and we are still wondering why Stalin had done this, no one knows for sure.
On the side note, I know this episode is heavy and the unknown that died in his purges deserves a voice, but I am sad that you didn't mention, my Hero of the soviet union, Konstantin Rokossovsky. The polish-born soviet general, who was arrested, tortured and imprisoned until the start of WW2 who would later replace the void left by Mikael Tukachevsky, and go on to play a key role in the Battle of Stalingrad and Battle of Kursk, and the key person who executes the stunning success like Operation Bagration.
Stalin is not bothered by a million dead.
Eh. Getting Thukachevski was bad, but on the other hand it wasn't like he was the most major creator of their new doctrine. In fact some attribute most of the actual work to a group arround an old Bolshevik general who of course got purged during the purges because his revolutionary credentials were too good. And then even though generals like Roskovsky were being released he sat out the war in Gulag making him mad salty he sat it out. And if anyone could make a military conspiracy Thucavhevsky probably had most trust and influence.
So it's still a waste of a good offcier, but not THAT much of a waste.
Also the real reason for poor Red Army performance was likely not even culling all the generals, but that trust between ranks was lost so nobody dared make any corrections to plans in fear of getting NKVD on their case. And that's not something leaving one man alive would have solved.
Tukachevski was far from being genius. He was just a little bit more professional than other red generals.
"Tukachevsky was a strategic genius" No. He wasn't. In all the battles he won, he had a huge numerical superiority and a poorly organized and armed enemy. When meeting with the not-so-strong Polish army, he was defeated primarily because of his tactical and strategic mistakes. And his "new doctrine" was neither new nor his.
@@MsKulom Okay, let's be fair to him with the Poland thing, he was forced to command that fight from MOSCOW. And in the field he had all sorts of commanders like Stalin that could and would do whatever they pleased due to their political standing. So he hardly had a great deal of control over what happened there.
But on the other hand, yes, his reputation like some other Soviet commanders was kinda overblown later.
Timeghost: The best answer to coronavirus quarantine
Or Great War.
@@demonelf2094 Yeap!
Και το fight club το ίδιο. Ευχαριστούμε
Hell yes.
Oooohhhh yes
"It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen."
The opening line from 1984 😅
You bring up an excellent point. Stalin was there at ground level when an upstart Communist movement overturned the Tsar. He saw firsthand what a dissident could accomplish if a state was destabilized by a war. In all those people, he saw potential Lenins and Stalins.
That´s actually a good point. However, the Communists were a well-known organization in Russia at the time. They may have operated illegally, but it´s not like no one knew who they were. The Great Terror was more about hunting ghosts and phantoms than actual enemies. It probably did it´s job in scaring people enough to fall in line, but the cost in reduced economic, cultural and military capabilities most likely wasn´t worth it.
ua-cam.com/video/TBY_aDd5knE/v-deo.html
ua-cam.com/video/NHl5nU5WYn8/v-deo.html
ua-cam.com/video/NrrDMyAz1SU/v-deo.html
@@jirkazalabak1514 ua-cam.com/video/TBY_aDd5knE/v-deo.html
ua-cam.com/video/NHl5nU5WYn8/v-deo.html
ua-cam.com/video/NrrDMyAz1SU/v-deo.html
What goes around comes around had this happened it would been better for the world
8:20 "Stalin is not always clear in his directives and his subordinates have to guess what he wants"
Deja vu, I've been here before...
This is always true in top-down organizational structures. You're only as good as the guy at the top.
@@harrymills2770 man, I see you everywhere. Greetings, fellow Chiefs fan!
ua-cam.com/video/TBY_aDd5knE/v-deo.html
ua-cam.com/video/NHl5nU5WYn8/v-deo.html
ua-cam.com/video/NrrDMyAz1SU/v-deo.html
American: "explain the Yezhovshchina to me quickly."
Russian: "Okay... imagine Alex Jones is head of FBI."
American: "Dear Lord..."
If Yezhov is Alex Jones, then who the fuck is Beria? Albert Fish?
@@drakedangereux8042,
Now you're thinking like Albert Fish.
"Psychic vampire counter revolutionaries. They're invading our children's MINDS, folks. They want to rape and destroy. I don't like that they're puttings things in the water to screw with the revolution, to make frogs gay! I don't like it! It makes me mad, I'm a man, ARRRRRRGH!!1one"
@@drakedangereux8042 Beria ehade MKVD after 1938 and that' twat's execution
This joke is genius. Really Good.
Just noticed how the light bulbs in the case to the left are gradually going out as the series progresses. Almost like a countdown to World War 2. Neat.
And now the little skeletons in front of them are being gradually knocked down.
;)
“The darkness of the Second World War”
The lamps are going out all over Europe...
@@legalvampire8136 and I dread they will not be lit again in our lifetime
*PAW*
"You are DEAD"
- Yosef Jughashvili Stalin, circa 1938
*Thud*
"I am dead"
Mikhail Tukhachevsky
Circa 1937
not big suprise
Oh, that's about right for what happened!
