Caught between war repressions and party purge

Abstract

AbstractThe article tries to seize the role of the Second World War in the evolution of the criteria that defined the good communist. This evolution completed a shift initiated in the 1930s from genealogical criteria (social origin, political past...) to criteria focused on the communist’s inner “self.” First, the author examines the launching and mechanisms of the purge from 1942 to the immediate postwar years, at the national level as well as that of a region whose liberation started early in the war. For Moscow, the purge was a top priority despite the lack of activists in liberated territory. However, there was some misunderstanding between the various levels of authority about the criteria of censure, expulsion or reinstatement. The second part of the article examines these criteria and their meaning in the history of Soviet Party purges. Some communists were punished for the same motives that triggered judicial prosecution, whereas others were heavily censured although their acts were not considered as crimes in the penal system. The deep meaning of the purge lies in this second set of criteria: for Party members, the Second World War was indeed the “Armageddon of Revolution” (A. Weiner). It revived the original values of the good Bolshevik (fighting spirit and sense of sacrifice for the collective project) while confirming the new method of appraising Party members by scrutinizing their intimate conscience, supposedly revealed by their acts. At the same time, the ordeal did not only test communist pugnacity: more broadly, it questioned sincerity and devotion to the Party. This broader viewpoint preserved some members despite their sojourn in occupied territory. However, it deeply shook Party structures just when the latter were central to the restoration of control over society.