Purge and Politics in the Periphery: Birobidzhan in 1937

Abstract

Recent scholarship on the purges and Great Terror has contributed immensely to our understanding of the Stalinist political system that emerged in the mid-1980s. Research by J. Arch Getty and Gabor Rittersporn, among others, has challenged the totalitarian perspective that views the Terror as part of a grand scheme designed by Stalin to silence his opponents in the Party and government, establish his personal dictatorship and coerce society into unquestioning submission.1 Instead, these historians emphasize the limits of power and control wielded by the national leadership which found itself at times frustrated in its efforts to impose its will on both society and regional party organizations. They conclude that the "cleansing" of the Party and government was the partial product of a conflict between national and subnational officials, with initiative from below sometimes playing as important a role as central directives in fueling the purges.