If it breaths, it may try to kill me.
-probably Stalin.
And now tRump
??? ¿¿¿
Death - “Lol”
@@leonardogomez8812 hmm?
And if it bleeds....we can kill it
I can't help but think Stalin would have tried to purge Lenin himself if he had still been alive.
I recall absolutely heartbreaking story of husband and wife having a hunch that armed man in black car will come for them at night soon (they always made their arrests in night) and husband calmly sitting at the kitchen and telling his wife to write a report on him to NKVD, thus sparing at least her from horrors of GULAG.
"The Way Back" with Ed Harris and Collin Farrel is about a guy who is sent to gulag camp and he is "betrayed" by his wife. His wife were tortured before she agreed to accused him for bullshit crimes against communism gouvermant.
The Russian people.
- Exploited like cattle, cheap cannonfodder by the Tsars
- Starved, forced cannonfodder, executed as traitors by the Soviet Union
- Humilated on unbelievable levels and murdered by the Nazis
And still people ask why the Russians are so paranoid and resilient to human suffering!
@@obelic71 I mean when I think about Russians and slavs essentially also, suffered all throughout history. Mongols, Tsardom, invasions and poverty, Soviet Union, starvation, Nazis, Stalin being paranoid and evil af, NKVD, the fall of the Soviet union and now again under emperor Putin xD . I mean I was wondering why russian novels are so dark and depressing, but when you see it this way, yeah pretty much explains it.
@@firstnamelastname-uw6vq And that is also the reason lots of foreign countries are afraid of "Russia" They can't be made to suffer they invented suffering and enduring it
@@obelic71 yes, I'm russian myself. Last 120 years of our history is a complete clusterfuck with very brief moments of ease, and people wonder why russians are so grim and rude.
Stalin: "The Red Army is the biggest threat to me. Hitler's got my back"
Yeah. Sure it is buddy. LOL
@Oi m8 you got a loicense for that? You got a loicense for spoiling it for us?
@Oi m8 you got a loicense for that Can i see yours mate?
@Oi m8 you got a loicense for that I'm surry
If history were a Greek Tragedy, Moscow would have been conquered while the leaderless Red Army sent an endless stream of reports of failure and Stalin would have been captured and executed by the ally he should never have trusted. Then in a separate play (unity of location is a thing) Hitler would have been in Berlin when it got the destroyed by a weapon designed by a German Jew he'd driven away.
Unfortunately, among the perfections of God is not found a perfect sense of irony.
Last summer I visited the last Gulag that can be visited in Russian, Perm-36, near the Russian city of Perm. The fact that it is in the middle of nowhere already gives a gloomy sight. Because of Russian nationalism is might close down...
@@johnwayne8494 Exactly.
@@johnwayne8494 Most Russians have many other concerns. And almost in those years has long been dead.
@@HistoryHustle What do you know about "Spring case"?
The soviets ended the GULAG system because it was too expensive to operate. All those prison camps cost more to operate than they could generate through slave labor.
I would suggest You to look up Danzig Baldaev " Drawings from the gulag " to get a graphic picture of what was going on inside the GULAG system. Baldaev was guard who worked for many years in those camps.
The comments for this video are going to be hilarious.
Personally, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that this Stalin is a bad guy.
Hilarious. You keep on using that word, but we don’t think it means what you think it means.
“Stalin is a bad guy” Bold statements only here folks
A bad manager anyway.
@@zang9147 No... I feel comfortable saying he's a bad guy.
Do I detect a little Communist Sympathy from TimeGhost History? Mhnmhmnmh... might be Trotskyists, Comrades.
Nikolai Yezhov in 1938: I have all the power! I purge others, no one can purge me!
Nikolai Yezhov in 1940: Oh crab!
He really should have seen it comming given that he was hardly the first of the Stalin's AXE MEN who would go under the same AXE they wielded as soon as Stalin wanted to let matters cool down. The only one that escaped Stalin was Beria, and only because Stalin died before he got tired of him... only for Khruschev and Zukov/Military to AXE him with a pretty much similar trumped up charges on which his predecessors went. This is not saying Beria was clean, oooh no. But the things he was in the end judged for read more like someone decided to convict him for EVERYTHING in Soviet book of crimes.
Блажо Ђуровић That was a generally accepted point of view until Beria’s rose garden was dug up in the ‘90s and they found where he buried the women and girls he killed.
That's enough crustaceans
It amazes me that Prokofiev managed to stay alive during the purge.
Likewise Eisenstein. The opening credit of Alexander Nevsky is actually very subversive.
'Russia, recovering from the Mongol onslaught face a new enemy" = "USSR, recovering from the Great Terror, face a new enemy"
Didn't the nkvd have saying that 7 out of every 6 citizens were an enemy of the state...
That might be part of the problem. Stalin's in that 7 out of 6.
2+2=5.
Enemy of the people...
