Origins of the Great Purges: The Soviet Communist Party Reconsidered, 1933–1938

Cambridge Russian, Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies

by J. Arch Getty

This is a study of the structure of the Soviet Communist Party in the 1930s. Based upon archival and published sources, the work describes the events in the Bolshevik Party leading up to the Great Purges of 1937–1938. Professor Getty concludes that the party bureaucracy was chaotic rather than totalitarian, and that local officials had relative autonomy within a considerably fragmented political system. The Moscow leadership, of which Stalin was the most authoritarian actor, reacted to social and political processes as much as instigating them. Because of disputes, confusion, and inefficiency, they often promoted contradictory policies. Avoiding the usual concentration on Stalin's personality, the author puts forward the controversial hypothesis that the Great Purges occurred not as the end product of a careful Stalin plan, but rather as the bloody but ad hoc result of Moscow's incremental attempts to centralise political power.

Genres: History, Soviet Union, Soviet History, Nonfiction, Russia, Politics, Russian History

276 pages, Paperback

First published April 26, 1985

About the author

John Archibald Getty III was an American historian and professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), who specialized in the history of Russia and the history of the Soviet Union.

Reviews

[Sugarpunksattack Mick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Arch Getty's book 'Origins of the Great Purges' is an important, albeit an early, book for Revisionist historians that helps to dispute the totalitarian model favored by most liberal historians (as well as western propaganda). Getty's book is very academic and esoteric. While this is super important and valuable for scholarship reasons and for anyone trying to cut through the ideological warfare of many western historians, it is not an accessible book. Instead, it is a tumultuous 200 pages even for some one who has a general sense of soviet history. That said, I really enjoyed the book and it makes some very crucial discoveries and points.

The three most important aspect of Getty's book is: (1) what is meant by purge, (2) various disputes within the central governing body and (3) the interaction and struggle between central governing structure and periphery or local party machines.

Getty is very focused in this book and doesn't really cover what most call the Purges of 1936-37 which saw massive political repression and elections. Instead, he describes the purge as it is articulated in the archives as 'a sweeping or cleaning' of party membership ranks, which help to illuminate the communist party structure from the lower to upper echelons. These purges happened periodically dating back to the beginning of the Soviet government; prior to that period Lenin's parties would simply split. Although this clearing of the ranks did involve a category of 'political crimes' those expelled from party ranks for political crimes were low comparatively, which is party of Getty's evidence for distinguishing between purges or being expelled from the party and a Purge being imprisoned or worse.

The documents around the purges then demonstrate the various disagreements in the central governing body and competing ideas. Likewise, the implementation of these membership clarification processes show a very evident struggle between the center and periphery or local machine.

Arch Getty is an American Scholar and a part of revisionist historians that look at the USSR and dispute older 'totalitarian' model historians like Robert Conquest. To give a sense of his political position, Getty's academic page states, "Professor Getty eagerly awaits the final collapses of socialism, capitalism, and all other political systems." Getty is then neither a stanuch anti-communist of the cold war variety nor is he a USSR or Stalin apologist, but a scholar attempting to look at what archives and Soviet writings actually say about how the USSR system functioned.

[Jon Black · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well researched and important but boring to read frankly

[Roan24 · Rating 4 out of 5]

He walked so Grover Furr could run. I don't know if a more up-to-date version of this book exists, but this destroys the cold warrior perspective meticulously

[A, Dean · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very good book about the purges that took place from 1933-1938. If you were wondering what the CPSU was doing during this time, the CPSU was wondering the same thing. The book chronicle the utter disaster Russia was in and dispelled the myth that the soviet union was some sort of monolithic totalitarian state, frequently orders from the top was ignored or sometimes flatly disobeyed. The purges were the result of this, Getty makes the distinction between the purges before and after the assassination of Kirov. specially how the show trials were not seen as a apart of the purges at the time. These "little purges" were done at the regional level in order to "cleanse" those who were part of the communist party that were doing little communist work, the most common reason for a member to be purged was for either drunkenness or corruption. Where this book fault is that it seem to be a smaller chunk of a bigger book in mind. The notorious show trials are brought up in passing and the question if old bolsheviks like Bukharin or Kamenev are actually innocent is kind of left unanswered. Some other faults is Getty liberalism when talking about political education he calls it indoctrination. Despite these flaws this book does a good job of dispelling anticommunist beliefs built on unfounded assumptions like the ridiculous idea that Stalin killed Kirov.