Stalin's mass purges against CPSU members during the 30s are widely seen as paranoid outbursts and/or brute-force elimination of opposition. However, is there any unifying theme or pattern that could be gleaned out of the killings?

by ablaaa

I read about Kirov's death (allegedly ordered by Stalin, though not proven), and it was evident that he was a hard-working and loyal Communist, with no ulterior motives to oppose Stalin. However, it was mentioned that he was also very boisterous and independent-minded, leading somewhat of a Bohemian lifestyle that could have been in discord with Stalin's strict and spartan worldview. Stalin could have viewed him as some sort of bad role model, so in this case there is at least some "logic" (quotes intended).

What other "justification" would have Stalin had for other purged members?

SerfofPirates

The party congress that year had effectively voted Stalin out of power and replaced him with Kirov, but the vote totals were kept "secret" so Stalin retained power.

The main "official" crimes of the Great Purge were being a traitor to the party, a traitor to the revolution, involvement in the assassination of Kirov, and involvement in a planned assassination of Stalin, plus whatever else the interrogators felt like throwing in.

The real reasons were

  1. It was a terror, modeled after Lenin's Red Terror, but expanded to include party leadership. The accusations and show trials create a sense of paranoia that everyone is out to get you, but because Stalin was never openly involved, it also creates a cult of personality.

  2. The concept of the permanent revolution, advocated by Trotsky and endorsed by Lenin, would tie Stalin to Lenin's legacy for the ideologically dogmatic while helping Stalin remove threats to his power. This concept called on the "revolutionaries" to consistently flip back and forth between internal purges and external conquests. Trotsky, in his essay "Fascism and how to fight it", blamed Stalin for the rise of fascism as a sociopolitical movement, claiming that Stalin was too slow with the purge/invade cycle. The next party congress was in 1939, the year Stalin forcibly annexed Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, and invaded Finland, marking the switch to the invade portion of the cycle, and an effective end to the purges until the Plot of the Doctors.