These days everyone is the enemy of the Bourgeois State or maybe the Bourgeois state is the enemy of all humanity!
Sounds like what the whole human population think of their rulers!
One of the more gentle depictions of Stalin that I've seen.
ua-cam.com/video/TBY_aDd5knE/v-deo.html
ua-cam.com/video/NHl5nU5WYn8/v-deo.html
ua-cam.com/video/NrrDMyAz1SU/v-deo.html
This is one of the finest Timeghost episodes yet
Indy and crew, this is one of the videos that arrest my attention, those 20 minutes have flown
"...what if the one person you didn't kill turns out to be the spider in the web of a lethal conspiracy against Stalin..."
"If he dies, he dies."
I'm glad you mentioned that some ethnic minorities were among the groups especially targeted during the terror. You already talked a bit about it in episode 009 of the WW2 series 'Stalin's Murderous Adventures', but it's always good to mention it more, as not many people seem to know about it. The ordinary victims of the purges, in general, are overshadowed by the high-ranked Party members and Red Army officers and persecuting people because of their ethnicity is wrongly thought to be one of the things differentiating the Nazis from the Soviets.
ua-cam.com/video/TBY_aDd5knE/v-deo.html
ua-cam.com/video/NHl5nU5WYn8/v-deo.html
ua-cam.com/video/NrrDMyAz1SU/v-deo.html
Yes very true the targeting of minorities during the terror just brings Stalin just a little closer down to the level of the Nazis and Hitler
And Mao's Great Leap 20 years later.
Lar M and cultural revolution. The deaths of Stalin and Mao were the best things to happen to those politburos and the States in general-all things considered.
@@shmeckle666 then came Pol Pot.
Great leap backwards
Your two series on the world wars have been full of details that were new to me, and thanks for that. Between Two Wars, however, has told me of whole events I never knew about. It's been a great education.
at 9:11 that scene with the music and the footage just really solidifies the feeling of the people just constant vigilance for an unknown threat
I feel like this could break out into a war, perhaps even a world war.
Proabably not. Germany would have to fight Britain and France again. It's not like they'll just be kicked off the continent. Hitler is clearly just trying to make Germany an equal power again.
Hold on, didn't we already see a war on a global scale in the 1910s? Indy should cover that first
Nah, that Chamberlain guy from the UK is a great diplomat. I'm sure he'll find a way to ensure peace.
@@Raskolnikov70 в Мюнхене этот "гениальный" дипломат нарулил.
"я привез вам мир!" - недоумок тупой.
You have such an electric charisma. I feel thrilled every time I watch your videos. I wished all the history teachers were like yourself.
A question was once asked as too who was the best German general in ww2. And I have to say that without a doubt it was Comrade Stalin.
For no enemy of the Soviet Union had achieved such devastating results against the soviet military and it's people.
Poland killed 17 thousand Wehrmacht soldiers in 36 days (472 people a day). France and allies killed 50,000 Axis soldiers in 43 days (1,163 people a day). The USSR killed 383 thousand Axis soldiers (1984 people per day) in 193 days (1941). The allies after the opening of the second front killed 340 thousand German soldiers in 216 days (1944), which gives 1,574 people a day. Moreover, the Allies had numerical, technical and material superiority over the enemy, in contrast to the Red Army in 1941.
Just to be clear Stalin like Hitler and Churchill was a deeply flawed human being.
The USSR's victory in the war is largely because he started to listen to his generals rather than remove them. If Hitler had done that the war could have been longer if Churchill had it could have been shorter !
Firstly, Stalin was not incompetent in military matters (compared the non-professionals) - this is just a myth. Secondly, the leader of the nation (subjective factor) cannot have much influence on the course of the global war (objective).
@@nick-jo3hy Dr Moran thought the war could have been shortened by 2 years but for Churchills drinking. He was Churchills Doctor.
@@Mentol_ If Hitler had a top spy in the Soviet Government he could not have picked a better man than Stalin.
He blundered and blundered even Hitler after the Red Army killings thought him mad! That is why Trotsky was murdered and Tukhachevsky. They would have halved the USSR's casualtys. Trotsky would have prevented the Working Class callapse in Germany and Hitler and WW2!
Another excellent and interesting and necessary video. Thank you for all the time and effort that the Time Ghost Army devotes to all the videos that they produce!!
Thank you, we try our best.
@@TimeGhost ua-cam.com/video/TBY_aDd5knE/v-deo.html
ua-cam.com/video/NHl5nU5WYn8/v-deo.html
ua-cam.com/video/NrrDMyAz1SU/v-deo.html
And still to this day Russia has not acknowledged what what they did in Poland/the Baltics before/after/during the second world war..
Latvian guy Sadly, it’s true. There was a short period when the officials seemed to begin reversing their attitude; but now we have kgb people at the top - and they see themselves descendants of Stalin’s nkvd, not its victims.
@@SPb1_irregular You're the first Russian to not call me a ''nazi'' because of my name/pfp/opinion. I congratulate you, good sir.
