The size and scale of the Great Purges sometimes obscures some of the subtleties of the Soviet system and the nature of political power under Stalin. While the Purges appeared to outsiders- both at the time and since- to be a case of the Revolution eating its own, the senior Bolsheviks purged tended to come from internal factions within the Soviet system. A number of the "Old Bolsheviks," ie veterans of the pre-1917 political world, survived the Purges. Anastas Mikoyan and Lazar Kaganovich were certainly rather senior members of the Politburo and both survived. Stalin himself played a dynamic role in the course and micromanagement of the purging of senior CPSU members. These dynamic of the Soviet state gave some individuals in Stalin's personal entourage a modicum of security all while fueling the the Purges excesses.

One of the facets of Stalin's dictatorship was that by the early 1930s he had accrued a constellation of hard-nosed administrators and servitors. Stephen Wheatcroft memorably coined the phrase "Team Stalin," to describe these individuals. Some of them had been junior members of the RSDLP and had come to prominence during the Revolution and Civil War, which in turn led them to a position within the nascent Soviet bureaucracy. Both Khrushchev and Molotov fit this mold; both men were what would be termed in the West as "upwardly-mobile" within the Soviet state. This naturally meant these men were drawn into Stalin's orbit. Stalin's political maneuvering after Lenin's death capitalized on his control over the bureaucracy to sideline his other rivals among the senior leadership. Still other members of the Team were Stalin's early political allies like Kaganovich or Kliment Voroshilov. These men not only capitalized on a close personal relationship with Stalin, but were also important allies for Stalin's emerging dictatorship. The aged Mikhail Kalinin, for instance, struck the correct image of a senior peasant elder within the Politburo. Although he was relatively toothless in terms of actual power, only Stalin received more personal petitions from Soviet citizens than Kalinin. The Team had proved essential in implementing both collectivization and the Five Year Plans, as well as attempting to restore something of a Soviet diplomatic presence within Europe. Stalin may have a strong tendency to micromanage, and this was one of the sins Lenin faulted Stalin in his Testament, but a micromanager needs someone to carry out orders.

The problem with this semi-open clique leadership is that it puts those outside the group into an anomalous position. They have less real authority, but still exist within the system. Trotsky's purging and exile often obscures the fact that many of Stalin's political opponents of the 1920s remained within the USSR, often in some form of official capacity after a suitable supplication to Stalin. Both Zinoviev and Kamenev were in neutered political positions until their formal expulsion from the Party in 1932. Stalin himself saw these super-attenuated members of the Party as dead wood and they were ready scapegoats for the failures of the 5YPs and other problems with Stalinist state-building. Both in private and in public, Stalin would rail against the old-style thinking and lack of energy devoted to the Soviet project that characterized these sidelined individuals.

The emergence of the Team as well as a whole generation of young managers from collectivization and the 5YPs created a dangerous nexus that made the Great Purges so destructive. Not only did Stalin fear that his rivals could unite and dethrone him, he also had at his disposal a collection of servitors willing to advance their careers at others' expenses. For the Team, this meant ferreting out real or expected enemies, and they often targeted outsiders. Of the Politburo members purged in 1937, they were relative outliers within the larger Soviet system. they were late-comers to the Politburo and a number of them had been abroad for reasons of health, providing a neat pretext for charges of foreign collusion or connections to Trotsky. Other out-groups were especially vulnerable to the purging process. There was a strong distrust within the early Soviet system of military professionals. Many officers of the first decade of Soviet rule had ascended the ranks semi-independently of the Party, and, by extension, Stalin. These suspicions bore fruit during the Great Purges as military officers found their personal networks within the military provided very little cover against charges of treason and wrecking.

But being on the Team always carried with it an element of risk. Displeasing Stalin or creating some sort of pretext for removal was an ever-present threat during the Purges. Genrikh Yagoda's fall exemplified that no one was immune from the process. Yagoda, as head of the NKVD, was notoriously corrupt and inefficient and enemies within the Team and the NKVD used this against him. His successor, the much younger Nikolai Yezhov, conducted his duties with far greater probity and thoroughness than the venal Yagoda. But although Yezhov was a more efficient executor, that very status painted a target on Yezhov's back. Like many intelligence chiefs, Yezhov actively sought out intelligence on his political rivals. Such files were dangerous in the collective paranoia of the Great Purges as trivial biographical details and missteps could become treason. Stalin's habit of simultaneously delegating and then micromanaging the Team gave Yezhov plenty of evidence on the Teams' activities that could be spun into a charge. Not surprisingly, Yezhov was the most powerful member of the inner circle to be purged. Even here, the purging process was quite different and staged with a gradual stripping of his power before his arrest, show-trial, and execution. A similar fate befell Yezhov's successor Beria after Stalin's death, illustrating the occupational hazards of being Stalin's chief of secret police.

Although underlying causes of the Great Purges are still highly contentious within the historiography, the process of the Purges was relatively straightforward. Much of the initial targets were outliers and men who had lost earlier political battles with Stalin and were thus automatically suspect. But as the Purges escalated, blame-shifting and circular squads began to take over, leading to a wider expansion of arrests and show trials. Stalin proved an important bellwether for the Purge process that encouraged to evolve in certain directions or occasionally putting a stop to it in some areas. The Team had been used to tailoring data to suit Stalin's expectations for the better part of a decade before 1937 and the Great Purges were not an exception to this phenomenon. Yezhov in particular knew how to play to Stalin's instincts and suspicions and it was this that made him especially dangerous to other members of the Team. While other members of the leadership participated in the Purges as a matter of self-preservation, others like Yezhov or Khrushchev used them as an opportunity for career advancement or to settle scores with other rivals. While the Terror certainly disrupted the Soviet leadership, it also created opportunities for advancement and bound certain members of the Team together with their master. By fusing self-preservation and careerism, the Stalinist system of government created a self-perpetuating dynamic that only Stalin could put the breaks upon.

Sources

Fitzpatrick, Sheila. On Stalin's Team: The Years of Living Dangerously in Soviet Politics. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015.

Getty, John Arch, Nadežda Vladimirovna Murav'eva, and Oleg Vladimirovič Naumov. Yezhov: The Rise of Stalin's "Iron Fist". New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008.

Khlevniuk, Oleg. Master of the House Stalin and the Inner Circle. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009.

Wheatcroft, Stephen G. "From Team-Stalin to degenerate tyranny." In The Nature of Stalin’s Dictatorship, pp. 79-107. Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2004.