What Were The Causes Of Stalin's Purges During 1936-1940?

IDENTIFICATION AND EVALUATION OF SOURCES

The focus of this investigation will be “What were the causes of Stalin’s purges during 1936-1940?” and this book will analyze based on historians did he really consolidate his power over Russia during late 1930’s . For the purposes of investigation it will solely focus on late 1930’s to answer the question in more depth .Thus, The Great Terror: A Reassessment by Conquest Robert is source of great value and strength for this investigation because book focus completely on time frame of 1935- 1940 and also begins book with description of purges and goes in more depth of why according to the author Stalin started purges in Russia and lastly by the end of the book author

Conquest argues that Stalin took aggressive steps during 1934 -1940 purges in order t o maintain and consolidate his power over the Soviet- Union. Conquest also claims that, throughout the book, ever since Stalin came to power he was always more worried about losing power from rivals and from citizens of country. In other words, he was worried about losing power from his main rival Trotsky at first,then Grigory Zinoviev, Lev Kamenev and Nikolai Bukharin was also his biggest fear. Conquest initially starts his book by arguing that all Stalin did was to consolidate his power from his rivals and ends his book by making same argument. Stalin killed 20 million people just to maintain his power over Soviet Union. Conquest argues that ever since Stalin came to power he wanted to get rid of his rivals and was more worried about losing power from his rivals. So Conquest is trying to conclude that all the purges that Stalin did was to consolidate his power. Lastly, author is specifically arguing in this book that Stalin used Purges to gain power.This book is also insisting that the fear of losing power over Soviet Union forced Stalin to kill millions of