Nobody but us Germans and the Italians has really come clean as to what they did in WW2. Japan has yet to acknowledge Unit 731 and the crimes they committed in Manchuria and the Russians still praise Stalin like he was a fucking hero. It's all very disgusting.
It`s the state propaganda of todays Russia that wants depict Soviet Unions actions during WW2 as pure, justfied and holy although in reality the Soviets did at least the same amount of horrible things as nazis.
@Troy Staunton Not only money. Also political gains. Russia justifies both internal and foreign policy on ideology which glorifies the Soviet part in WW2.
This episode was pretty intense, in a tragic sort of way.
ua-cam.com/video/TBY_aDd5knE/v-deo.html
ua-cam.com/video/NHl5nU5WYn8/v-deo.html
ua-cam.com/video/NrrDMyAz1SU/v-deo.html
Fun Fact: Nikolai Yezhov, who was head of the NKVD during the height of the great purge and personally engaged in torture and killing of his victims, lamented the stagnate pools of blood in the execution/torture chambers. Seeing a problem that needed a solution, he directed that these rooms be built with a sloping floor of his own design so the blood and gore could be hosed down after executions. How's that for trailblazing a "LEAN" concept to enhance efficiency? The concept of Karma being a real bitch comes into play as Yezhov falls into disfavor in 1939 and in 1940 is tried, convicted and sentenced to death. He was dragged out of his cell, kicking, screaming and crying and thrown into one of his own designed execution chambers where an NKVD officer blew his brains out. A most fitting and telling end to one of Stalin's many monsters.
I have watched all of the inter war episodes you guys have made… it is a shame that we have reached the end! Thank you guys for making history fun and enjoyable!
Theres a lot of great stuff on the horizon though
"The Master and Margarita" is probably the best novel I've ever read. Essentially, it is dedicated to this period...
Is that the one with "Voland"?
Outstanding script and great delivery by Indie.
I love the subtle set changes for each episode..for this one, the 'speak no evil' piece is tipped, and the mein kampf book has disappeared from under the skull. The beverage has changed to vodka.
When we consider the reasons for the Great Terror carried out by Stalin one possible contributing reason was that the Russian Revolution happened during World War 1 and maybe Stalin worried that something similar could happen in the potential/inevitable coming war.
Excellent video once again.
ua-cam.com/video/TBY_aDd5knE/v-deo.html
ua-cam.com/video/NHl5nU5WYn8/v-deo.html
ua-cam.com/video/NrrDMyAz1SU/v-deo.html
And we called him “Uncle Joe“.
Uncle Winston came up with this nickname
Roosevelt did. Stalin hated it!
No Roosevelt did Stalin hated it!
Well, lots of monsters were somebody's uncle.
I noticed one of the three skeletons sitting on the desk behind Indy has fallen over. I suppose it too was purged by the NKWD who left its bones to rot next to that old school lamp. ;-)
I recommend the movie Stalin with Rovert Duvall. With the way he acts I believe it is probably a very accurate portrayal of Stalins personality. At the end Viria, or whatever his name was said let him suffer when Stalin was on his deathbed. Stalin opens his eye to look at him and he gets on his knees and kisses his hand really fast.
Lavrenty Beria
Have you watched the film "Feast of Belshazzar. Night with Stalin" in 1989.? It is about 1935-36 before the start of repression. Perhaps there are no English subtitles on it.
@@jangrosek4334 No I have not. But if you recommend, I'll look into it brother.
I trei
I saw this movie many years ago. It was good. His inner circle called him Koba
Great video y’all. I learned some things from this. Enjoy this channel very much.
This series has given me weird nostalgia for the stuff I learned for my A Levels
At 5:52 to 5:57 there is a little mistake, the soldiers seen marching are actually Romanian soldiers, not Soviet.
Youre correct. The helmets and Czech made Vz. 24 rifles are a giveaway.
Also Soviet soldiers started to wear berets long after WW2.
Thats an editing mistake that went unnoticed in the review. Our bad..
@08:23 Stalin's not always clear in his directives, and his people have to guess at what is meaning is. I'm not sure but I think I heard something along similar lines in the documentary Nazis A Lesson From History. Hitler gave very vague directions and then would set different departments in competition with one another. This made his administration remarkably chaotic and inefficient. I wonder if that's a trait you find amongst other dictators as well.
And if you have two competing departments they will ask you as leader eventually. So you have increased your power.
@@Ba-gb4br Also it fit in with Hitler's concept of survival of the fittest. He believed if you put two or three people in competition the strongest will prevail.
@@unbearable9770 Nazism and Bolshevism were both perversions of Darwinism. The third great perversion of Darwinism that powerfully influenced the 20th century and today was the social Darwinism than found its ultimate expression in Ayn Rand: capitalism as survival of the fittest, in which the poor and unfortunate have proved themselves inferior and should be allowed to starve for the benefit of the more productive.
His purged almost cost him to lose the war.
