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2N Revolution and Dictatorship: Russia, 1917–1953

The Gulag and the End of the Purges

  • 3 things to know
  • Component 2

Overview

Recall questions on conditions in the camps, how the mass operations were halted, the fate of Yezhov and the change under his successor.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

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Key term

What were conditions like in the gulags?

Key term

Who replaced Yezhov as head of the NKVD and what change did this bring?

Key term

What are the intentionalist and revisionist interpretations of responsibility for the Terror?

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

  1. 1

    What were conditions like in the gulags?

    Model answer

    Inadequate food, extreme cold, exhausting work quotas, disease, and arbitrary violence, resulting in high mortality rates.

  2. 2

    How did the mass purges come to an end in late 1938?

    Model answer

    Yezhov was replaced by Beria, and the regime acknowledged that excesses had occurred, blaming overzealous NKVD officers.

  3. 3

    What happened to Yezhov after the purges ended?

    Model answer

    He was arrested in 1939 and executed in 1940, becoming a scapegoat for the terror he had administered on Stalin's orders.

  4. 4

    Who replaced Yezhov as head of the NKVD and what change did this bring?

    Model answer

    Lavrentiy Beria became head of the NKVD in 1938 and reduced the scale of mass arrests while maintaining the apparatus of repression.

  5. 5

    How and when was Leon Trotsky assassinated?

    Model answer

    In Mexico City in August 1940 by NKVD agent Ramón Mercader, who struck him with an ice axe.

  6. 6

    What was the significance of Trotsky's assassination for Stalin?

    Model answer

    It eliminated Stalin's most prominent critic abroad and the symbolic leader of opposition to Stalinism.

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