By Harry Sloan
Socialist Organiser1983 1983-07-14Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 11 →
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500,000 - mostly the elderly and very young children - died as a result.
This wholesale and wanton action, taken in the midst of a full-scale war effort, was a flavour of things to come in the post-war period.
Purge followed purge. The entire Leningrad leadership of the Party was wiped out, accused of plotting to move the Russian capital from Moscow to Leningrad.
A vicious anti-semitic campign annihilated the able Jewish leaders who had run he Soviet war propaganda, drove jews from posts in industry anc banned them from the high command of the army, the foreign office and the party leadership. Darly in 1953 the 'doctors' plot" was announced, accusing Jewish doctors of planning the murder of Stalin and his closest supporters.
Parallel purges were mounted in the Communist Parties of the Eastern European 'buffer zone" - reaching right to leadership level, with show trials framing up, excuting, jailing or disgracing no less than three CP general secretaries (in Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia and Poland) a state president, deputy premiers in four countries, dozens of ministers and leading officials, around 100 generals, and thousands more at on Stalinism