Stalin should have lost, instead of his allies the UK and US giving him a victory along with much of Europe.
Yeah, it was quite close. Just pack winter gear and more supplies. And maybe take out Moscow first.
@@juanpaz5124 I agree, That would have probably defeated the Soviets. Hitler and others underestimated the Soviet Union because of the Soviets humiliating defeat by Finland. But it really was the Russian winter(Germany's lack of preparedness for it) that lost it. Hitler only wanted to take the western area of the Soviet Union, which was 90% accomplished.
> His purged almost cost him to lose the war.
Poland killed 17 thousand Wehrmacht soldiers in 36 days (472 people a day). France and allies killed 50,000 Axis soldiers in 43 days (1,163 people a day). The USSR killed 383 thousand Axis soldiers (1984 people per day) in 193 days (1941). The allies after the opening of the second front killed 340 thousand German soldiers in 216 days (1944), which gives 1,574 people a day. Moreover, the Allies had numerical, technical and material superiority over the enemy, in contrast to the Red Army in 1941.
> Hitler and others underestimated the Soviet Union
The winter war did not affect the preparation of the Barbarossa operation. This was an attempt to deprive England of her last hope of victory in the war. Thus, Soviet policy was not influenced by Hitler’s decision to start a war in the east.
> Soviets humiliating defeat by Finland.
USSR won winter war.
> But it really was the Russian winter that lost it.
nice propaganda.
@@SgtMajorSkull giving a victory by sitting their asses across the channel up to 1944
In my opinion, this is one of your very best presentations. Thank you!
Thanks!
The revolution devouring its own children
Stalin finished the job that Robespierre couldn't.
The Left always eats it’s own
@M M B yeah Vietnam is going through a pretty positive economic miracle right now, despite the pandemic. Pretty impressive I'd say.
USA on the other hand is definitely struggling right now. It has been hit the hardest and because of its failure to hold down the virus, it is now going through a economic crisis, coupled with a climate crisis (hurricanes are a bitch), racial crisis, and unemployment.
Not sure how the US is going to pull out of this one, it never has faced this many crises all at the same time and at once.
The ignorance of the American population will probably be its downfall. Nobody in the US took the virus seriously until it was too late, and even now there are many that are too stubborn and selfish to even wear masks in public despite it being enforced into law.
What a damn mess. But hey, if the US does pull out of it and recover fast enough to res secure its global throne before China takes hold of it, then that will be one hell of a surprise.
@M M B Yes I sincerely hope the US will eventually sort its shit out, I fear the Chinese are growing more and more powerful both economically and militarily.
13:18 - This is a masterfully worded and asked question by Indy.
In the biography of William Stephenson, "A Man Called Intrepid", there is a reference to the military purge being engineered by a novel disinformation campaign created by Reinhold Heydrich specifically to decapitate the Red Army. (Stephenson himself is a Canadian businessman who is regarded as the creator of the modern 'integrated intelligence' system, the idea that intelligence can not only be used as an information gathering tool but also can be used as a weapon.)
My high school history teacher told us that there were forged documents found by Czechoslovakian counter intelligence in CS (planted by Germany). Believeing them to be genuine CS government passed them on to Soviets.
What a nutter! Noone says anyone but stalin did it. 😅
You guys teach history in the best way
It is a common error to think all evil leaders are stupid or "just sick". Often they are very smart but use their talents to do weird things (it seems weird or stupid to us that is).
Due to relations between Russia and Finland, the matter of Finnish victims of the purge is not often discussed, even though people of Finnish ethnicity were disproportionally targeted. According to non-fiction writer Jukka Rislakki about half of all Soviet citizens who stood trial were executed, while more than 80% of all Finns, Estonians and Poles who stood trial were executed. In the mass graves of Krasnyi bor, Sandarmoh and Levashovo are buried tens of thousands of Finns, Ingrian Finns and American Finns. Muistakaa.
It is not exaggerating to call these acts of the Soviet state genocide
@@hendriktonisson2915 Probably rightly call it a stratocide
ua-cam.com/video/TBY_aDd5knE/v-deo.html
ua-cam.com/video/NHl5nU5WYn8/v-deo.html
ua-cam.com/video/NrrDMyAz1SU/v-deo.html
I think that Stalin was so paranoid he was scared of his life, even to the point he could be thinking that *they* (his enemies) are going to start a civil war against him
Awesome series!!
I actually think this is a rather good argument as to why Stalin carried out the purge. Getting rid of all the potential troublemakers before something major happens. Stalin did seem to have tried it already a few years before, but he didn't seem to have had the power back then. Further I would like to point out that the massacre of Red army officers wasn't as bad as some people think. It was bad, don't get me wrong, but it was not the only reason the Red Army would preform so abysmally in 1941.
