The Fate of the Top Soviet Officials
The Execution of Eight Soviet Generals: Stalin’s 1937 Red Army Purge
12m
On 11–12 June 1937, one of the most devastating political purges in military history unfolded in the Soviet Union. Eight of the Red Army’s most prominent commanders — Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky, Iona Yakir, Ieronim Uborevich, Robert Eideman, August Kork, Vitovt Putna, Boris Feldman, and Vitaly Primakov — were arrested, tortured by the NKVD, and accused of plotting with Nazi Germany to overthrow Joseph Stalin.
After a secret trial that lasted only a few hours, all eight generals were sentenced to death and executed by shooting shortly after midnight on 12 June 1937.
Their executions marked the beginning of Stalin’s massive purge of the Red Army leadership. Tens of thousands of officers were dismissed, imprisoned, or killed, crippling Soviet military command just years before Nazi Germany launched Operation Barbarossa in 1941.
Only decades later were the generals officially rehabilitated, when Soviet authorities admitted that the charges had been fabricated and their confessions extracted under torture.
Up Next in Season 1
-
Stanisław Kosior: Architect of the Uk...
Stanisław Kosior was one of the most powerful Communist leaders in the Soviet Union and a key figure behind the policies that led to the Holodomor, the Great Ukrainian Famine of 1932–1933 that killed millions.
As First Secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine, Kosior helped enforce collectivi...
-
Boris Rodos: Soviet Secret Police Tor...
During the Great Purge of the 1930s, Joseph Stalin unleashed a campaign of terror across the Soviet Union. Millions were arrested, tortured, or executed as alleged “enemies of the people.” Among the most feared interrogators of the Soviet secret police, the NKVD, was Boris Rodos.
Born in 1905 in...
-
Nikolai Yezhov: Stalin’s “Bloody Dwar...
The 1930s, the Soviet Union. As Joseph Stalin consolidates power, fear spreads through the Communist Party. Convinced that enemies and conspirators surround him, Stalin launches the Great Purge – a campaign of arrests, torture, and executions that will engulf the entire Soviet state.
At the cent...
