The Anatomy of the Great Terror: A Quantitative Analysis of the 1937-38 Purges in the Red Army

Abstract

Elite purges are an instrument of control in autocracies. We study the patterns of repression among the Soviet high command during the 1937-38 Great Terror, when over one-half of general-grade officers were executed, using a unique dataset compiled from a large number of open and archival sources. Some of our findings support the conventional wisdom: the risk was higher for certain ethnic minorities, higher ranks, and those with prior foreign contacts. Overall, we believe that Stalin was not reacting to any imminent conspiracy threat but preemptively minimized the risk of a possible coup, targeting the most competent officers: controlling for other characteristics, the probability of repression was much higher for younger cadres. At the same time, military promotions in 1941-1945 were inversely related to age. This is the first systematic evidence that the Great Terror directly impacted the disastrous Red Army performance in the first year of the German invasion.