The 1930's Red Army seems to have been a poorly trained mess, regardless of the purges. It wasn't that well funded either, nor that well equipped. Sure, they build a lot of tanks and bi-planes, but so many other equipment was lacking. Trucks, radio's etc, the not glamorous stuff. Further the peace time and war mobilisation strengths where being increased during the purges and plenty of young officers where actually entering the army while others being purged or shot by the NKVD. The problem was that a lot of teachers where also shot, thus reducing standards. Standards that don't seem to have been that high before the purges. Finally the Red Army seems to also have been seriously short of junior officers as well, regardless of the large influx.
However, the standard WW2 field manual and the Deep Battle doctrine where established by 1936, before Tukhachevsky was arrested and shot. Neither do these seem to have been disputed much. The Red army seems to have continued the Deep Battle doctrine, they just where completely incapable of preforming it in the field. That wasn't really different before the purges. The problem seems to have been not so much a lack of doctrine or competent officers because of the purges, but a combination of poor training of both soldiers and officers, poor equipment and a lot of shortages, poor planning in terms of army size and growth, general shortage of officers and a command structure incapable of actually carrying out the pre-war plans.
I get the feeling that a lot of post WW2 Soviet commanders decided to blame Stalin for their failures and ignore the systematic failures the Red Army was suffering from. Almost as if they where doing the same thing the German generals did by blaming Hitler for everything.
But Indy, I suspect you are doing some research about something big that might start off in June. Have you read Alexander Hill, The Red Army and the Second World war? I got a lot of information from that book and I would recommend it. It is recent and quite information packed. Personally I found it a bit frustrating to read the war coverage part because it is jammed with all kinds of supplementary information around the fighting. It makes reeding just a chapter a bit of a grind. For the WW2 coverage however that might actually be somewhat beneficial because it creates some additional circumstances. The first few chapters however make quite a strong argument about a lot of pre WW2 issues inside the Red Army, on top of which came the purge. Further at least the hard cover has a usable index for some specific searching. That might also help.
spectacular, as always.
Thank you!
One group that was almost completely exterminated were former Finnish Red Guard officers who'd made a career in the Red Army. Men like Alenksanteri Vasten, Verneri Lehtimäki and Aleks Tuorila had experience of fighting in the snowy conditions of Karelia and Finland. Come the winter war, that experience could have served the soviets well.
Indeed. An example of how desperate the Red Army was while looking for any finnish officers left would be the case of Toivo Vähä, who was pulled from Death Row to work for the so-called Finnish People's Army.
One thing this topic makes me think of, was that Stalin was surrounded by fellow revolutionaries. If they were his allies why would he be so worried? But they did know how to fight in a civil war.
Why would he fear fellow revolutiinaries?... But they did know how to fight in a civil war.
"but?" - how do the two sentences connect?
'makes me' (present tense); 'was that' (past tense).
I watched this at the beginning of the day but I've come back to it and the end. While I've studied some history I haven't into this part of it in depth. I feel there's I only have one word for it, chilling.
great video. thank you for your lecture
Glad you liked it!
this somewhat reminds me of the Inquisition in the 1500's , records from the Lisbon Holy Tribunal show that only 4% of complaints and/or suspected cases went to trial, most were neighbors oggling the next door property
Purges and terrors like this have always been a risk in large societies with powerful governments. Wherever great power exists, the temptation to abuse it has existed. 1500 years before the Inquisition, Rome had the purges of Tiberius/Sejanus, Caligula, and Nero, which went about the same way.
Both your shows produce great content congratulations!
Thanks for watching!
Stalin my boi you must choose a path
Path 1: Get right with god and be a priest and preach the good word
Path 2: Be a monster and murder millions
Stalin:👀👀👀
Denis Diderot wrote, "No Philosopher has ever killed a Priest but plenty Philosopher have been killed by Priests!"
Path 3: be a good communist
One of the best Timeghost episodes. This was a truly bizarre episode in Russian, Soviet, or any history. Here was the USSR, faced with a rabid, hostile, and threatening German enemy, surrounded by countries that it views as inherently hostile by virtue of being capitalist. And yet they gut their armed forces by executing or imprisoning virtually the entire military leadership. In many contexts Stalin sometimes appears rational, albeit malevolent. But here, he appears irrational. There is no evidence of any bonapartist tendencies in the Soviet Army and by all accounts it did not threaten Stalin's power over the regime and country. I very much appreciate that Timeghost did not try to whitewash this strange happening as some You Tube (and other) historians have tried to do. Excellent work, folks; makes me happy to be a Specialist in the TGA.
And we are extremely grateful for your support!
the more i hear about this stalin guy the more he sounds like a real creep
At 5:54, those are Romanian soldiers marching in front of the royal palace in Bucharest. What's the connection?
Propably just an error
Stalin's actions are not labeled as genocidal often enough
Because genocide has a definition and his action do not meet that definition. Genocide isn't just "when you kill a lot of people".
