[MUSIC] 1937, 38 saw the trial of anti-Soviet military Trotskyist organization or military fascist conspiracy. This was actually a trial of the top Soviet generals. I shall not go on about the ways the confessions were extracted. It was just the same, but the results were absolutely devastating. Among the top command, three of five marshals were executed, 15 of 16 commanders of the armies. All commanders of corps, all army commanders, almost all divisional and brigade commanders. Half of all regimental commanders, all army commissars and more. About 35,000 military staff were sacked. Was there anything behind these charges? One thing is clear, top military did not like Voroshilov, who was not a true professional and who did not understand much in military affairs. Not in the sense of killing him, but in the sense of substituting somebody else more professional than him in his position. But there was nothing else, of course. In March, 1937, there was another show trial. This time Bukharin and Rykov finally got under the axe, the rightist-Trotskyist Bloc. Bukharin and Rykov were executed and many others. Some NKVD officials, for example, Genrikh Yagoda, Yezhov's predecessor and many of his associates. Thousands of accomplices throughout the country were arrested and executed. Bukharin wrote a letter to Stalin before he was executed in which he confessed all his sins, the biggest of which was that Bukharin spoke to Kamenev behind Stalin's back. But otherwise, Bukharin said that he admired Stalin's idea of a great purge, because it was necessary before the coming war. And, amazingly, before the coming democracy. It is not clear what he meant by that. Stalin kept this letter until the end of his life. One of the most shameful pages of the great terror was the crash of the Komintern. Communists from other countries came to Russia for guidance, safety, and assistance. Stalin did not like the Komintern. He used the information which it supplied, but he did not participate in these activities. Yes, he used the spies that the Komintern had but that was about it. Now, during the great terror, thousands of leaders and members of foreign communist parties were executed. Several dozen German communists who fled the Nazi regime and came to the USSR were sent back. Communist Party of Poland was disbanded, and all its members were imprisoned or executed, all accused of Trotskyism, anti-Sovietism, and so on. Here you see the Hotel Lux, which is now called Central. Komintern officials and members, the members of the parties which were members of the Komintern lived in that hotel. Every night in the late 1930s, The NKVD cars drove to the hotel. And every night nobody slept, listening which door the steps would come to. Sometimes people could not stand it, could not bear the tension. And they jumped to their deaths into the internal court of the hotel, always into the internal court. They did not jump out of the windows into the street, because the Soviet people should not have known what was going on. They were trying to protect Soviet people. So finally the windows to the internal court where grilled. From August 1937 until mid-November 1938 when the terror was called off, approximately 1.6 million of ordinary citizens were arrested. About 700,000 were shot, 1,500 people were killed everyday. It was long thought that Stalin did not have anything to do with that or that Stalin had very little to do with that. In fact, he participated in this process very directly and very actively. In 12 months of the great terror, Stalin received 15,000 special communications from Yezhov and spent all in all 850 hours with him. Here you see the lists of people to be shot signed personally by Stalin. After the end of the Great Terror, In November 1938, when Stalin started to to ramp up his campaign, he blamed Yezhov for excesses. And he and his subordinates were first arrested and then executed. It was called counter-revolutionary organization in the NKVD. To show you some of Stalin's methods, here is the real photograph on the left of Stalin together with Yezhov and other Soviet leaders. But after Yezhov disappeared, this is what remained of the picture. Stalin's Gulag, which is the Stalin system of labor camps. Look at this map, it occupied the whole country. Look at how many of these camps were there in the European part and in Siberia, just everywhere. In some of these places, memorials were organized. This is, for example, a Butovo memorial in Moscow, where more than 20,000 people were killed. This is a memorial in Omsk, this is an memorial in Yekaterinburg where about 20,000 people were killed too. This is a memorial in Ingushetia, but, many of these places just could not be located, there is nothing left there. [MUSIC]