@@PejmanMan I am sorry comrade, pls do not report me
@@PejmanMan Many have argued that his actions in Ukraine met the definition of genocide. He also carried out smaller genocides against minority groups like the Cossacks and Tatars, and practiced ethnic cleansing on probably the greatest scale in human history both before and after WW2. He deported so many Balts to Siberia and replaced them with ethnic Russians that ethnic Russians actually became a majority in Estonia, where they had been a tiny minority before 1940.
@@PejmanMan Stalin did infact persecute certain ethnic groups like Crimean Tatars, Chechen and in 1937-38 purgers all people who were ethnically from neighbouring countries like Finns, Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Poles also Germans. Also the artificially created famines in Ukraine to smother Ukrainian nationalism. If thats not genocide than I dont no what is
@@hendriktonisson2915 Well Russians made up a bulk of the victims, and Stalin was not Russian, so it can be called a genocide - or not. Its a tricky subject because the catalyst was not the race of people.
This was a good episode
Stalin being as much of hindrance and destructive force to the Red Army as Operation Baraborsa was feels fitting
Perhaps almost as destructive as a few Finnish biathalon teams?
This is a great video with great information!
13:09 - Stalin was not a tall man. Yezhov must have been tiny.
Yezhov was sometimes called 'the bloody dwarf'
The President of the USA is HUGE!
I heard that an order to arrest zhukov was drawn up but never signed.
"The executions will continue until morale improves..." said someone, probably...
ua-cam.com/video/TBY_aDd5knE/v-deo.html
ua-cam.com/video/NHl5nU5WYn8/v-deo.html
ua-cam.com/video/NrrDMyAz1SU/v-deo.html
Two things come to mind. First, a quote from Charles C Sharp's Soviet Order of Battle in WWII, Vol. 1: "He [Marshal Budyenny] summed up the purge succinctly when he reassured one of his staff: ' - don't worry, they're only killing the smart ones.' " Second, I remember reading in one of the histories that soon after the start of Barbarossa disaster, Stalin went to his dacha and awaited arrest. When the officials showed up, it wasn't to arrest him but to ask him what they should do which implies the utterly complete success of the purge with regards leaving anyone who would even think of deposing him.
ua-cam.com/video/TBY_aDd5knE/v-deo.html
ua-cam.com/video/NHl5nU5WYn8/v-deo.html
ua-cam.com/video/NrrDMyAz1SU/v-deo.html
The Russian Orthodox Church was nearly exterminated by Stalin. It had been the object of severe persecution from the beginning of the Communist era. But the persecution reached its zenith during Stalin's Terror when, according to Richard Pipes "Communism a History," 168,000 clergy, were arrested, with 106,000 being executed. Almost all of the others ended up in the Gulags where they were subjected to especially brutal treatment even by the standards of the time. The total number of persons murdered for their religious faith is not known with estimates varying. But even the most conservative estimates rank in the many millions and some place the number at over ten million. Most were members of the ROC for which Stalin harbored a deep personal hatred. By 1941 on the eve of the Hitler's invasion there were less than 150 churches and only one monastery still open in the entire USSR. Every single bishop save one, who had attended the 1917 Sobor died either by execution or in prison. Today these millions of "New Martyrs" are commemorated on 25 January (7 February new calendar) by the Orthodox Church.
@bimmler Found the Fedora.
bimmler this person is obviously trolling. No atheist today condones religious persecution, and this is coming from a devout Christian
@@Rickeeey1
He who believes in the unseen is himself blind
@@dumbyboi-c1d
True but it is the religious zelots of the world who would gladly purge us just as Stalin did the Kulaks
Napoleon Bonaparte, Empereur des Français you’re trolling too.
That, or this is the first time I’ve heard an atheist claim that religious people want to exterminate them.
Honestly, I hope it’s the latter, cause that’s hilarious
Great work as usual. Thanks for the video....
Thanks for watching!
The Soviet Union early on eliminated the "bourgeois" definition of crimes that had dominated the justice system since Tsarist times. From the early 1920's forward , the law defined a crime as "any socially dangerous act or omission which threatens the foundations of the Soviet structure and that system of law which has been established by the Workers’ and Peasants’ Government for the period of transition to a Communist structure." (The Criminal Code of the RSFSR, 1922. June 1, 1922, Art. 6..) This introduced a certain level of "I know a crime when I see it" mentality. Within a short time period, the identification of criminal behavior had become a movable feast. Orthodox Marxist/Leninist ideology on one day became heresy the next, making those considered heroes of the Soviet Union "enemies of the state" overnight. Even when the Soviet Code started to define crimes with more particularity at a later date, it still permitted prosecution for "socially dangerous" acts - not defined as crimes - by analogy "to those articles of the code which provide for those crimes most similar to it in kind." (Criminal Code, Article 16.) One need not be overly cynical to see how Stalin and his inner circle could manipulate such fuzzy definitions to make criminals out of political enemies and then purge them. It gives new meaning to what Lavrenty Beria said, "Show me the man, and I'll find you the crime."
Was Stalin paranoid? Maybe. But he also had another motive for his purges. He, like most other Soviet leaders over the years, had an overpowering - even byzantine - urge to consolidate power. Loyalty to the person of the leader became the sole metric for determining who sat in the inner circle.
It affected everyone. People were expected to denounce co-workers, fellow students, neighbors, and etc. as enemies. The failure to denounce someone (later determined to be an enemy) constituted a "socially dangerous ... omission" that would also subject one to criminal punishment. Spouses were punished for simply being the spouse of someone thusly denounced. Not only did this induce a general feeling of paranoia, it put lies into the mouths of people who knew they were lies, and expected them to repeat them and like them. How any social system like that could last for 70 years is a pure mystery.
It didn't, though. The post-Stalin Soviet Union was a nasty bit of business but the mass denunciations and purges on the scale of the Great Purge were never repeated.
@@brucetucker4847 The mass purges were never repeated after Stalin's death. However, plenty of purges occurred both before and after the purge of 1937-38. Purges continually occurred even before Stalin rose to power.
Great job on this episode
Stalin: They must die! They must all die! No one must be left!
Germany: Wow, that crackpot is gonna kill his own army for us.
Some historians believe that the German intelligence services planted "evidence" that started the Red army purge. Unfortunately for the Germans, they didn't kill quite enough of the Soviet generals (and at the time lesser ranks.)
@@indy_go_blue6048 German officers: dang it!!
NKVD stands for Narodny Komissariat Vnutrenikh Del - Peoples' Commissariat of Internal Affairs. Before the war, ministries in USSR were called commissariats. It is not "secret police" it is ministry of internal affairs - agency, which oversees police, border guards etc. Secret police agency was called Main Directorate of State Security (Glavnoe upravlenie gosudarstvennoy bezopasnosti, Главное управление государственной безопасности), which was the part of NKVD.
"The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of a million is a statistic."
Said Erich Marie Remarque.
I always love to see how things in games like Hearts of Iron 4 match up to historical events in videos such as these. Great end with the comment on how Hitler and German high command felt about the purges and the Soviet performance in the Winter War, too!
it out of context but is hoi4 good?
@@paulrobertson4058
It's a great grand strategy game that simulates the worlds nations from 1936 to 1953. I liked the original HOI game in its political decision making, the types of units. But the map in HOI4 is great as well as the fact that you can design your own divisions (infantry, motorized, mechanized, armor) as well as design the ships of your navy . However the game focuses only on military strategy at the expense of economics.
The prior game (Victoria) which covered 1836 to 1935 was heavily focussed on economic development and social issues as well as military.
The most recent patches add more realism. But you can only get so much. Real world is far far more complex.
I know this is a heavy topic but "... doing nothing implies that you have something to hide..." made me laugh out loud
4:34 Hmmmmm mr. Schmidtler is in a good disguise
Stalin the first man of steel,Superman is the second
Ironman tho?
@@fclp67 no because Stalin means steel not iron
@@romaniacountryball but steel contains iron
I prefer Superman to Stalin.
this series can be summed up as a beautifully presented prologue to a tragedy that in itself is the sequel to an earlier beautifully presented tragedy.
ua-cam.com/video/TBY_aDd5knE/v-deo.html
ua-cam.com/video/NHl5nU5WYn8/v-deo.html
ua-cam.com/video/NrrDMyAz1SU/v-deo.html
I can understand the fear of German collaboration within your movement when the leader of your movement (Lenin) was sent to you by Germany.
Are you missing Nicky yet?
Great video! Just wish the beginning of the video could've had the same unbiased tone as the end.
What do you mean exactly?
Well, Stalin did say that the death of a single person is tragic, and the death of a million is a statistic
Was it Churchill that claimed that.
@adelkheir expect that he never said that
I think that was Charlie Chaplin in Monsieur Verdoux.
@@julianshepherd2038 They all say that Donald Trump with Corona virus too!
3:35 - this is a good illustration as years earlier both of these officers fought the Poles with Stalin at Lvov as the rest of the Red Army was routed waiting for them to show up at Warsaw. These two Marshals are the only senior Army leaders, not in the Pacific district, to survive the purge and its not overstatement to say they instigated the Red Army Purge, probably on Stalin’s secret request.
Good old Joseph
And many Americans still belive the image of "good Uncle Joe" because the Roosevelt`s goverment made great effort to portray Stalin like that to the US public in the state propaganda.
Amazing set! From the larger than life color studies on the walls, to the tiny hear-no/see-no/speak-no skeletons (speak-no is social distancing I see). One light burning instead of three, the skull, "lady justice"... Clues?
When Stalin bingewatches Russian Info Wars...
I remember reading somewhere that before Stalin died in 1953, he was planning on another series of purges.
Stalin was preparing to shipped the entire jewish population to far east when he died of heart attack.
Few day after the dead of stalin,molotov told khruchev "for while I thought we are going to be next"
No episode about the legionnaires in Romania? This would have been the perfect opportunity to be fair, seeing that Captain Codreanu was assassinated in 1938.